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Ive tried 20.04 on a phenom x4 905e with 3gb pf ram. It passes all hardware tests. Tried dvd and thumbdrive installs. It goes to a black screen with white ubuntu at the bottom and a mouse pointer that moves but nothing else. Getting really frustrated as ubuntu 8,9, 10, 16 run fine on this machine.

david
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1 Answers1

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The 3GB of memory will certainly be an issue for Gnome-based desktops since 2018. Let's look at the hardware requirements over the years:

Release Minimum Recommended
8.04 (Hardy) 32 or 64-bit CPU / 384 MB RAM for the Desktop
9.04 (Jaunty) 32 or 64-bit CPU / 256 MB RAM for the Desktop
10.04 (Lucid) 32 or 64-bit CPU / 256 MB RAM for the Desktop
16.04 (Xenial) 1GHz 32 or 64-bit CPU / 1.5 GB RAM / 10 GB Storage
20.04 (Focal) 2 GHz 64-bit CPU / 4 GB RAM / 25 GB Storage

As you can see, the system requirements have evolved quite a bit along with the operating system itself. The AMD Phenom x4 905e does meet the requirements with its 2.5 GHz clock and 64-bit instruction set, but Gnome may be a bit too heavy for the system. As a result, you may want to try a lighter distribution such as Ubuntu MATE or Bodhi Linux. Both of these are pretty darn good alternatives.

matigo
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