Hi there!

Just joined 10 minutes ago.

After spending EURO 2,600 on a brand new SAMSUNG X10 XTC1600, I have found out (the hard way) that installing a Linux distro is "off limits".

These are the results of different attempts:

SUSE 8.1 PRO After the first 2-3 screens, laptop restarts
without any reason
It keeps doing this indefinitely, and installation
obviously never moves on

MANDRAKE 9.1 After installation is finished (no problems at all)
the summary screen shows the X System as
NOT configured

ANY configuration chosen at this point makes
the screen go wild (and the system to hang, I
guess)

LYCORIS 46 Installation of packages takes about 5 times
longer than on my slower desktop machine.

After the whole thing seems to be finished, the
system hangs and nothing happens.

LINEX 3.0 RC1 Installation screen freezes after some 25 mins.

KNOPPIX 3.2 HD Everything works right up to firstboot. When
startup messages are shown, system freezes
with syslog.

The really funny thing is, Knoppix 3.2 without
a HD install. worked perfectly

The graphics card?:

nVidia GeForce 420 Go 32M

ALL distros recognize the card correctly.



The monitor?:
Not even the best hardware listing tools manage to identify my monitor: it simply comes up as unknown, or as an odd 'NVD100'



Can anyone help?.

Cheers,

Arthur

Fist off, Welcome to LQO.


Its always a good idea to check linux-laptops.net, and your laptop has the traditional good new/bad news situation. Maybe. The good news is that it is listed here. The potentially bad news is that the entry is in German. However there is also this site that is in English with a few pointers.

The common theme is that both of them are using Debian.


Good luck!

Thanks, hangdog42,

My problem is, I've already read both, but none of these people seems to be having the same problem.

I would appreciate your own opinion...


Regards,

Arthur

I guess I don't have any practical advice since I've never installed Linux on a laptop (although I've been eyeing my Dell Inspiron lately). However, from the digging around I posted previously it looks as if Debian is worth a shot. I believe that Knoppix is derived from Debian, and your partial success may indicate it is the way to go. The other tack I would be tempted to take is to go the vanilla route with Slackware. If you have the documentation that came with your system, it hopefully has monitor stats in it that woud allow you to get Slack going. Slackware's not as hard as you might think and since it relies on the console, it may get you a functional system that you can then tweak for X.

Sorry, trickykid

I was clumsy enough not to see the Laptop Forum!!!

Try this:

http://www.gentoo.org/

??? All I did was Type Samsung X10 Linux into google and I found more than 600 people running Linux on it with no problems what-so-ever? Including several on linux-laptop.net...

Maybe you need to go read a little better?

You are so lucky!

I've done the same, with the same search engine, and found quite a bunch of people desperately trying to make Linux work on their X10s.

Thanks for your support!
Angry Samsung X10 Users

http://www.creative-sadness.de/cgi-b...l?Site=samsung
http://www.sk-schwanstetten.de/linux/x10-de.htm
http://page.inf.fu-berlin.de/~chjaco...g/samsung.html

These were my first 3 results? All of which are guides for successfully installing Linux on a samsung x10. 1 english, 2 german. Use a translator if you need to.
And next time.. really.
Read better.

Thanks, but being aggressive is not the way to help.

I had already read all of these, but you probably didn't read the one I provided.

BTW, I haven't been able to find 600 users of a Samsung X10 anywhere. Where are they?.



Please also read the first 3 postings on this thread. Other people give the same advice as you do, but using pleasant manners.

Whatever, i've got more than 40 other posts and replies to attend to with "Well Done" "Thank you" and "More help please." All of which tried different links I posted to various degrees of success. So, I don't really care. It works or it doesnt. The 3 links all have the laptops working, the second link, everything but the network card. Not sure what else you would need.

SOUTHPAW,

Thanks for the advice on Gentoo.
I did download 2 ISO images (basic CD and CD1).

Basic didn't work, so I tried a Stage3 install from CD1.
Spent an interesting 4 hours following instructions by the book, only to find that my beloved nVidia GeForce4 420 Go made the screen produce a lot of garbage.

However, I am proud I managed to boot!.

Will keep trying, although my Red Hat is now the main lab to test ACPI patches for the 2.4.21 and 2.4.20 kernels.

Will keep you posted.

BTW, it seems that LinEx didn't install because Debian Woody comes with a slightly older XFree version that won't allow an X environment with my graphic card.

HANGDOG42,

Following on the links you mentioned at the start of this thread, I found quite a few Samsung X10 users fighting to get different speedstepping modes and full ACPI compliance.

It seems clear that I'll have to fiddle with the buggy DSDT provided by Samsung for their PhoenixBIOS.

Thanks to both!

Regards

OK, you should have no problems installing Gentoo without X (I have only done it from stage 1). I have an XTC 1500 which has the same hardware bar the processor.

I can successfully load X using the nv driver (not the nvidia drivers - they produce garbage) however when I close X the screen becomes unusably distorted.