Once again timed out (so pardon any typos):
Linux Mint 13 Maya LTS XFCE install at 640x480 from LiveCD:
Booting from the LiveCD...
During boot hit the SPACEBAR before the timer times out.
Select the 'Start in compatibility mode' installer.
This *should* force the GUI to use the VESA driver.
That kernel boot line includes xforcevesa.
After boot the screen will probably be at the wrong resolution.
Use CTRL-ALT-F1 (note that in Mint CTRL-ALT-F8 is the GUI).
Type: export DISPLAY=:0
Do a: cd /home/mint/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml
In that directory do: nano displays.xml
In that file you want to put this text:
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<channel name="displays" version="1.0">
<property name="Default" type="empty">
<property name="default" type="string" value="default">
<property name="Resolution" type="string" value="640x480"/>
<property name="RefreshRate" type="double" value="60.000000"/>
<property name="Active" type="bool" value="true"/>
</property>
</property>
</channel>
Save that.
Type: xrandr -q
If the 3rd line down starts with 'default' you are good.
If not re-edit the previous file with: nano displays.xml
Put whatever that line started with, be it VGA1, HDMI1, DVI1 or whatever in place of the *all lower case* defaults.
Be careful not to change the 'Defaults' it does matter.
There was a reason I did not use xrandr to set the screen mode.
If you try this the GUI will crash.
However in the GUI under 'Settings' then 'Sessions and Startup' in the 'Session' tab Mint came setup to restart the GUI automatically.
So if you try to use xrandr to set the video like this it will not work out.
Now then...
Type: xfce4-session-logout --logout
This only alters the XFWM window manager so on a system that needs to display 640x480 for 10 seconds you will not have a display then XFWM should load at 640x480.
At this point you should have the LiveCD GUI at 640x480.
Click the icon 'Install Linux Mint' on the desktop.
The installer was written for a video mode greater than 640x480.
To use it press ALT-F7 to drag the window around the desktop so you can get to what you can't see.
ALT-F7 doesn't seem to work on the partitioning part of the installer, on there you might need to use TAB to select the options.
This installer checks that your:
Laptop is plugged in.
That you have 5.3GB of storage to install into (so no this won't work with less than 5.3GB available to partition).
That you have Internet connectivity.
Given we've been imposing a 4GB storage limit just keep in mind that LinuxMint's installer is basically saying Mint needs more resources.
I simply resized my virtual hard drive to 6GB to finish this process.
I don't think with the cost of storage these days 6GB is really asking all that much.
Consider that I have P3 thin clients with 8GB internal IDE hard drives that are basically a decade old.
After a nice long install the system will reboot.
Chances are you won't see much except a black screen till the user login displays.
You probably won't be able to see that user login correctly either because it will default again to the wrong video mode.
Again as before.
Do a: CTRL-ALT-F1
Use the same displays.xml as before, including any modifications you may have had to make.
The only change you need to note is that now the install process has created a real default user account.
That means that in this command above:
cd /home/mint/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml
The word 'mint' should be the user name you created during the install.
The same one you used to log in.
That user's name is also probably the *only* directory name in the /home folder at this point in the process.
Now if one looks back at the directions I provided earlier in this topic for Lubuntu they apply to the grub 2 bootloader that is installed.
The configuration file is still in: /etc/default/
I would at least display the grub menu and boot process as text when I first installed I couldn't see either.
Remember to commit the changes with: sudo update-grub
Linux Mint 13 LTS uses mdm instead of lightdm or gdm.
To configure the login screen resolution alter the file: Default
The file is located in: /etc/mdm/Init/
That file can be edited with: nano Default
Add the line: xrandr --output default --primary --mode 640x480
Put that just above the last line: exit 0
Again remember if you did 'xrandr -q' before and had to alter things replace 'default' in the xrandr line above as well.
With that said this process should install a working copy of Linux Mint 13 LTS at a resolution of 640x480.
Remember that this older version of Linux Mint does not require PAE but is still very much supported till 2016.
Now if you got this far consider installing the package: fake-pae
If you can get fake-pae working it will trick Mint into thinking the CPU completely supports PAE.
Once you manage this trick you should be able to download the OS upgrades to bring the system to Linux Mint 15.
*DO NOT* automatically upgrade this kernel unless you manage to get fake-pae working.
If you allow the version 14 or 15 kernels to install your system will fail to boot.
Hopefully by then you'll have configured the boot menu and will be able to revert (and of course made backups of your work!).
When the install of Linux Mint was done it turned it out it only consumed a little more than 3.2GB of the 6GB virtual hard drive.
I noticed that 'startx' worked fine when I booted to the command prompt but it did eliminate the GUI login from mdm.
I would configure mdm even if you intend to boot into the command prompt.
Before running anything the 'Task Manager' showed 27.1% of the memory used or roughly 130MB.
Firefox 12.0 consumed about 45MB of physical RAM while displaying:
https://www.google.com
LibreOffice Write consumed about 33MB of physical RAM with a blank document.
I got Python 2.7.3, Perl 5.14.2, OpenJDK 1.6.0_24 and no PHP as defaults from the install.
This is not the 'lightest' distro we've looked at in this topic.
It could be much worse.
I know Linux Mint is pretty popular.