The problem that exists here is that the LiveCD is generally a GUI.
The LiveCD will boot a GUI with the screen scrambled.
The core X-Windows system all the distro share does not know his system needs 640x480.
So either the LiveCD has to allow him to set the resolution to 640x480 even though it thinks he can use a higher resolution.
or
It needs to offer a text or TUI install.
You can install Linux entirely from the command prompt but that requires fair amounts of knowledge and the process has fallen out of favor because users find it off putting.
Lubuntu offers the 'Alternate Install' as does Ubunutu (but his system resources are limited).
RedHat offers a TUI install.
It *might* be possible on the LiveCD to use the CTRL-ALT-F2 trick to bypass the scrambled GUI and then use xrandr as I showed above to fix the GUI until the next reboot. Not all distros use xrandr like that so one would have to test. Either way the long instructions above hopefully offer inspiration.
Crunchbang has the Debian TUI under the boot option 'Text Install' if the grub boot loader graphics work right on the LiveCD.
If the boot menu does not work try 'setup' or 'install' at the command prompt.
PuppyLinux will be a harder install because the only installer he has is GUI based.
The following is how to get PuppyLinux to let you reconfigure the display at boot:
When you first see the PuppyLinux logo almost immediately after the BIOS that screen will wait 5 seconds by default.
That is the boot menu.
Press F2 *before* the 5 second time out.
Type: puppy pfix=nox (this is the kernel parameter I mentioned before above)
This will force PuppyLinux to boot to a command prompt instead of the GUI.
When you get to the keyboard template menu...this will take longer than Lubuntu...
Just hit ENTER at the keyboard template menu as I suspect you have a US English keyboard and speak American English.
Now you have the command prompt which is merely a hash: #
At the command prompt type: xorgwizard (remember I mentioned that before?)
If that does not work or complains like this:
mv: cannot stat '/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/displaylink_drv.so': No such file or directory
Here's something silly just do: xorgwizard (yes do it again)
Oh look....a menu.....silly xorgwizard.
Select '< vesa >' on the right.
Now it'll probe your hardware and we know that is probably not working correctly.
Scroll up and down with the arrow keys.
If you see a line that ends with: CRT 640x480
Select that line with: ENTER
On the next menu you should automatically have the highlighted option:
640x480x16 Unconfirmed MAXIMUM for monitor, OK for card
Select that with: ENTER
Now it'll drop you to the command prompt with a red ominous warning.
Ignore the warning.
Type: startx
The PuppyLinux GUI will start in 640x480.
Now you can use the graphical installer.
The graphical installer is the icon labelled: install
That installer stinks because it ends showing you the grub configuration file.
Also it tends to disappear like it is done when it is not.
You will know when you are done because it'll show you the grub configuration file.
What it really barely mentions is you need to put grub on the internal drive.
You need to save that text file first (it's the configuration for grub which is not yet installed).
Grub is on the 'Menu' under: System
Select: simple
Select: standard
Now there is more nonsense, it'll pop-up a menu that says::
Puppy Linux users: If running from the Universal Installer....
It tells you to press OK.
Really? Cause there is no default provided that I saw.
I gave this menu the following to make it happy:
/dev/sda1 (this will also be the line shown in the grub configuration file and that the installer will *constantly* mention)
Now select: MBR (it's at the bottom of the menu)
Now do a reboot.
When it asks you to save do not save.
You will boot up to a text boot menu.
You will see text boot messages.
It has no login screen so you go directly to the desktop.
If the installed desktop is the wrong resolution.
CTRL-ALT-F1 to get the command prompt session running the GUI.
Press CTRL-C to stop GUI hard (it sends sigint).
If it asks for a login do:
Username: root
Password: woofwoof (not kidding)
Now...
Start: xorgwizard
Look up at the last set of directions to fix this like on the LiveCD.
Once you finish xorgwizard.
Restart the GUI with: startx
If all is well it should stay well after a reboot.
There you go.
When I was done with this:
PuppyLinux 5.2.8 - Full Install consumed 445MB of my 4GB free (much better than LUbuntu but I did not optimize Lubuntu).
It booted a full 17 seconds slower than Lubuntu for me.
'LXTask Manager' shows 37MB of 503MB of physical RAM used (which seems to be half of what Lubuntu was using).
Abiword still consumes 7MB of RAM while running.
I did the simple network install.
Selected Chromium as a browser that downloaded 37MB more.
As that ran I noticed that physical RAM usage crept up to 42MB (still less than Lubuntu).
Perl 5.10.1 was installed by default.
You get no Python or PHP by default (so Lubuntu already gave you Python as default).
You do get GAWK and GNU SED.
With Chromium installed and just opened to the SSL version of the Google search engine page, PuppyLinux is now using 90MB of RAM.
At that point PuppyLinux is consuming actually just a few MB less RAM than Lubuntu.
However, once I stopped Chromium the physical memory usage dropped back to 44MB.
Interesting that Chromium consumes 40MB of physical RAM on PuppyLinux and 27MB on Lubuntu.
