If not I may be the first, though while inspecting this nice machine I notieced the 802.11g card is made by Broadcom *cry* but otherwise a good machine. I'll probably take a crack at it with Mandrake 9.1 since I'm more familiar with the NTFS resize tool on it.

okay go for it
do a search on yahoo/google or linux on laptops

I've successfully installed RedHat 9 on a ze4430us. Had a little trouble getting the video to work but got it going with the vesa (generic) drivers at 1024x768.

http://linuxany.com will make the 54g work in linux

sorry http://linuxant.com i typed it wrong

Ok, I have had Redhat 9 running for several weeks now on my ze4430us. I have downloaded the package from Linuxant (See above) and it can't find the broadcom card. I have tried the driver disk that came with the laptop, and the ones that they link to on HP's website. Anyone have any ideas? Does it matter which kernel I am running? I am on the verge of switching to the 2.6.1 kernel and will use the generic tar.gz package instead of one of the prebuilt ones. Anyone have an idea if this will break anything else?

On a brighter note. I DID get my V66 GPRS capable phone to work with linux the first time. IT was a lot easier than in winblowes!

I assume you are useing at least a 2.4 kernel if not the 2.6 I have gotten this to work with mandrake 9.2 and slackware 9.1 I have not tryed redhat but i think i tryed it with fedora without seccess

did you try the redhat rpm from linuxant? and make sure you have the right one. because they have like 3 or 4. do you have a windows partition on this laptop? thats how i did it. i download the drivers from hp, installed them and wrote down what dir they installed into and then when linkx ant asked for them i just pointed to my windows partion. if that makes any sence. english not great

Yes, I downloaded the one that matches my kernel. I have tried several versions of the HP driver too, without any luck. I saved them off to my USB flash drive and then rebooted into Linux. they install and then when it tries to load the driver for the wireless after I install it with the web interface, it tells me bad magic with a -5 error code.

I own the ze4420 (which just taught me that I hate laptops in general aparently) and I found this for that laptop. Assuming they were pretty lazy you can assume that the two arn't much different. there's no wifi on the 4420.

I have the exact same laptop ze4430us and I can't get red hat 9 to install everytime it loads the page where it asks if I want to skip the test or not my computer hangs there. I dloaded the iso files from redhat and burned them to cd but I just cant get it to work I need to know of anything that I didnt do that experienced linux user would do seeing as I am new to the world of linux

We'll RH9 is now end of life. I've had great success with Fedora Core 1, and am now testing Fedora Core 2 test 3 which works great also..

Fedora is the continuation of Redhat 9. You can get it at http://fedora.redhat.com


FYI those lockups could be a badly burned cd.

Well, I got RH9 to work, but I had the same problem with the video, I had to use the VESA generic drivers to make it work. Fedora Core worked first time, video and all, except the built in WI-FI, I loaded the trial from Linuxant and got it to work however, without too many problems.

I did have some issue with the APM working properly with the Redhat/Fedora distro's at first. My best success has been with SUSE 9. I got everything to work the first time, except the wireless of course, until I downloaded the SUSE version of the linuxant drivers, worked the first time, without the problems I had with Fedora. The APM capabilities worked the first reboot also, without any tweaking or turning things on or off in the config files.

I will have access to the RH Enterprise workstation in a few weeks, so I might give it a try see if it is any better than 9 is on supporting my laptop and it's hardware.

I prefer Slackware, but I have never had much luck with the X setup and Slackware, so I am kind of hesitant to switch now that I have things working with SUSE!

I think I am going to stay with SUSE for now. Now if I can only get the few Windows Apps I NEED to use, working with WINE or might go the VMWare route, I can kill the Winblows partition finally!!!

ok I downloaded fedora and checked the disk and they are good but I still got the same problem my computer just stops when it gets to the page after linux loads all that text stuff that i see and then boom nothing. I dont understand what I could be doing wrong seeing as everyone that has my exact same laptop have had success and I cant for some reason. could it be the way my hd is partitioned. I am using partition magic and boot magic and I have 34g ntfs partition at the front of the drive for my xp os and then I have a fat 32 partition of 200 megs so I could install boot magic and then I have a 2gig linux ext 2 partition after that. Please keep in mind I am very new to linux

I would kill the Boot magic partition, there is no reason to have it at all, since grub or Lilo, or even the Windows XP bootloader can be configured to boot the other OS for you. I have mine setup in a similar fashion, but using Grub as my bootloader, I used Partition Magic (8 I think) to setup my hard drive with the two partitions. I don't think the different size partitions will matter either. But the one thing you are doing differently is using the Boot magic software, which you really don't need.