From A very very new NewBie ... I am trying to install distros like Ubuntu, Ubuntu remix and others I get from the web via a PC on Vista. No matter
how I try, I can not get the 390E to read and act upon the CD distros or other ISO converted file that I want to execute .. A hint would be most welcomed - thank you

Would love to give you one, but your question is lacking details. What do you mean by "ISO converted file"?? How are you trying to boot your system?

There's no magic to installing Linux. Download the ISO image (Ubuntu would be a good one for you to start with), and burn it to CD/DVD. When you burn it, be sure to burn it as an ISO image, not as a file. If you do, the disc won't be bootable. Put the DVD in the drive, turn the machine on. You don't 'execute' anything, or put it in under Windows and have it work...Linux is an entire OS, not an application.

I have an old Thinkpad 380XD which had only 96mb mem, 10gb hard drive and a cd drive. I can't remember if the drive was bootable. I believe I had to use a floppy boot disk to start the installation. I ended up using a debian netinst to put a minimum system and then connected it to a wired network to download everything else I needed. I chose Fluxbox window manager.

It ran pretty fast, I had Win98 on it also and of course, debian was the fastest of the two OSes.

Here's a link to the article I used at the time to install linux on my Thinkpad.

http://www.osnews.com/story/2016

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.

An ISO image is a byte for byte copy of a CD. I assume you are using windows to burn the disk which means you are probably dragging and dropping. If you look at the contents of the CD and all you see is a single file then it was not burned correctly. Windows does not have any built in utilities to burn an ISO image. You need Nero, EZ CD creator or download a free utility like isorecorder.

I believe your laptop can boot from CD. Once the CD is burned stick the disk in the drive and reboot the laptop.

How much memory is installed in this computer? Without much ram you will need a lightweight desktop. Even the netbook version requires at least 512MB. I would try crunchbang first if you want stick with ubuntu based distributions.

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....

TUVM - the 390E just will not read the CD I got with the Ubuntu User magazine so I guess I will have to work on the machine first - downloaded files were burnt as ISO,

GM and TUVM Fred

I will work on the machine to get it to read CD's and then try again

GM and TUVM Fred

I will work on the machine to get it to read CD's and then try again

TUVM Michael - I will have to work on the CD-ROM for it to read and then we will see - cheers

...

Hello Michael

the 390E now has 256megs of RAM, I will see what CrunchBang is - thanks