I did notice that PuppyLinux does not shutdown properly in my VirtualBox machine. Not sure why.
Great it corrupted the ext2 virtual partition I installed it on.
Puppy ate it's own tail again!
Reinstalling with ext4.
Noticed I still get a text boot menu, but not a text boot log...in fact now I get blank splash screen.
Ah I see the grub configuration file in: /boot/grub/
Called: menu.lst
Never got written by the reinstall. So if this happens to you either figure it out or reinstall and install grub *before* you run the install.
Course if the drive is not partitioned first you have to partition it, then install grub, then run the install.
That makes perfect sense (sarcasm) because the install will detect a completely blank drive and start partitioning but not install grub.
Yes this install method is not nearly as clean as Lubuntu.
It did start and is using similar amounts of physical RAM and storage.
Going to repeat this and see if it self-destructs again.
With PuppyLinux reinstalled on an ext4 partition and Chromium installed and working it now oddly only consumed 30MB of physical RAM.
Clearly something was going wrong before because now it reboots without eating itself.
How to boot CrunchBang 11 into the TUI installer:
You'll notice that in CrunchBang 11 Waldorf the LiveCD boot menu does not have a text boot option.
So I booted into LiveCD GUI on a system where that works.
Then I opened a terminal and did a: find / -name initrd.gz
There are 2 of those found.
One in: /live/image/install/gtk/ (the one that runs the GUI install from that menu).
Another in: /live/image/install/ (the Debain TUI installer that was not added to the menu).
To find the syslinux boot menu configuration files do a: find / -name live.cfg
You'll find that live.cfg file in: /live/image/isolinux/
So if you look at the menu configuration files in: /live/image/isolinux/
If you look at the install.cfg file you'll see this line:
append initrd=/install/gtk/initrd.gz video=vesa:ywrap,mtrr vga=788 quiet file=/cdrom/install/crunchbang.cfg
That needs to be edited to start the other hidden installer.
When you boot(reboot) move the selector down to the 'Install' option WITHOUT pressing ENTER.
Press TAB.
When you press the left arrow the line will print again but the cursor will move left.
Do that till you get to the character to the left of /gtk/ in that line.
Then BACKSPACE to delete: gtk/
Now press ENTER.
Surprise there's the Debain TUI.
Follow it through.
I used the simple guided partitioning.
I let it write grub to the internal virtual hard drive.
When done it boots into a grub menu in a low graphics mode.
When that times out or you select CrunchBang it will load the GUI.
If the GUI is at the wrong resolution and scrambled.
Repeat the trick from Lubuntu...
Use: CTRL-ALT-F2
Do a: sudo su
In: /etc/default/
Edit (vi(m) is wonky for me in CrunchBang as well, but nano works): grub
Comment out the line that tells the boot to be 'quiet' by starting it with a hash: #
Add the line: GRUB_TERMINAL=console
The text option we used with Lubuntu to boot into command prompt first won't work here.
Save that.
Do a: update-grub
Now those changes are commited to the boot menu.
The following is the polite way to set the resolution of openbox....
To edit the Openbox configuration it is in: /etc/xdg/openbox/
Edit: autostart
Add: xrandr --output default --primary --mode 640x480 (note the @ is missing from the same line in Lubuntu)
Problem is that CrunchBang 11 gdm/slim login does not really give you an easy way to call xrandr unlike lightdm.
So back to the dreaded >modelines<
In: /usr/share/X11/
In a file called: 10-monitor.conf
Here's an xorg.conf with the VESA driver and 640x480 CRT settings.
Code:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
ModeLine "640x480" 25.2 640 656 752 800 480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "vesa"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Now save that.
You don't need to chmod it.
Reboot and there you go, the gdm/slim login and openbox will be 640x480.
Now note if you do this 10-monitor.conf like this you can only use 640x480.
Not even xrandr will give you any other choices.
This is good and bad.
Good because no more accidental changes to something that will not work.
Bad because you might want to change for some reason.
If you want more generic modelines look here:
http://linuxhelp.150m.com/resources/modelines.htm
At this point you have now limited the boot menu and boot process to 80x25 text.
The login and GUI to 640x480 graphics.
If you reboot that should stay as such.
Immediately after installation I followed the post installation script.
I let it install: cups, java and libreoffice.
I stopped it at the prompt about the more unusual choices.
I started with a little more then 2GB of my 4GB of internal drive space used.
After all those files were installed it consumed another 800MB.
There is now roughly 1GB free (just like Lubuntu).
The system is using roughly 80MB - 84MB of 512MB of physical RAM (a little less than Lubuntu).
I could have avoided installing 'LibreOffice' as CrunchBang came with 'Abiword' but I was curious.
As before running 'Abiword' consumed about 7MB of physical RAM.
I chose to install Chromium but somehow ended up with IceWeasel.
IceWeasel is using initially 70MB of physical RAM while displaying the CrunchBang start page.
After all the updates from the post installation script I have:
Perl 5.14.2, Python 2.7.3, OpenJDK 1.6.0_27, AWK, GNU SED.
I got no PHP.