Trouble booting

[Pingpong]

Hello, I have a Gateway ML3109 that I have installed I think Debian 6.05(in grub it says Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 2.6.32-5-686 ) and my grub version is "GNU GRUB version 1.98+20100804-14+squeeze1". For the install I had a lightweight ISO (191MB), so it downloaded most of the OS from the internet during the install. The install seemed successful, however when I tried to boot, it did not work. The problem is each time I try to boot, either in recovery mode or normal mode it freezes a different way. Sometimes it freezes with a just black screen, or a black screen with a blinking _, other times it freezes after different processes, such as Setting preliminary keymap..., or "Waiting for /dev to be fully populated", but it is rarely the same, and it is not a matter of patience, as I have let it sit for quite a while, and it does not move on or load something new. I do not know what to do, as I am not very experienced with linux, but I tried to include as much information on my situation, please help me get my machine up and running

[wayne128]

If you want to install Debian, you can also get Debian Live iso, this one can let you know whether it works on your graphic and internet.
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/cur ... so-hybrid/

[Pingpong]

I might try installing one of those later, but is there some simple fix to what is currently happening?

[cwsnyder]

It sounds like you either don't have your swap set up or you are having driver problems. The driver problems could be verified by a Mint Live DVD/CD or Live Debian CD. You don't need swap for a Live environment, but you definitely need swap set up if you have less than 6G RAM on the laptop for a regular install.

You could also have some bad RAM.

[Pingpong]

I downloaded and burned debian-live-6.0.5-i386-lxde-desktop.iso
However, neither the live, live failsafe, or the live 686 or live 686 failsafe options worked
I am sure that my ram is good, but a driver issue might be the problem, however I have no clue how to fix this without a GUI
Do you think another flavor of linux might have better results?
I want to use something lightweight, as I only has 512MB of RAM

[xenopeek]

As this isn't about Linux Mint or LMDE, but about Debian, moving it here.

[Pingpong]

thank you, sorry about that, I am new to these forums

[Pingpong]

KK I am downloading Linux Mint, I have never heard of it before, and didn't even realize it when I stumbled upon this form haha, I am a NOOB. I have used Tiny Me, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian before, but maybe I can get Mint to work, from the screenshots I have seen it looks pretty cool, and maybe Mint-Debian will work better for me than regular Debian =)

[cwsnyder]

Just about any major distribution should be about the same. What you want to look at instead of 'What distribution should I use for 512M?', the real question is: 'What desktop environment should I use with 512M?'

I would suggest staying away from any environment which uses Compiz or a fancy graphical desktop of any sort. From what I saw of your laptop specifications, you should avoid Unity desktop, KDE, or standard GNOME 3.x. Xfce is available in Linux Mint 13, or MATE installation, or you can install one of those and later install LXDE in place of the default desktop. OpenBox is not directly supported in Mint, but you can install that desktop as well and have a fairly responsive machine.

Full-fat applications like LibreOffice/OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Evolution, GIMP, and Banshee may also stress your computer and make it crawl, especially with multiple applications open.

You don't have to go all the way down to AntiX, Puppy, Slitaz, DamnSmallLinux, or Tiny Core Linux, just match your expectations to your hardware. To use an analogy from the Evil Empire, don't expect to run Vista on a 256M XP installation.

[Pingpong]

good advice, but the amount of RAM wouldn't cause this not to boot in the first place, and I am not sure why it won't boot, but I have used the LXDE environment before, and I found it ran a lot better than Unity did on Ubuntu, but first I need to get this computer working, which at the moment I don't know what I can do other than trying to install different things, and maybe one will boot, maybe someone knows some line of code to put into the command line that will fix my problem, but I am not sure what my problem is, and I know nearly nothing about the linux command line

[cwsnyder]

Can you run a Live environment in 'compatibility mode?'

On the vmlinuz line in GRUB, replacing the quiet splash with nomodeset noapic acpi=off normally allows most computers to boot if there are no hardware problems.

[Pingpong]

How to I get to the Vmlinuz, it from the GRUB it gives me the options of E to edit the commands before booting, or C for the command line, but I don't know how to use the linux command line