Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody help?

Hello, there's something wrong with my computer.

I can't install anything. Everything I try to install comes up with this error message.

Program Name cannot be installed on your computer type (i386). Either the application requires special hardware features or the vendor decided to not support your computer type.

I saw somewhere that it said it might be because I'm trying to run 64 bit binary on a 32 bit PC but I'm sure that's not the case. I checked the CD and it's one for 32 bit.

Just some hardware specs on this computer.
It is:
933MHz PIII
512MB PC-100 RAM (I know I should be using PC-133)

I don't think any other hardware specs are relevant, but:
nVidia GeForce 4200Ti
2 Maxtor 60GB hard drives
2 Samsung CD Drives
1 Floppy Drive
Asus CUSL2 MOBO

I am also dual-booting Windows XP

I am trying to install software from the Add/Remove Applications. I have also tried using synaptic package manager, which gives me all these errors about dependencies. Using apt-get also does not work

Things I've tried:
Reinstalling the whole system
Changing the kernel to 386 from generic

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

Can you post the contents of your /etc/apt/sources.list file?

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

I don't know what you mean by posting the contents, but i just went

cat /whateverdirectory/sources.list

I attached the a txt file of the output.

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

problem solved!
i went into preferences of add/remove and checked all the sources and it's working fine now thanks for the help

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

Right - yes, at the moment you only have the CDROM and security updates listed as repositories.

Enabling the online repositories will certainly help.

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

i am having this exact same problem. i'll gladly do whatever it takes to fix it if someone could give me a step-by-step, as i am almost completely useless and have no idea why i installed ubuntu 7.1 in the first place. please help?

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

What are you wanting to do with your older machine?

What type specs do you have?

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

specs are:
2.5ghz core2duo
2gb ddr2
onboard graphics
120gb sata WD

nothing serious, but as of now i can't listen to music, watch movies, check youtube, or install any sort of software packages, codecs, anything. anything i can do is much appreciated.

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

Try Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS (support till 2011) it will run much better on the system you posted, plus, 7.10 is no longer supported by ubuntu leaving you without the ability to download important updates patches etc, that could be why you can't install anything.

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

a friend of mine who turned me onto linux in the beginning just mentioned to me that my "repositories" might be out of date since this is an old version of ubuntu? is there a way to update them? when i tried to reload in synaptic, several error messages popped up, one of which said "could not download all repository indexes" and had a list of sites. i don't understand the full concept, but i think a repository is a site from which linux software comes from? i'd love any ideas...

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

You won't be able to as aI stated above because ubuntu 7.10 is not supported any longer, in short, the repositories are dead and inaccessible. Go with minimum Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS and you'll be just fine. 8.04 has better hardware support than 7.10 anyways

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

Just get 9.04, it'll have everything that you need. Works well on my dual core.

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

I over-read the fact he has core2duo :-o

That will definately work well for you

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

ok, downloading 9.04 now. didn't realize how old that disc i had was i guess, or that it'd cause so many issues, but hey, i'll take what i get. thanks so much for the help, i'll hopefully never have to talk to you guys again 8D.

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

OOOOOHH you'll be back :-D

 

Re: Ubuntu"blah blah cannot be installed on your computer type (i386)" can somebody h

Oh c'mon deaver, is this a one thread stand all we're worth? 9.04 is a nice *nix OS, I'm sure you'll like it. Had drivers for even my newish GTX260-216 video card!:cool