Saturday, July 19, 2014

Install Ubuntu 14.04 on old/legacy PC, with "Disabling IRQ #9"

This post describe how to install Ubuntu 14.04 on a old/legacy Netbook, Fujitsu M2010 Netbook with CPU of Intel Atom N280 and GMA 950 graphics processor.

Prepare a Installation/Live-USB of Ubuntu, 14.04 LTS, 32-bit Desktop version.

With the default options, the boot-up sequency will stop in "Disabling IRQ #9".


To by pass it, we can make it boot with option "acpi=off".
- Press F6 while the Live-USB booting, untill you see the selection page.
- Press F6 and select option of "acpi=off".
- Then follow the normal installation steps.


Once finished, remove USB and restart the system. Suppose it can be run with "acpi=off" in the new setup.


Then, the first thing you should do is updating your system, just search and run "System Updater".


Up to here, it run the new Ubuntu UI very slow! You can install other lightweight desktop to improve the performance greatly.
- Install gnome-session-flashback
- Install lubuntu-desktop
Install Cinnamon on Ubuntu 14.04

With option of "acpi=off", my legacy Fujitsu M2010 always show in 800x600. Alternatively, it can be set "pci=noacpi" to recognize the true resolution 1024x600. But with this setting, the display brightness cannot be set and in little bit dark!
-  Edit /etc/default/grub to set GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi=off"/"pci=noacpi" options

Anybody know how to fix it, please advise.

2 comments:

Etienne said...

With kernel option vga=
You can force the resolution
Check ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=258484
if you want 1024x768 at 16 bit color at command line, add "vga=0x317" to the end of your kernel parameters. This is the option I like to use most. You also can use the decimal equivalent, since 0x317 is in hex. The decimal equivalent is 791, so you'd use "vga=791" instead
I hope it will help

Erik said...

Hello Etienne,

Thx for for info. I study it in coming days.