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Induane

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Linux Laptop Question
« on: February 12, 2006, 07:51:13 pm »
I have purchased a new laptop, and now wish to install linux on it.  I tried Ubuntu as usual but can\'t get the installer to start.

Laptop:

HP Pavilion dv5000
2.68 Ghz AMD Turion64
1.0 GB DDR 2700 Ram
100 GB 7200 RPM HD
ATI Mobility XPress 200  128MB Video
DVDRW/R CDR/W + LightScribe  Disk Media Drive
Widescreen LCD
Broadcom WirelessG Builtin
RTL8139 Ethernet
Some Sort of Standard Audio.. not sure if its AC97 or not.


Are there any suggestions on a distro to try on this machine?  I\'d like to start building planeshift for linux on this machine :D
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Xordan

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« Reply #1 on: February 12, 2006, 08:39:17 pm »
Gentoo is probably a good choice.
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Induane

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« Reply #2 on: February 12, 2006, 09:53:20 pm »
I think Gentoo can always be considered a good choice afaik.  I\'m looking for a simple binary distro that is easy to use and update, and isn\'t FC4.  Hopefully debian based... Xandros maybe?  

My wife and some friends will be using the laptop too, so I\'m looking for something powerful yet easy enough for a novice.
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hook

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« Reply #3 on: February 12, 2006, 09:56:55 pm »
I\'m quite happy with Gentoo on my AMD64 Laptop :]
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1Samildanach

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« Reply #4 on: February 13, 2006, 11:16:56 am »
Quote
Originally posted by Induane
I\'m looking for a simple binary distro that is easy to use and update, and isn\'t FC4.



Fedora 3?



You could try Simply Mepis.
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Xordan

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« Reply #5 on: February 13, 2006, 12:23:54 pm »
I guess SUSE might work ok. I avoid debian based stuff like the plague, so I can\'t really help you there. :P Binary distros have a much less chance of working on laptops than source distros, so I think experimenting is the best thing to do. :)
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lanser

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« Reply #6 on: February 16, 2006, 09:17:44 am »
I use Suse 9.3 on an Acer laptop and have installed suse 10 on another Acer and a Dell each time it was very smooth everything just worked including wireless
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malevolent

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« Reply #7 on: February 28, 2006, 12:46:26 pm »
Yes if you want play in two hours try SuSE 10.0, is not Gentoo! but everything works and YaST every day it\'s better
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Araye

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« Reply #8 on: February 28, 2006, 08:09:20 pm »
I agree.  SuSE 9.3 and 10.0 are really good choices for your laptop.  I have it installed in three laptops or various ages and three desktops.  My broadcom wireless card plus 9.3 require ndiswrapper and if there is a kernel update, ndiswrapper has to be recompiled, but other than that works like a dream.
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Tharizdun

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« Reply #9 on: March 01, 2006, 01:36:41 am »
If you have in the past found Gentoo to be too difficult or intimidating in the install process, then 2006.0 which has just been released has a graphical installer - it might be a more comfortable and familiar environment if thats what you are used to.

As for your laptop Induane, do you have any idea of the bits that Ubuntu cant work with, is there a new piece of hardware that is yet to be supported, etc? Theres a whole bunch of LiveCDs around that are fairly diligent and aggressive in probing for hardware and figuring out the right drivers, kernel modules, etc to use, if you are stuck for ideas try out the latest SLAX or Knoppix, see how well everything works, and get a list of all the kernel modules they load, output of \'lspci\', \'dmesg\', etc.

Laptops usually have odd video cards compared to desktop systems, if I had to hazard a guess as to how to get Linux working I would suggest using the latest driver package from ATI and see if that makes a difference.
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