Hi!

I use a LG E500 laptop with:
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600
3Gb RAM (DDR2 667MHz)
Intel Core2 Duo T9300, both at 2.50GHz
250Gb SATA hard drive

I've tried to use LiveCD's: Kubuntu Hardy Heron, the latest Kubuntu, Fedora 9, a version of PCLinux OS I can't recall and the OpenSuse 11.1 DVD. I've tried them all(except the DVD)on an older desktop and they worked fine (thus, its not a problem with the media). In my laptop, Kubuntu and PCLinux would boot but they got stuck during the process.

I've also tried Mandriva 2009 RC2 (successfully installed, but unable to boot!) and OpenSuse 11.0 (KDE4). OpenSuse would boot only on safe mode, it would initiate on command line interface (I initiated KDE using a command) and I couldn't shutdown, no matter what!.

I thought that that was a drivers problem, uninstalled OpenSuse and I waited for the OpenSuse update on a DVD. I downloaded the DVD but the laptop doesn't recognize it. I'm not sure if this is a corrupted DVD, but shouldn't the other LiveCD's work?

I'm now stuck with the default Windows Vista

I think (as you indicated) that you're having problems with hardware support; this doesn't mean you can't make it work, but as far as I can see, the graphics chipset will make troubles until some proprietary drivers are installed. That's because most vendors don't care to open source their drivers - but at least they provide matching (closed) drivers. The downside of this is that most GNU/Linux distributions can't legally ship WITH those drivers - you need to do a basic installation and then download and install the drivers.

A way to do that is to add "xmodule=vesa" (without the quotes) to your bootline (if this isn't an option provided by default, try hitting "e" while menu entry you want is highlighted, hit "e" again (because the first line you'll see will be the relevant line) and add the above. "Failsafe" is even more frugal, but should work (almost) without exception.

After installation, you'll have full access to your distributions software repositories, which will (depending on policies, of course) most certainly provide ways to install the proprietary drivers.

M.

Thanks!

I can only try this at the weekend - I'll try it then and them if there are problems I post something.

Hi!

I used OpenSuse so far, but it is giving plenty of trouble. Trying to fix one of the many problems I found out that if I activated acpi it wouldn't boot.

I tried disabling acpi on a Kubuntu LiveCD and this time, it booted!

The other problems are not boot problems, I'll not include them here.