Cannot click desktop icons

Itsdacraic

Hi,

Just taking my first foray into Unix/Linux this morning.

I have just ran the Linux Mint CD on an old Evo N1000v I had lying around here in the office. It took a while to run through but eventually prompted me for a username and password (which I set) and then it loaded up a desktop for me with 3 icons - Computer, Mint Home and Install.

The problem is I cannot click on any of these icons. The cursor will move with either the mouse of the touch pad but it will not allow me to click (or right-click) on the icons.

Anybody got any ideas? Apologies if I'm missing something very obvious.

An Fear Aniar

If it's an old machine, it may not have enough memory to run Mint.

Does the Menu work? It's in the bottom left-hand corner. You could try disabling Compiz effects and see if that helps.


.

Oracle

Looks like it should run, although not very well if you got the minimum memory. It's Pentium 4 and minimum 256mb of RAM :eek: : http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11371_na/11371_na.html

This guy put Linux on his, although I wouldn't recommend Suse: http://folk.uio.no/oeysteio/Compaq/

Lol quote

About the notebook

Don't buy one! I really can't stand it. It noisy, battery-life is below two hours and the touchpad has failed in addititon to all the problems with overheating (see below).

Update 2004-12-02:

Installed SUSE 9.2 It works pretty well, but the laptop is still noisy, the touchpad has failed again and the floppy drive isn't working anymore. I've also seen this behavior with Compaq Evo 800v and 800w. Do not buy any of these laptops. They are nothing but pieces of junk! I've also got several new e-mails from people with similar problems.

I really would like to compile a list of lousy laptops that people should avoid.

Itsdacraic

Oracle wrote: »

Looks like it should run, although not very well if you got the minimum memory. It's Pentium 4 and minimum 256mb of RAM :eek: : http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11371_na/11371_na.html

This guy put Linux on his, although I wouldn't recommend Suse: http://folk.uio.no/oeysteio/Compaq/

Lol quote

Cheers for the replies lads, I'm a totally newbie to Linux, I was kinda under the impression that it would run ok on older machines as it wasn't as demanding as Windows. This laptop had Windows 2000 on it previously, P4 processor with 512MB of RAM.

I have 4 of these useless Evo's in the corner and I was just hoping to put one of them to use and learn a bit more about Linux.

Edit: The menu doesn't work, there's just a grey taskbar with nothing on it.

It doesn't have to be Mint that I put on the laptop. I'll stick on a different distro if you could reccomend one that works better with older machines.

An Fear Aniar

Itsdacraic wrote: »

It doesn't have to be Mint that I put on the laptop. I'll stick on a different distro if you could reccomend one that works better with older machines.

If the menus is not working it's probable something is faulty on the install CD.

Can you boot from USB with these machines? Try Slax or Slitaz on them, just to see how well they work.

Then try Xubuntu, it's got a lighter desktop and needs less RAM.

.

Tillotson

Yea but windows 2000 is 10 years old. The two main desktop enviroments are Gnome and KDE. Neither of these will work. Try looking for a distribution which use Openbox or XFCE. I'd recommend Crunchbang or Xbuntu. If these don't work you're stuck with something like PuppyLinux or Damn Small Linux.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Minimal_Linux_distros

Oracle

Yeah Xubuntu should work, try it from the Live CD first, without installing, just to see how it goes. You could try installing more RAM, it's cheap now but you probably won't want to bother. Also if there's a LUG (Linux Users Group) in your area they sometimes have install days were they'll install Linux for you free. I think there a sticky somewhere on that. I'd love the challenge of getting these babies working on Linux ... I wouldn't promise anything mind you!

Itsdacraic

Cheers lads.

Having a quiet day here so I'll try XBuntu on it next!
I have a decent spare HP nx7300 here as well but I can't find a power supply for it. (My office is a mess!)

I put Ubuntu on my old laptop at home last night after trying it on the LiveCD. Seemed pretty good. Will get a proper look at that this evening.

An Fear Aniar

I'd also recommend you use Unetbootin, this will make bootable USB sessions. It's very easy to use and runs much quicker than a CD.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

It works in Windows. I never bother burning CDs anymore, I just use the USB.

.

Itsdacraic

I have Xubuntu working now. Looks pretty good.

Now what amazing things can I do? lol

An Fear Aniar

Itsdacraic wrote: »

I have Xubuntu working now. Looks pretty good.

Now what amazing things can I do? lol

Cool, you could start by skinning it with a new theme:

http://www.xfce-look.org/


.

Oracle

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

I'd also recommend you use Unetbootin, this will make bootable USB sessions. It's very easy to use and runs much quicker than a CD.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

It works in Windows. I never bother burning CDs anymore, I just use the USB.

.

That looks cool, just what I was looking for. Thanks.

Itsdacraic

Well, posting this from the Ubuntu OS I installed last night at home.
How come the font on boards seems to be a lot smaller than it does on my windows machine?

I'm going to have loads of these stupid questions

corkie

Itsdacraic wrote: »

Well, posting this from the Ubuntu OS I installed last night at home.
How come the font on boards seems to be a lot smaller than it does on my windows machine?

I'm going to have loads of these stupid questions

A question is only stupid, if you already have the answer or/and to lazy to google it!

In firefox if your using it. Press "Ctrl +" a few times until you get the size you want.
Also see

---

> view, zoom and zoom text only.

Also try changing your character encoding which might get your fonts to look similiar, or download and install non-free fonts.

Regards,
J.

Itsdacraic

corkie wrote: »

A question is only stupid, if you already have the answer or/and to lazy to google it!

In firefox if your using it. Press "Ctrl +" a few times until you get the size you want.
Also see

---

> view, zoom and zoom text only.

Regards,
J.

Sorry Corkie, I described it wrong. I should really have said smaller font as opposed to size. I've increased the size already but I just think the font looks a little weird. I suppose I'll just get used to it.

An Fear Aniar

Have you installed the Microsoft fonts package?

msttcorefonts.

Best thing to do is to install the

xubuntu-restricted-extras

package (if you're using Xubuntu). You can find it in the Synaptic package manager. Or you can install it from the terminal with:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-restricted-extras

.

Itsdacraic

Cheers for all the help An Fear. I'll install the fonts tonight.

Managed to get Skype installed on it last night, after plenty of problems! But figured it out eventually. I should probably give a read of a terminology guide or something because I didn't understand what a lot of the info I googled last night was referring to but when I actually went and made the changes it was straight forward enough.

XUbuntu ran fine on the live CD on the compaq but it crapped out half through installation so I'm going to wait till I get a power supply sorted for the HP 7300 and put it on that instead as it's a much better machine.