Would Linux Work on a Couple Year Old Compaq?

why not linux mint you got enough ram its most easy distro out of box + you get everything of ubuntu

 

I have another question. Does the menu and taskbar setup depend on the distribution, or the desktop environment? I ask because the menu setup is the same in PCLinuxOS and openSUSE, even though they are not based on the same distribution, but they are both KDE. Sorry if my question is worded poorly.

 

Both. Same desktop environment should give the same default interface, but some distributions customize it.

 

I am going to ask another question here since I don't feel like creating a new thread for ever little question.

I have tried several distros on my VM; including Mint, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, and Chakra.

Chakra wouldn't properly install so I am forgetting that.

The others worked, but only openSUSE has a driver built-in that supports my HD 6950 and my resolution of 2048x1152 without me having to do anything.

I tried downloading the appropriate driver from AMD's site on Mint months ago but after it supposedly installs, I can't change the resolution and trying to run CCC to autoconfigure gives me a message about there being no driver or there is a problem with it. This also happened on Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and today, Fedora.

I am wondering why the driver doesn't seem to install right or work, since it comes from AMD and it is for Linux x64. Am I doing something wrong? It never let me double-click and run the installation like in Windows; I had to chmod it and then ./ the file to make it run.

 

You can install Ubuntu and then add X Swat ppa to get latest ATI driver, it works fine on my Ati fusion netbook.

 

I always use the instructions at the Unofficial Wiki for the AMD Linux Driver, http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Main_Page to install the latest driver. This works seamlessly for me on ubuntu and mint however I am using the 32bit driver and my screen is only 1440 x 900.

I just reread your post and noticed you are running in a VM. AFAIK VM's like virtualbox use a graphics driver of their own (this is why i could never get gnome shell to work in my VM install of Fedora 15) so installing an ATI driver whilst inside a VM won't work properly. Why don't you try running a live version of Ubuntu or Mint and then installing the driver via "additional drivers" to see if it works that way?

 

More precisely: Virtualbox provides its own virtual graphics card which requires its own driver. Therefore, installing any 3rd party graphics driver (ATI, Nvidia, Intel etc.) doesn't make any sense at all.