unable to put ubuntu on a tiny laptop amd athlon cpu with 704mb ram and 40gb hard disc

Till recently I purchased a new hard disk I ran Ubuntu 8.10 and Windows XP in dual boot at 40 GB, 1,3 GHz and 512+256 MB without any problem. This disk was only for OS-es and the bigger second disk for data.
So I don't think your computer is tinny. 9 GB is enough for Ubuntu the maximum being 30 GB.

Ubuntu really needs about 15Gb to be comfortable in, it can squeeze into 10Gb but you really need to consider uninstalling unnecessary programs or else it will be almost impossible to download & install updates. I managed 10Gb for a while but it was a bit tight. There are other versions of linux, other distros that take up a lot less room but they are not as fully featured as Ubuntu. I would recommend Xubuntu as it almost is Ubuntu and is already a little lighter but looking very much the same.
http://www.xubuntu.org/get
Some people prefer Xubuntu on larger machines just because it's a little lighter and faster.

It sounds as though there are 3 or possibly even 4 machines at issue here. So without knowing specifics of cpu&ram and free-space on hard-drives my general advice would be

Ubuntu for machine with 15Gb free space and 700MHz & 512Mb or over
Xubuntu if the machine is close to that but only falls short on 1 or 2 criteria
Ubuntu Netbook Remix for netbooks or any smaller laptops
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download-netbook
Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 for anything much smaller (although Wolvix really performs better on more top-end machines)
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix

Consider running a LiveCd session (or LiveUsb session) first before installing to save time. Simply place the *buntu cd in the cd/dvd-drive and reboot the machine. When you get to the menu with "Try Ubuntu without changes to the machine" choose that option and you should get to a working desktop, we call this a LiveCd session if it works. This guide helps if there's difficulty getting to the menu
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD
The UNR allows this from a Usb stick i believe. Other distros, such as Wolvix also have thi functionality as their default although they don't usually have a fancy menu and title for it but it is usually the default option.

Please let us know the cpu speed and ram size as well as free-space available on your hard-drive and then we can be a bit more accurate in our suggestions :)
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

thanks vihar but my computer isn't tinny its a tiny(as in the make tiny).my problem appears to me to be that on reboot it is reverting to a shell i think that is why it is comeing up with ubuntu@ubuntu$_ then waiting for a reply but i dont know how to answer it. thanks
i have managed to get pclinuxos to run

ram size is 693.9mb. processor mobile amd athlon(tm) xp-m 2200+ available disc space 31.5gb
i have run live cd's of puppy,knoppix,debian,ubuntu,linux mint, no problem it only happens when i try to do a full install and again only after shutting down and rebooting the day after. my other laptop has ubuntu on with windows running in a virtual box.because i am unable to get ubuntu on my desktop i have been running pendrive linux from a usb stick and ubuntu the same.

PClinuxOS is a lot tinier than Ubuntu, as i was suggesting it's often better to go for a slightly different distro for different hardware if you're 1st choice of distro doesn't work for you straight away on a particular machine. Hopefully you'll be able to use Ubuntu on a different machine sometime but in the meantime PClinuxOS does seem to be quite a good distro although i have to say Ubuntu forums are better ;) heheheheh

If you want to have a go at getting Xubuntu working then please copy the xorg.conf from PClinuxOS into here and we might be able to copy chunks into Xubuntu's with any luck :) On a command-line you could reach it by going

cd /etc/X11

Note that X was a capital letter. I'm not sure what the text-editor is but it does have AbiWord i think so you could open it by then typing

abiword xorg.conf

or simply type the whole thing in one go from anywhere

abiword /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

lol, knoppix NOT running would be more of a surprise but it is interesting that Mint is fine as a LiveCd, and Ubuntu too. The machine's specs look a lot higher than i was expecting too so i guess it really must be an error in hardware detection during install.

Hmmm, with installed Ubuntu do you get to a boot menu with lots of options for booting into Ubuntu with the 2nd option having "recovery mode" near it's end? It might be worth choosing that one and then trying it's "Repair x-server" option and then "Resume normal bootup". If that drops you down onto a command-line this time then try typing in

startx

although i guess you've probably already tried that?
Regards from
Tom :)

thanks tom but i should be able to get ubuntu on my machine as i allready have it running on a compaq n400 notebook with 20gb hard drive,256mb ram unsure what cpu as i use it at work. i allso have the full ubuntu distro working on a acer aspire 1 with 512mb ram,16gb hard drive and some abskure cpu i am only messing around with other distro's when i get fed up of messing around installing and uninstalling ubuntu

thanks again thats worth haveing ago at i seem to recall something abought x config failing when it was scrolling through the commands i will let you know if it works if i dont throw it out first thanks
mick

A copy of an xorg.conf from something that did boot to a desktop would be nice. We could try to have a look and work it out from there maybe ;)
Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

Hah! I saw the difference tiny<->tinny and it makes a lot of fun in this particular case :-) I meant of course tiny, sorry for my english.

Hey, your English is a lot better than most people's around where i live (England). There was a title that had a nn typo, i thought it was this one. Anyway a lot of cases are tnny, or aluminiumy (is that even a word?). I thought the play on tiny vs Tiny was quite humorous, gosh we have such a laugh in here ;)

hi you where probably right vihar it is tinny and a lot of other choice words as well. anyway tom i did what you suggested and typed in start x it ran for abit then stopped with an error code 2 and an error code 3 saying it couldn't configure screen resolution gave the disc's to the dogs and downloaded xubuntu i am writeing this on my tinny computer(ha) so far seems to be running ok but i do miss messing around with virtual os's thanks for all your help.

I think you can get VirtualBox and stuff in Xubuntu. It's meant to be pretty much identical (different colours but you can change the themes) with all the desktop effects and all but just with an Xfce rather than Gnome Desktop. While your specs seemed to be just under min.spec for Ubuntu i think they are quite a lot higher than Xubuntu's so you should be able to push it further ;)

This handy link is probably way behind you if you've already been doing vmware stuff but here goes
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromWindows
i find it quite handy as reference at odd times :)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)