Im trying to install linux on my main computer. Unfortunately, all of the installers i've tried have halted with a kernel panic during their hardware detection. Thus far i've tried Suse, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Fedora Core 5, and a few others, all ending with the same result. At one point this computer had been running Ubuntu linux, awhile ago. The computer is a Celeron 2.4 ghz, 768 megs of ram, 120 gig hd, nvidia fx 5200. It also has onboard video which i dont use, if that makes a difference. If you need any more information, let me know. Thanks for your help.

Do you have any USB devices plugged in? Sometimes those can cause trouble. If you can find an install that will do a failsafe setup (or go into the CD boot loader manually and add "noapci acpi=off" to the kernel command line that may also help (you would basically be telling the kernel to be very gentle in probing hardware). How to do this varie, but there should be a way in the install disk to press an F key to set kernel options.

I actually have a usb kvm switch plugged in, to which i have a usb keyboard and mouse combo. I tried booting DSL just now, and used the failsafe option. It booted perfectly except, i had no mouse. But its progress none the less. Any more suggestions for solving my problem would be greatly appreciated.