Hi all,

I have a Hewlett Packard Pavilion dv5-1125nr laptop containing factory loaded Windows Vista. I have a lot of hard disk space on it and I wanna install Linux. But I don't know which version/distribution will work on this laptop.

Anyone, please share your expertise.

-mad34

I did a quick google, and turned up this:

http://sites.google.com/site/fedoraonpavilion/

If Fedora will run on it, just about any main line distro should work. There are a few things you should think about first.

This machine is a dual core 64 bit cpu. 64 bit versions are available for most distros. You can run a 32 bit version, if you choose to. The 32 bit versions are a little easier for a noob.

You will need to re-partition your hard drive. I assume you have the 250 Gig drive listed there. The installers have partitioning tools built in. Since I have no I have no idea your experience level, do some reading before you begin. Many distros have nice How-to installs online. So do some googling after you think you know what you want to install.

As for which one to pick, Fedora, Ununtu, Mandriva are all good first time picks. I personally would pick Mandy, it has a very nice installer, good online repos ( that is where all the updates and new so0ftware come from ). You will get lots of opinions on which distro. Pick one.

1 members found this post helpful.

If you are a Linux beginner, I would suggest you to use Virtualization software's for linux installation.

Thanks to Camori for the valuable response.

I am now typing this on my dv5 laptop after installing Fedora Core 12. The first thing for me to do was to correctly perform 'shrink volume' in Vista. I squeezed out 43 GB after much googling and research. Then I went ahead and installed FC12 x86_64 on the free space. No problems in installation.

Thank you to Camori and kirukan. I love Linux

-mad34

You are most welcome. I'm glad you had success.