liquidzoo Posted January 11, 2004 Report Share Posted January 11, 2004 Ok, I resized my Windows partitions on my laptop and want to install another flavor of linux in the void (about 10 GB). I have Mandrake 9.2 on there now and it is my main distro. Couple of things: I wanted to try Debian. Installed it, but the boot sequence for Debian (2.4.21 kernel I think) doesn't like the fact that my Mandrake install has the 2.6.0 kernel. Finally got it to boot, can't get X to start, more of a hassle for me than I really want. Plus the person (to remain nameless, but not a member of the board) that was helping me really didn't seem to know what he was doing. I'm really surprised that he didn't hose my mandrake install in the process. Thought about putting Fedora or SuSE on there just to check them out but haven't downloaded either yet. I didn't like RedHat the last time I tried it and I have never tried SuSE. I also thought about maybe putting PCLOS in that void but I am wondering about it conflicting with Mandrake since it's a lot of the same code. I even thought about going back with Debian, but doing a HD install of Knoppix and upgrading it from there this time, just to make sure that X actually worked. Anyway, what are your thoughts? I have some free space on my desktop that I want to experiment with too, but that may come later. We'll see. I want to keep and share /home partitions as well. I know how to do that, so that's not a problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzylizard Posted January 12, 2004 Report Share Posted January 12, 2004 Hey, you could try something really radical and install windows on your laptop. :P what about Gentoo? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted January 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 12, 2004 Already have Windows XP Home on there...Hate it. Gentoo is an option as well, but A. I would need it to recognize my wireless card druing the install (for net connection) and.. B. I don't have the free time to sit there and compile the distro the first time...I need the laptop every day for school. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted January 12, 2004 Report Share Posted January 12, 2004 Try MEPIS. It can start as a "live" distro, and if it recognizes everything, simply install it from a nice gui, kde! B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted January 12, 2004 Report Share Posted January 12, 2004 How about Knoppix..... No install or anything.... Then add the deb sources and it gets round the deb problems...??? Personally Im now using Lindows (Laptop edition) which is turning out to be hassle free. If you want it to 'just work' and are not bothered about server SW etc. then this works for me.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted January 12, 2004 Report Share Posted January 12, 2004 Try them all! Slackware <no one ever mentions this guy ;(> SuSE Fedora Mephis Knoppix Gnoppix Phlak <new release today> fix some bugs> rocklinux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted January 12, 2004 Report Share Posted January 12, 2004 Thats the prob with laptops, if you use one it tends to be crucial. Wheras you might have a few partitions or disks in a desktop or several desktops that you distro ho on laptops tend to be to critical to play about with. Thats why eventually I ended up with Lindows on my laptop..... Yeah I know but it works, worked first time and keeps working. Im not tempted to fiddle to much becuase theres only so much you can do in Lindows in a practical sense. Take adding my wireless card. I just plugged it in, used kwifi and set the essid and it just worked. Take out the ethernet or pcmcia and it just switches over. Set a default and it uses it when connected or not. Mandy doesn't like my PCMCIA so this was no go anyway under mandy but for a PC to work on and always be working this is doing prety good. acpi and all. Its not like you can change your graphics card or modem etc. The Winmodem just installed, no set-up etc. when I was back in the UK for Xmas I just tried it and it worked!!! etc. etc. The other thing about laptops is you easily sperate them from your install disks whilst travelling. Without an internet connection in mandy I wouldn't have been able to download the linmodem stuff to make it work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted January 12, 2004 Report Share Posted January 12, 2004 I've had good luck with suse on laptop's too. Well one laptop Toshiba Tecra 8100, found winmodem, wireless card, resized my windows partion and slapped suse on for me. ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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