I thought I would have a look at linux. I have an old laptop dell lm. I downloaded the ubuntu cd from the site and burnt it as an .iso. I formatted the hard drive on the laptop and inserted the disk - message insert system disk. This is an old laptop with the swappable cd/floppy. I have tried to follow the instructions from ubuntu but without luck. (Apparently the laptop will take ubuntu as far as I can see!) Can anybody help? Many thanks Bob

133MHz/40MB RAM isn't gonna run Ubuntu. If you wanna experiment with Linux on an old machine such as that, you'll have to try something like Damn Small Linux. BTW, when you downloaded the .ISO file, you converted it thru Nero or another such program? http://distrowatch.com/

Also systems that old do not boot to CD's let alone "burned" cd's. No matter how you burned it I doubt that laptop would boot to it. Systems that old don't boot to the newer type of loader. I think you'd need isolinux instead of syslinux. Does it boot to any CD? As above dsl, puppy, zipslax and others. Search for distros for older machines or even 486 based systems or floppy based systems. You should consider a system at least 1G processor with 512M ram to try ubuntu. Some versions might be lighter without Gnome window manager. You might get a simple x server on that. You might also look at different types of client os's such as nx client running from a booted Knoppix 5.3 using terminal services. Consider also a live linux cd/dvd such as Knoppix and many many others on a much faster machine. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

many many thanks for your advice.I will have a look at some of the other linux possibilities you have mentioned but the ubuntu site said it should run. Will also try converting iso too. haven't had much to do with iso before

You'd better have a look at the Ubuntu system requirements. The bare minimum is 300MHz CPU & 64MB memory...even then it states, "It should be possible to get Ubuntu running on a system with the following minimum hardware specification, although it is unlikely that the system would run well" https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

You won't get a modern distro on that laptop. You need a special distro for 486 machines. They still exist. Most will be command line. Funny thing is the best floppy ever made was a QNX floppy. Full gui and browser on a single floppy. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10