linuxgeek: Re: [LINUX_Newbies] What distro's to try.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Re: [LINUX_Newbies] What distro's to try.

First off there is no 10.1 of Ubuntu.You probably mean 10.04.

Linux and laptops are particularly difficult because laptops use so much
proprietary hardware and Linux is open source. The job of backward
engineering software to fit proprietary hardware is huge, if you think about
it. Windows does not have to do this because Microsoft sets standards and
OEMs comply. This cosy relationship leaves users out of the equation. It
exists to sell more hardware and more copies of Windows. Upgrading in
Windows may force users to buy new equipment. Just keep this in mind when
you knock what Ubuntu or other distros are attempting to do.

That being said, Ubuntu works surprisingly well as many people here can
attest. It takes patience and perseverance to troubleshoot problems. I have
found that where one distro fails another may work. The reason is that they
use different kernels and boot loaders. Some BIOSes use funky settings which
can throw off the boot loading process and cause kernel panics and hanging.
You need to use settings or parameters in grub to bypass these unorthodox
settings. So you can try other distributions (there are over 300) or try to
play around with the settings in Ubuntu to get it to boot.

I have found PCLinuxOS and SimplyMEPIS to work well with tricky hardware.

Roy

On 7 May 2010 11:50, Knowledge Seeker <knowledgeseeker78@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> I was onto Ubuntu since 7.0, but with every new version Ubuntu seems to
> walk away from my laptop. With 9.0, it failed on my Athreos wifi card,
> started giving Kernel crash.
>
> With 10.1 when I tried installing from standard i386 image, my laptop
> hanged. When I tried installing from alternate CD. It failed to install
> at the step of installing 'base package', corrupted my MBR, so that I
> cant boot in my windows also. Somehow I mended my MBR to boot in WinXP.
> Ubuntu seem to be a far ship for me to sail .....now.
>
> BTW, my laptop might be bit old. Toshiba Satellite L20. Athreos Wifi,
> Celeron 1.3G, 2GB RAM, 40 GB linux dedicated partition (rest for my own
> and XP), additional SWAP partition, SlimLine DVD writer., ATI Radeon
> Express 200M graphics card.
>
>

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