How to Mint 14 (15?) on a pentium M no pae

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justy39

How to Mint 14 (15?) on a pentium M no pae

Post by justy39 »

First of all. I am not all that up to speed with linux yet. Also, I used a old dell d600. So this isn't my main computer, it's more of a toy for playing on. So if the computer was messed up. No hard feelings. If you do this, backup backup backup.

So my old d600 has the pentium M 1.5ghz processor (Banias), and no pae support. But mint 14 (ubuntu 12.10) runs just fine on it. My d600 had mint 13, 32bit before doing this. Most likely this will also work with ubuntu and zorin.

First thing need to do is, install fake-pae. It adds a flag to the /proc/cpuinfo. https://launchpad.net/~prof7bit/+archive/fake-pae. I found it in software manager.

You can try sudo apt-get update.. Then try sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. But for me, that did not install mint 14.

I had to go here http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-upgrad ... a-with-apt. I did what they said to do on website using terminal. That didn't work for me. So I went in File System>etc and right clicked apt folder as administrator. This is where I opened sources.list using pluma and deleted the info, and replaced it with mint 14 info.

Once I did that. I could do the remaining stuff on the webpage. sudo apt-get update... then sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. It's took probably a good 2 hours to download and update to mint 14. So you might as leave it for a while. During install progress it asked if I wanted to update the packages, answered yes to all of them.

Once done, rebooted.. Mint 14 worked perfect except one item. Wireless internet connection. It was giving me dns errors and wouldn't load a webpage.

To fix that, I opened terminal. Typed sudo dns-fix. (may have to run it twice if get a error)

And now I have a working mint 14 mate 32 bit on a pentium M processor. It's possible, once mint 15 comes out, this same procedure will also work. I will definitely try it.

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Last edited by justy39 on Sat Mar 30, 2013 1:49 am, edited 5 times in total.
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xenopeek
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Re: How to Mint 14 (15?) on a pentium M no pae

Post by xenopeek »

Moved it here as this is a tutorial. Thanks for sharing :) Can you share what kernel version you are now running? I'd guess the 3.2 kernel series from Linux Mint 13, as I understand the Ubuntu package base used on Linux Mint 14 doesn't have a non-PAE kernel.

You can get your kernel version with:

Code: Select all

uname -r
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justy39

Re: How to Mint 14 (15?) on a pentium M no pae

Post by justy39 »

Using kernel 3.5.0-26-generic from the looks of it. I used uname -a command, said samething.. So I dunno, no issues. Runs smooth. I'll try the -r once.

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justy39

Re: How to Mint 14 (15?) on a pentium M no pae

Post by justy39 »

So yes... I did your uname -r and it says 3.5.0-26-generic.

I discovered something new. With mint 14, youtube videos are no longer choppy on the d600.
justy39

Re: How to Mint 14 (15?) on a pentium M no pae

Post by justy39 »

I've been keeping the d600 up to date. Updated the kernel recently like any other linux based pc. Computer been running great, I've noticed lower cpu usage vs mint 13. It is a well worth upgrade in my opinion. Email and internet is smooth and quick for a 10 year old laptop, that most people would have scrapped by now.

I used to be against laptops. Thought they were useless. Getting this d600 for cheap has been fun, and a trial with the life of using a laptop. Doesn't have my lovely 36" desktop lcd monitor, but holds it's own in mobility. Since scrapping the outdated win xp which came with the d600 and installing mint 14. I find myself using this old laptop on the couch, more than using my very good desktop.

What fake-pae does is, tricks linux/ubuntu that there is a pae cpu installed. Even though, the cpu actually has no pae support. Once mint 14 was installed. And fixed my easy dns error via terminal. Everything worked out of the box, no added drivers to install.
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Side note: My old laptop will not display cinnamon correctly, not mint 13 or 14. But mate is what I use and it's pretty fast for a 1.5ghz cpu. Mate, I have no desktop display issues. I think if you are on a old laptop like mine, anything but cinnamon should work. Some people who know more about linux probably could get cinnamon to work if they can find better display drivers.

-Computer-
Processor : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz
Memory : 1026MB (434MB used)
Operating System : Linux Mint 14 Nadia
User Name : justy39 (justy39)
Date/Time : Sun 21 Apr 2013 03:15:26 AM CDT
-Display-
Resolution : 1400x1050 pixels
OpenGL Renderer : Mesa DRI R200 (RV250 4C66) x86/MMX/SSE2 TCL DRI2
X11 Vendor : The X.Org Foundation
-Multimedia-
Audio Adapter : ICH4 - Intel 82801DB-ICH4
-Input Devices-
Lid Switch
Power Button
Sleep Button
AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
Video Bus
DualPoint Stick
AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad
-Printers-
No printers found
-SCSI Disks-
ATA WDC WD400VE-75HD
HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4241N

