I've got a couple of old Dell laptops, a Latitude PPX (C family) and a Latitude PP01L (C600/C500). The first is a 650 MHz P3 the second is a 700 MHz P3 and both are maxed out with a half gig of RAM.
Xubuntu 12.04 LTS installed and runs great on the first one but the video is hosed on the second one (C600/C500). Oh it's got video, but the native 1024x768 screen seems to be divided into two overlapping segments (looks like maybe 800x768) which deteriorate into moire patterns in the overlapped areas.
There is no xorg.conf file in this version of xubuntu and I can't find a utility that will configure the video. xrander is no more (obsolete). There are 3 choices for display settings; 1024x768, 800x600, 640x480 and the screen is split in all three of them. There seems to be no way to alter the color depth. I tried taking a screenshot of the display and it came out looking perfectly normal, as though the display were actually working. Very frustrating.
I guess I should just be grateful I got one of them to work with a current LTS release but I'll keep tinkering with it. Funny, any more I hate distro hopping. I just want to find one that works and stay with it. The problem is, every distro I like eventually turns into one that won't work on the hardware.
In brighter news, we just bought a couple of laptops from 3btech. One is for Lisa's mom and the other is for Lisa. Here's the machine: http://3btech.net/hppa15lawinc.html
It's a 64 bit machine but 32 bit Kubuntu runs beautifully on it. With the first one, the built-in wireless didn't work at first (not sure why) and I bought some wireless dongles that Lee recommended in a previous post on this list ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833166041 ) which were plug-and-play in Kubuntu but after I ran updates on the machine the internal wireless started working and, on the second machine, it worked the first time. This left we with a couple of really nice back-up, Linux-compatible wireless dongles so I count that adventure as a win (especially considering I've already used the a couple of times).
-- Don Crowder http://www.don-guitar.com http://twitter.com/eldergeek http://don-guitar.blogspot.com/ //www.freelists.org/list/donspatch https://plus.google.com/106370117092434105137 http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Crowder/1321324044 A proud user of Kubuntu 12.04 LTS (Linux) ______________________________________________________________________________ Highland Lakes Linux User Group (HLLUG): http://www.hllug.org HLLUG mailing list: //www.freelists.org/list/hllug
