openSUSE 11.2 on old Sony Vaio laptop

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi all

I tried to installed OpenSUSE 11.2 “i586” on an older Sony Vaio laptop (model PCG-XG9) with 20 GB HD and 128 or 256 MB RAM (not sure). There is no ethernet port, but I have a PCMCIA WLAN card “Cabetron RoamAbout 11 Mbit/s”, which should work perfectly with any Linux.

The computer had Win98 on it originally (which, of course, after all installation attempts is now destroyed). The problem is that I cannot install to the end at all - no matter what I try:

  1. Having the disk as a single FAT partition (made by a Win98 installation CD), it appears that the installer cannot create the correct partitions needed for Linux.

  2. Having deleted the DOS partition with FDISK from Windows98 - which is like buying a completely new, unformatted HD from a store. But again, it cannot automatically set the partitions…

Is there a manual / instruction page somewhere how I should partition the disk manually (how to do it, and what sizes are recommended for each partition)?

This would be great. Thank you, Christian

#2

256MB is not much RAM to install in, just barely usable for KDE. Try a lighter desktop. Also with 20GB, I would just have one / partition and one swap.