LinuxQuestions.org - newbie-can't get to suss 9.2 live dvd to work

Don't give up on Linux yet. What you will learn figuring this thing out will serve you well in your intellectual development. Trust me. First, the aficionados of different realms of technology (same is true of all academic fields as well) fence themselves off with jargon, in-group unique definitions for terms and common words (even Vietnam War Vets returned home with their own language, "short", "REMF," "freedom bird," "Charley", "friendlies," "Hooch," etc).

You must learn some lingo and language unique to the Linux world and don't expect hard core aficionados to explain anything Linux in much more common MS DOS, Windows or PC terms. As it now stands, you must become something of a "shade tree mechanic" or amateur "gunsmith" in order to load or drive any Linux distro. Forget about claims to "easy" & "automatic." If my ego needed the boost, I could just as easily tell people: "reading Attic Greek is simple", or "removing and soldering proprietary lithium battery connectors to replace "irreplaceable" PDA batteries is easy. It would serve no one but a narcissistic "I" to make such false claims. "Throw out "simple," "easy," and "automatic". You probably know to ignore such claims in the Windows world, where a person needs to know much less to operate a Windows PC.

Many, Many novices find it impossible to load and boot Suse personal 9.1 or 9.2 live CD. I notice most give up and forget about Linux completely. Even more people cannot install & boot new "automatic" & "easy" Mandrake 10.1 Community or Official packages. I am a total novice to all three: Linux, Suse and Mandrake. I managed this week to install and boot them.

In the process, my friends and I discovered a lot of people (and us) were having the following problem with Suse. If you place the CD in your CD-ROM as instructed and reboot, you get the distinct impression that SUse installer is analyzing and "live" installing the package, only to end up with a blank screen, frozen blank screen or a blinking cursor that accepts no entries. Believe it or not, many computers do not automatically boot from the CD-ROM and Suse install despite appearances does not set your bios to boot from the CD-ROM player. Many Dell desktop and Compaq and Dell laptop owners report that a lot of work seems to be going on for nearly an hour but they end up with a 'no go.'

I am reminded of the AOL release of AOL 8.0... Win XP owners upgraded to the version 8.0 only to have goofy things happen to their dial up connection. Many could no longer surf the Net. I read many AOL tech posts and accounts of tech instructions that walked XP owners through lines of weird procedure. None of it worked. Some techs were trying to impress users with their "expertise," many were instructed not to tell users the obvious. 8.0 did not work correctly with many Win XP systems. I spent a day posting a solution. Remove as much of AOL 8.0 as possible and "System Restore" XP to before 8.0 was installed. After all, AOL 7 worked fine.

Here is the solution for many people. As you boot a Dell & many other newer PCs, press the F12 key up and down until you get the BIOs menu. Change the first boot device from floppy or hard Drive to CD-ROM. then pick "exit & save changes", you will exit and reboot from CD-ROM. Older computers do not have a bios entry for the CD-ROM. They were not truely integrated components, so you cannot boot from CD by choosing it in the BIOs. Many laptops and notebook PCs do not use the modern EIDE CD ROM system that most Desktops do. For these and for PCs you cannot get to boot from CD, search for & download to floppy the tiny free utility "Smart Boot Manager" version (SBM) version 3.7. Read the documentation. This little baby does several useful things. If you find deciding what to download too confusing, search for "free to try" shareware program "osl2000 Boot Manager" & download it. Osl will download to your desktop in zip form.

This is not exotic advice to try entering lines of code or some other impressive ritual but Both boot managers easily get the job done for sure, they fit on a floppy disk and they come with documentation.