Difficulty installing Debian 6.0.0 on an old computer
I'm trying to turn an old computer (10-year-old IBM NetVista desktop with a 1.0 GHz processor and 256 MB of RAM) into a server. Thus, I've made sure to only use the i386 versions of Debian.
I'm having difficulty installing Debian Squeeze on it. I did once successfully install Debian Lenny on this computer. The logical thing to do is to install Debian Lenny instead. However, Debian Squeeze is now the stable branch, and that makes Lenny (the previous stable branch) obsolete. (Should I use Lenny anyway? I know that Ubuntu drops support for old versions. Does Debian do that as well?)
I tried the first Debian Squeeze CD, but selecting install or the graphical install in the installer boot menu to freeze and then flicker. The only way out was to reboot.
Because I used a new CD-R and used the verification feature in iso2cd (the Puppy Linux application I use to burn ISO files to CD), I knew that the CD wasn't the problem. I also tried the Debian Squeeze CD on my main computer (a newer one) in VirtualBox and had no problems. So the CD isn't the problem.
It's possible that the CD drive in my old IBM NetVista computer is in marginal condition, but that doesn't explain why it has no problem with my Puppy Linux or antiX Linux CDs.
So I tried booting the Debian Squeeze netinstall CD from USB. (I had to burn the PLOP plpbt.iso file to CD and boot up from that initially to get this old computer to boot from USB.) Selecting install or graphical install from the installer boot menu caused the screen to freeze and then flicker, just like before.
I tried going to the help page in the installer boot menu to start up Debian. When I tried this from the USB, Debian couldn't detect my network hardware. When I tried this from the CD, Debian couldn't read from my CD.
Have any of you experienced anything like this? Why does Debian Squeeze have so much difficulty with my old computer? Should I use Debian Lenny even though it's out-of-date even by Debian stable standards?
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Jason Hsu <jhsu802701@jasonhsu.com>
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