How To Install Ubuntu 12.10 On Non-PAE CPU

Further more, with 12.10, Xubuntu an Lubuntu no longer come with a non-PAE Linux Kernel, so by default, you can’t install any Ubuntu 12.10 flavor on computers using CPUs that lack PAE support (such as Intel Pentium M).

Physical Address Extension (PAE) is a feature to allow (32-bit) x86 processors to access a physical address space (including random access memory and memory mapped devices) larger than 4 gigabytes.

1. Download the required files (includes non-PAE Linux Kernel 3.5.0 deb files).

You can grab all the required files as once, using BZR:

sudo apt-get install bzr
cd
bzr branch lp:~webtom/+junk/linux-image-i386-non-pae

2. Create a bootable USB stick with the Ubuntu 12.10 32bit ISO and once the stick is ready, open it in your file manager (.e.g. Nautilus) and replace the following files from the USB stick with the files downloaded under step 1:

• rename the downloaded “vmlinuz-3.5.0-17-wt-non-pae_3.5.0-17.28_i386″ file to “vmlinuz” and copy it to the USB stick, under the “casper” folder, replacing the already existing “vmlinuz” file.
• rename the downloaded “initrd-3.5.0-17-wt-non-pae_3.5.0-17.28_i386.lz” file to “initrd.lz” and copy it to the USB stick, under the “casper” folder, replacing the already existing “initrd.lz” file

3. Copy the following downloaded files to the USB stick (don’t place them in any sub directory):

• linux-headers-3.5.0-17-wt-non-pae_3.5.0-17.28_i386.deb
• linux-image-3.5.0-17-wt-non-pae_3.5.0-17.28_i386.deb

Note that these are the 3.5.0-17 Linux headers and image, not 3.5.0-18!

4. Now you can use the USB stick to install Ubuntu 12.10 on the non-PAE capable computer. Once the installation completes, DO NOT REBOOT the computer, press CTRL + ALT + F1 and in the tty, type the following commands to install the non-PAE kernel you’ve copied to the USB stick under step 3:

cd /cdrom
sudo dpkg --root=/target -i *.deb

Some warnings will be displayed when running the above command:

ignore these warnings and once the installation completes, reboot the system (you can press CTRL + ALT + F7 to switch back to the installation and reboot from there or type “sudo reboot”).

5. Your computer should now boot the newly installed Ubuntu 12.10 flavor. From the files downloaded under step 1 (or, if you don’t have access to them anymore, redownload just the ones below), copy the following files to some folder that doesn’t have any other deb files, e.g. your home directory:

• linux-image-3.5.0-18-wt-non-pae_3.5.0-18.29_i386.deb
• linux-headers-3.5.0-18-wt-non-pae_3.5.0-18.29_i386.deb

This is the latest Linux Kernel version available in the Ubuntu 12.10 repositories (3.5.0-18 and not 3.5.0-17 which we’ve used under steps 3-4). 

And finally, install these deb files:

cd #if you've placed the files in your home directory
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
sudo apt-get install -f

That’s it!