-Processor-
Name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz
Family, model, stepping : 6, 13, 6 (Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon/Celeron)
Vendor : Intel
-Configuration-
Cache Size : 2048kb
Frequency : 1500.00MHz
BogoMIPS : 2990.08
Byte Order : Little Endian
-Features-
FDIV Bug : no
HLT Bug : no
F00F Bug : no
Coma Bug : no
Has FPU : yes
-Cache-
Cache information not available
-Capabilities-
pae : Physical Address Extensions
fpu : Floating Point Unit
vme : Virtual 86 Mode Extension
de : Debug Extensions - I/O breakpoints
pse : Page Size Extensions (4MB pages)
tsc : Time Stamp Counter and RDTSC instruction
msr : Model Specific Registers
mce : Machine Check Architeture
cx8 : CMPXCHG8 instruction
sep : Fast System Call (SYSENTER/SYSEXIT)
mtrr : Memory Type Range Registers
pge : Page Global Enable
mca : Machine Check Architecture
cmov : Conditional Move instruction
clflush : Cache Line Flush instruction
dts : Debug Store
acpi : Thermal Monitor and Software Controlled Clock
mmx : MMX technology
fxsr : FXSAVE and FXRSTOR instructions
sse : SSE instructions
sse2 : SSE2 (WNI) instructions
ss : Self Snoop
tm : Thermal Monitor
pbe : Pending Break Enable
up : smp kernel running on up
bts : Branch Trace Store
est : Enhanced SpeedStep
tm2 : Thermal Monitor 2

-Version-
Kernel : Linux 3.5.0-27-generic (i686)
Compiled : #46-Ubuntu SMP Mon Mar 25 20:00:05 UTC 2013
C Library : Unknown
Default C Compiler : GNU C Compiler version 4.7.2 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.7.2-2ubuntu1)
Distribution : Linux Mint 14 Nadia
-Current Session-
Computer Name : justy39-Latitude-D600
User Name : justy39 (justy39)
Home Directory : /home/justy39
Desktop Environment : MATE
-Misc-
Uptime : 2 hours, 10 minutes
Load Average : 0.25, 0.16, 0.21
9wiklund

Re: How to Mint 14 (15?) on a pentium M no pae

Post by 9wiklund »

Also I have good experiences with 7bit's fake-pae.

And I am trying to make it easier to install a new version of Ubuntu based distros/flavours to a computer with Pentium M. See this link

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu-fake-PAE

Yes, it's about Lubuntu, but it can be easily ported to Mint. It should work to add a mint 32-bit pae iso file as /second.iso in 'grub-n-iso-n-swap'- If you want to do a bit more, replace /lubuntu.iso with /mint.iso and change the entries in grub.cfg.

I tried to make it easy also for Windows XP users. Maybe it needs some improvements before an average Windows user dare use it ;-)
justy39

Re: How to Mint 14 (15?) on a pentium M no pae

Post by justy39 »

It's good you are working on something with fake-pae.

There is some nice older labtops still out there, well capable of doing typical things as any other computer. I used mine the other day to do some spreadsheets and photo editing.

But for a future standpoint. It would be nice if, either the kernel writers would turn off pae flag checking. Or ubuntu and other's add a distro with fake-pae already installed. It would save a user from doing extra steps to getting the latest version. I had to start with mint 13 (ubuntu 12.04) to get to mint 14 (ubuntu 12.10). It's a longer process, but mint 14 hands down works better on a d600.

Mint 13 and d600, will not play youtube videos without video stuttering. d600 mouse/finger pad goes on the fritz and sometimes wonders off across the screen by it's self. Sometimes you will watch the mouse fly across the screen and go beyond the screen edge. Sometimes the mouse froze up for a bit before allowing you to move it again. I tried several mint 13 installs, all had the identical problem.

On mint 14, all problems stated above is gone. Hence the reason, it's a well worth upgrade. Not to mention far less cpu usage. While mint 13 averages on idle 38-46% cpu usage at any given time even idling. Mint 14 is at 22-28%. Mint 14 also has longer battery life, and the cpu fan come on less times.
justy39

Re: How to Mint 14 (15?) on a pentium M no pae

Post by justy39 »

Mint 15 mate... D600 No pae cpu. Only hard thing was after install and reboot. I got a log-in screen and found out you can't log in using gnome. You need to choose mate/cinnamon. Otherwise, pretty easy upgrade. http://linuxg.net/how-to-update-upgrade ... 15-olivia/

mint 15 source list

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ olivia main upstream import
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ raring partner
deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ raring free non-free

# deb http://archive.removed/ubuntu raring-removed apps
# deb http://archive.removed/ubuntu raring-removed games
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canislupusaeterna

Re: How to Mint 14 (15?) on a pentium M no pae

Post by canislupusaeterna »

Thank you for providing this information, I have found it very useful, as have a few colleagues of mine. I used these methods to get this up and running on an HP DV1000 laptop. I learned through trial and error (and several re-installations) to use aptitude and to go 13 --> 14 --> 15 (at least for this laptop). When wifi networks presented a problem, I found it useful to edit the connection and change the IPv4 setting to Automatic DHCP Connections Only, and then under DNS servers to put: 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4
with only one space between the two, and if this did not resolve the issue -- to switch off IPv6.

I also found it possible to use XFCE4 quite easily with this installation, and it is even possible (if one so desires) to replace the XFCE window manager with OpenBox.
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