After trying Ubuntu 7.10 and Mint 4 With no luck on my laptop I also tried Damn Small Linux. It did work but I found some annoying things about it I didn't like. So, I almost quit until I thought maybe there is other versions that will work. I found and had downloaded a Ubuntu 6.06 ver that I gave a try and it worked, at least the disc did. So I went for the install and it also worked, albeit not perfect, but I got it working and it is now downloading updates. This 6.06 is supposed to be supported through the next couple years. My laptop may not last that long. This gives me some time until I can get a computer built. The new one may not even get Windows installed if Linux works out. No questions yet, but I'm wondering why when I first booted it up in Linux, it didn't completely boot properly, so I switched to safe mode which checks the setup. It left me at a prompt and just set there. So I hit enter, it was kind of like doing that in DOS. So I thought why not try the word exit? I did and Linux loaded right up. Just kind of afraid to shut the thing off now unless I have to. I left it a double boot system for now, we'll see if I even have to return to Windows or not.
I use Linux Linspire 5.0. It has a Linspire warehouse you can go to and get free downloads. It has been better than the wife's XP Pro machine. Mozilla rocks!
Might have to give " I use Linux Linspire 5.0." a try. Ubuntu 6.06 didn't pan out for me. I am thinking HP does something that makes installing anything else but Windows on their laptops next to impossible. I keep getting hardware conflicts. I may give just a few more attempts at Linux on it before I quit and stick to Windows on it. The hard drive on my wife's computer is not really large enough to install another OS on it, plus then I have the conflict with her over her computer.
More Linux testing a work in progress. I have not giving up testing of linux versions on my HP laptop. Last night I downloaded and burned the iso file for KNOPPIX Linux. I didn't get very long to play with it yet, as the warm sunny weather today had me busy getting spring work started outside. Yhe test went well and seems to be somewhat on the order of Damn Small Linux, but much more user friendly. It can be run from the CD in read only of course. As it loaded I got no error reports of wrong hardware as with Ubuntu and Mint. Every thing went well, except I couldn't figure out how to connect with my router. Could have been something I just didn't understand as it ask for a wired connection. Had I moved into the office and ran a cable it probably would have connected easily. Next will be a test of PCLinuxOS 2007 as I'm downloading it with utorrent now. I will next be trying to get my hands on Fedora, Debian, and possibly 2 or 3 more versions, just to test on this HP laptop and give a report. My very favorite is Mint but it won't work on this computer. One of the errors I get as Linux Ubuntu and Mint are loading is wrong chipset. Actually it scrolls too fast for me to tell but I think there is at least 3 and maybe 4 errors. With KNOPPIX I didn't notice any and it seemed to have built into it a way to adjust for the hardware it found. One disappointment was it didn't come packaged with FireFox. The web browser it did have is similar to FireFox though, can't remember the name...
First tests of PCLinuxOS 2007 went well, it looks pretty good, but not Mint. Quite user friendly, couldn't go wireless, possible issue with that is missing drivers that need to be installed after OS is loaded on hard drive. Running from the live CD you don't get all the benefits available but I was able to edit a document file and save it, so the live CD does work as an alternate more secure OS running it from a PC and keeping all personal files on an external flash drive. So many versions to try, so little time. I might even get a working knowledge of Linux commands along the way.
The testing continues... Fedora works on the HP but not on the Dell, go figure! I've been kind of obsessed with finding the perfect Linux package to use on my HP laptop and missed the obvious. The processor! The laptop has a AMD and the Dell has Intel. I did a search on the Mint forum for anyone having issues with Mint not working right or at all and came up with so many results I didn't get passed the first couple pages. Almost all of the issues were with HP Pavilion laptops with AMD processors. KNOPPIX actually works on both equally well. The only thing holding me back from installing it, is there doesn't seem to be a way to automatically let the program do that. When it boots up, it sets up a ram drive on the computer where it saves all your settings and remembers them until you shut down essentially removing the ram disc and you loose your settings. What I'm in the process of doing now is seeing if mint comes in a release that will work with a AMD processor. The latest release is now available fro download and I'm in the process now. It's a 1 gig file so I won't get to test it today. The file is called, "LinuxMint-4.0-KDE-CE.iso". I'm hoping it will be compatible with the AMD processor. Anyone following my journey here would be welcome to join in.
FWIW, I'm watching with interest. I'll be upgrading machines and OS within the next year or so, and giving Linux a look. Don't give up on me, I need what you are learning.
