I tried linux for the first time and the experience was not good.
i own an HP dv2046tu laptop.
installing open suse was easy but what happened after it was preety dissappointing.
first of all, neither the sound card was working nor the graphics card's 3d acceleration was being supported
sound card is connexant hd audio and graphics is on board display device for intel 945 mobile chipset
if u can tell me how to deal with it pls help
and when i decided to remove linux using system recovery........i found that its just not working
so i was forced to follow destructive recovery using the dvds and all my data was lost
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pls help me out cause i really wanna become a linux user
dhruvkapoor7@gmail.com
thnx

Hi
I have HP laptop as well. I would suggest you to use ubuntu, this distro, according to my experience , has got very well support for drivers. You can download ubuntu desktop ( server distro comes without GUI), recent newest vers is 8.04 hardy. I haven't tried this version, but 7.04 and 7.10 works fine on my laptop, I have had problems with Solaris10, Fedora 6,7,8 and Suse 10.2. Try ubuntu if it is not a problem and you aren't binded to some particular distro. Look at: http://howtoforge.com/the-perfect-de...buntu-8.04-lts
or
http://howtoforge.com for all tutorials
it is like cook_book and if you have no experience with linux it will help.
It is live CD and you can boot it and try without real installation, hardware support as well. If You decide to install it will remove all linux partition ( you have to select this option) and will discover all other operating systems ( not sure about vista). If live CD doesn't boot, try older version like 7.10 ubuntu.
You have live CDs for Suse as well for Gnome and KDE desktop separatelly.
Hardware issues are nightmares in Linux environment, sometimes is quicker to choose right distro than configure ... My mail:tomkis@hotmail.co.uk if you need some help, or try linux in VMware server on the top of windows.
VMware is free, but registration necessary, but may be you know these stuff
GOOD LUCK !!!! don't give up easilly

if you are in early stages for box use the most popular version like ubuntu because it is produced for the best user exprerience rather that the performance and applications coming with box. One small note : do not upgrade the OS by using upgrade options. directly format and install new ones sometimes it cause problems.

Regards

thnx buddy