Hi guys,
I’m trying to install openSUSE 11.1 from the LiveCD on an old IBM PC. It always boots to the CD fine, but after I try to get into the live desktop, the progress bar hangs and eventually kicks me back to the command line. After repeating this a couple times, I finally got graphical installation to work, but when I attempted to log in, the login manager gave me a message saying “Unable to authenticate user” when I knew my credentials were correct. If anybody could help me figure out what’s happening here, that would be great.
What are the hardware specs? RAM? CPU speed? Disk space?
512MB RAM, 1.8ghz Pentium 4, and I gave it the full 20GB of disk space to install on.
May be marginal with the live CD as the desktop has to load into RAM, instead of just loading the installer. Is there no way you can use the DVD? Or use the net install CD and fetch the package over the net (LAN or Internet).
You could also try making a swap partition first, using a rescue CD like gparted so that the OS can use it right away.
THese old machines don’t have DVD drives, so I think I’m going to try installing from a USB stick next, and if that fails, I’ll go ahead with the net install option. I’m saving that for last as the connection we have here is far from blazing fast. 
The net install can also install from the contents of the DVD exported via NFS, HTTP or SMB from another computer on the LAN.