I didn't have any luck with my wireless on Mint 4.0, so I tried Ubuntu (Hardy 8.0 ) I did not realize it was still in Alpha. But I tried it anyway, worked great until yesterday. I broke something pretty bad, no desktop can only get to the command line. So back to square one. Linux sure is an adventure. Try this link http://ubuntuforums.org/ there are lots of informative threads to help work out issues with hardware. If you can get a glimpse of some of your boot errors and search for them, you might be able to get a fix Good luck, Mike
OK, got the ISO file "LinuxMint-4.0-KDE-CE.iso" downloaded yesterday evening. Gave it three attempts to boot on th HP laptop, gets so far and locks, just like the regular Mint 4.0 did. Switched over to my wife's machine and it booted right up, remember, it's a Dell. Anyway, If I could load that on my laptop, it'd be a keeper. I'm saying it is awesome. It has so many features pre-installed I fell in love with it. Well, the wife is still saying no to me building a computer, and since you can't usually find em in thrift stores and yard sales that are worth anything, I may have to start smuggling in pieces and calling them something else, like a new upgrade to the router or something. The dead give away would be when I hooked up a monitor to the box and placed a keyboard and mouse next to it. FWIW, I am now downloading "Slackeware 12.iso" which is a 3.62 GB file so testing on the HP will be halted until I can get that. If it where not for needing to use some Windows programs I'd be a total convert. I need to study up on the command line tricks, might have to print out some of the stuff I've found, to learn the language that make the system work. The journey alone has been interesting. I'm finding out a lot about operating systems and especially that all processors are not created equal. With Linux I'm finding out about hardware conflicts I would have never known about before. I asked myself, why not just put up with windows and forget about it? The answer is simple, there has to be something else, and I think Windows and the tracks it leaves are an invasion of privacy or could be. Maybe I'm a little to paranoid, but I just don't trust the system all that much. The things I've been learning will be important to me if I decide to purchase a new computer all built but, especially if I build a new one I will understand what hardware I should look for and/or install. For instance, however I get my next computer, I'll know, if I want to use Linux, I'll need to be sure what type of processor, video card, memory chips, audio, etc., it has before I put any money into something that doesn't support the Linux OS.
Sorry for your troubles. I'll go back and read the rest of this thread in a moment. Laptops can be a challenge. Part of the Bloat that comes with windows is that they include drivers for every (almost) hardware component known to man. Well, until Vista. http://distrowatch.com/ is a great site for watching all of the Linux versions on one page. PCLinuxOS http://distrowatch.com/pclinuxos is supposed to be the closest to windows as it gets. DSL is fine but really bare bones and you will have to install almost each and every driver which is a different process than in MS stuff. One of the biggest problems when getting your HP to work is that laptops usually have an integrated graphics card on the MB. THey are proprietary and usually need a workaround to get running. IIRC, vesa is a universal driver that sometimes works. Ubuntuforums are pretty good with this sort of thing. I run an Acer laptop and ubuntu worked 90% out of the box. Mint worked 100% until I lost the wifi and had to install the acerhk package which is a workaround for the proprietary wifi butoon on/off on this machine. I still lose it every once in awhile but have learned to live with it. I'll go read this thread now.
slackware is pretty hardcore from what I've heard. good luck. Knoppix is what I used to play with years ago. It's meant to load as a live CD only. I read a way of installing it but it's meant as a sampler. It uses the KDE desktop environment while ubuntu and Mint use Gnome. It's a preference thing. I like Gnome based OS only because I like the look of it. I'm still betting you have a graphics conflict that is stalling the load. ubuntu forums are rich with threads about this. Something about the boot screen from the live CD that you are able to switch the video driver before it loads or installs. One other thing to consider is that Linux tends to run better on older hardware. The hardware requirements are also much lower than even XP so it's possible that you could find a $100-$200 laptop in the newspaper that is of another brand and give it a try. I'm running at 99% right now and only have problems in Mint with laptop power management. Can't wake from sleep (So I disabled it since I'm plugged into a wall all the time anyway) and that occasional wifi glitch. It's a real killer because I have to do all sorts of unsavory things to get it back up. Oh, another thing. When you are installing ubuntu or mint or other derivatives of Debian, you have to let the partitioner set the mount point for the system, which is always a partition called "/" with no quotes. THe only other requirement is a swap partition. But. If you set up a partition called "/home", your system will automatically save all of your personal files there and if/when you upgrade to the next version, it will skip formating that partition and just update your system files. My 160GB HD is set up like this: 10GB / 144GB /home 1GB linuxswap Mint will load on less than 3 GB of space but I wanted to have room for latest and greatest versions over the yrs. Even though gparted is capable of resizing partitions on the fly whenever you want. Keep us posted and try to catch those errors and let us know exactly what they say.
Just a quick note of thanks and I look at it as an adventure. Since I had to buy the restore discs for my laptop and don't store personal files on it, I have restored windows and dumped bloat a few times now. I store and keep my "user" information remotely and back it up often. All my programs are either free or the ones I've got discs to reinstall, so I'm covered that way. In the windows directory I copy all the INI files and back them often too. Some of those seem to contain registration information. Well, I'm not sure about Slackware as it's almost 4 gigs, but I did do some searching and found a release of Ubuntu 7.10-desktop-AMD64.iso. I've got the download but still need to burn and test. My processor is an AMD64, so I'll know if it doesn't work, the processor is probably not the issue. What I did find out about PCLinuxOS is that it reminded me almost too much like Windows, but the live CD did work, so I could install that. I'm just not ready to commit to it until I have done more exploring. I need a faster DSL connection! The journey is half the fun of getting to the destination!
