Installed Ubuntu 11.10 on laptop OK, but all I see is background on boot?

Scougar

Scougar

Scougar

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I have an older laptop which is a celeron M 1.6Ghz with 1.5 GB of RAM. I installed Ubuntu 11.10 onto it, OK, and the menu's showed up fine.

But when I boot into Linux now all I can see is the background. I can use the keys to adjust the volume, but that's about it. Am I doing something wrong here? I can't seem to right click using the track pad or anything (to bring up menus).

Hmm.. maybe I should have selected to download updates when installing? (possibly to get drivers?)

(I can't actually find the system requirements for 11.10, but I'm looking).
 
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OK.. I'll look that up :-)

Downloaded Xbuntu, but in the mean time, sorted out my slight monitor faux pa (It lost the settings so had to reset), and now it ubuntu seems to be running OK. Tried some streaming music and video from my NAS and it played pretty well. Will see how it goes, then try Xbuntu is I don't get on with Ubuntu (or the machine doesn't).
 
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lol, thanks bud :-)

Annoyingly, the PC is very stable on XP... but seems unstable on Ubuntu, which is a little irritating. For example, why it keeps trying to shutdown bluetooth devices when the laptop doesn't have any is bizarre. (Even on Xbuntu). Sometimes Ubuntu just freezes on start-up.

Xbuntu seems VERY basic... but I'll see how it goes.
 
Would Mint be suitable for a Celeron M laptop? I'll gladly give it a go. Xbuntu still seems a bit flakey.

I'm also in the process of sorting out an old Dell C521 (Athlon 64 3200+ and only 1GB RAM.). I have never seen such 'thick' dust in a case before - front vent was about 1/4 of an inch thick - I am surprised the machine even ran.. took me two and a half hours to clean out, and wash all the plastics. I've just bought an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ for it and 2X 1GB RAM (for a total of 3GB) from the members market. Whilst waiting for those parts to turn up, I've installed Ubuntu 11.10, and it run's just fine, reasonably quick and stable.

Annoying as hell though is the GT 210 gpu fan runs at full speed and I don't know Linux well enough to install the official .run package from Nvidia, or NVCLOCK which is meant to help with that.
 
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What does that do then? Is that the same as what the Ubuntu software updater does when it gets version-current? I was hoping by installing the one's from the Nvidia site, I might get a control panel or get the fan under control.
 
Was looking for something else and came across this old thread. Xbuntu has been just fine on this laptop. The only thing I needed to install was the additional PULSE audio controller (mixer) in order to get the sound working properly.

Allows you to properly utilise an older laptop :-) (I.e. XP is not good on it really, as it is really rapid on the initial release, but with all the updates/service packs... it got MASSIVELY worse in performance, possibly a RAM threshold).
 
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