Note, now trying Fedora from the live CD and think I may go with it. It seem to have been built around Red Hat Linux. It boots up real smooth with no hangs on anything, recognizes all my hardware. The Ubuntu 7.10-desktop-AMD64 got as far as the testing hardware phase and hung like so many other versions did. Think I'll just leave it here for now as I really do need to get outside and get to work. I need to spend more time exploring the versions that do work. Since it's Red hat, support should be good, and programs I need should be able to be retrieved. So, I'll keep y'all posted on the results. the testing will go on at least for a while yet. Then it may be reports on other add-ons, issues, conflicts, etc. The speed that FireFox, the default browser, loaded and the Monkey popped up as soon as I typed in the address, is like I never have seen in windows. Maybe all the plugins I use slows it down too much, but I think it is running much faster than in Windows. And this is from CD.
After much frustration over how to get Linux working on my laptop, I think I may have finally found one to work. It looked good on paper, worked good from the Live CD, was a bear to install, but I got it done. I had to pre-partition the hard drive, before I could get it to install, and then it didn't even use them. But whatever I did, it used the size I set and installed anyway, and it still works. Now if it survives the long list (147) of upgrades it has to download. It also didn't come packaged with OpenOffice, so I've got that downloading too. Oh yeah, Windows also works, I left it with about 40 GB free. It already was using close to 30 GB counting the recovery partition. Almost forgot, I am using Fedora 8.
OK, the list of updates and upgrades was 221 not 147. It took about 9 hours to download and install, well almost. Once it installed it asked to be rebooted. eek! I did and then couldn't get it to load back up into the OS. There was a fix offered called 'fsck' which took care of that issue. So, I'm back up and running in Fedora now. Problem #1; when I try to do anything about further update I get this error: "An unhandled exception has occurred. This is most likely a bug. Please save the crash dump and file a detailed bug report against pirut at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla" When I do what is says it takes me to the web site but doesn't really offer me a way to fix it so I can move on. Next issues #2 No OpenOffice in Fedora. It does have a MS Word like and compatible program, but I'd gotten used to OO and several of my document files have been translated into that format. When trying to install OO to Fedora I end up with something, not sure what as the install procedure reported several errors with the database component, Trying to install excluding the component resulted in the same errors. Going to the add/remove software section I get the same error report as the view updates section. So, while I do have parts of Fedora that are working for me, I lack the ability to upgrade or customize it to what I'd like it to do for me. Oh yes, Windows works fine, but I have to hit esc to prevent the computer from automatically booting into Fedora. I thought I'd get a choice before it would boot in either. Maybe I needed to setup Grub first.
For all of you following this thread, I have just this morning dumped Fedora 8. In place of it I have installed PCLinuxOS, which seems the closest to Mint and Ubuntu of all the other attempts, except the install went great and the Grub file actually works better than with Fedora. Oh. I did try Fedora 9 but it wouldn't load on the HP. To install PCLinuxOS I had to go back into Windows and completely remove all the partitions that Fedora had set up and just leave them unallocated. Once I did that the install went great, trying to install it over top of Fedora ended in disaster. Once I blocked off the space [42GB] for Linux and inserted the Live CD, followed the install promptings it walked me through the new partitioning and grub settings with relative ease. There is even a help file right on the desktop you can follow as you install. By now I'm getting to be an experienced user, not pro, but then if I were a pro I'd probably not be posting this thread. I set up the [/] root with 20GB, [/home] with 20GB] and [/swap] with 2GB. Actually, I think I did that with [/swap] first and [/] last. I think I am comfortable enough to resize these as needed and even take more from Windows if need be. The laptop is going through the upgrade and update procedure now, like 556 files and 3-4 hours left to complete. Later we'll see if all this works for me this time, or if I'll have to keep looking.
I'm feeling kinda dumb. I just booted Ubunto on one of my desk tops and I can'y figure out how to move the tool bar into an area where I can see it and the left side of the screen is hiding outside in the underbrush.
PCLinuxOS hasn't bummed out on me yet, but I'm back in windows moving files from one external to an another. For some reason I can't get Linux to recognize my 500 GB Sea-Gate external but it will mount my Verbatim 250 GB. Ya might know the drive where all my movies are stored is the one it doesn't recognize. Won't recognize my flash drive either. Anyone have any clues? The duel-boot systems seems to be working fine, too. I think I may have to resize windows a bit though, especially if I start using Linux more.
Fine tuning Firefox and getting to know the OS now. I've still the issue of with the 500Gb external. PCLinuxOS knows it's there as I went into the configuration and located it, but for some reason it was telling me it couldn't mount the drive. Trying to format the drive so it will is out of the question, as that is where I store most of my downloaded movies and TV shows and backup my C: drive programs and personal files. The drive shows up in Windows as a FAT32 drive and should be recognized by Linux. the flash drive issue I solved by having it in the USB port when I rebooted. The same thing didn't happen with the Seagate drive. I'm trying to resist the temptation to go get a 750GB external that Linux will mount and load all my stuff on it and use the other 2 externals as secondary storage devices. And I remember when a 30meg hd was considered to be a major break through. I think that's all my first computer had and I had been against the whole idea of bringing a computer into the home. So, yes I remember when computers didn't have hard drives at all. Have a good day y'all and thanks for sticking with me.
