My Experience with Linux and a Thinkpad... a Newbie Reports :)
 

Ok, so i have been wanting to do a dual boot XP system with linux for a while... actually, I've wanted to do a dual booth Windows system for years... i've always gotten frustrated with linux in the past, however, because of the learning curve involved. But after reading a random post about Knoppix, and live-cd's in general, I decided to download one and play around with it. To my amazement, Knoppix found evderything on my laptop with the glaring exception of my wireless card. This was great for me, and I decided I was going to do it... i was going to use qtparted, and my limited knowledge to do a dual boot of the knoppix hard drive install and XP.

this is where my story gets fun! :)

So I am performing the partition, downsizing XP, and everything looks fine. Until I reboot, and poof... no more windows. Not having the money to buy windows, and not having a restore disk to restore the OEM software on my Thinkpad, I decided that the only option I had at this point was to do a complete linux install, balls to the wall, and get everthing working.

First thing I did was install Knoppix, this time taking over my entire hard drive with it. ONce again, everything worked except wireless, right after the install.

So I began playing around with Knoppix, not worrying too much about wireless right away, figuring i would learn what i could, and then figure out the wireless part. i fell in love right away with Gnome, and especially with apt-get (oh, did i say that debian rules?).

but the one thing I couldn't get working, repeatedly, was my wireless card. Finally, i found a piece of info here on the forums that got me onto the idea that i just needed to learn how to compile the intel PRO wireless drivers.

But in order to do that, I needed to be running 2.6.x for a kernel, which I wasn't.

I tried to update the kernel in knoppix... and completely hosed the system... don't quite know what I did, but it wouldn't boot. So i used my knoppix live CD, reinstalled and considered my options.

Meanwhile, in all this, I had come accross Ubuntu Linux. As I read about it, i realized it might be exactly what I need... it was a Debian based distro, which I already knew i liked, and the default kernel in the first releas was 2.6.8. So i downloaded Ubuntu, burned it to disk, installed it, downloaded the intel drivers, read several tutorials on compiling, and voila! I am now writing this from the freedom of a laptop that is completely free of Windows and wires (i'm at Starbucks right now :) )

I wanted to write this as a.) an encouragement to newbies everywhere, b.) my claim that if you want to learn linux, put yourself in a position where you don't have a choice, and c.) as a thank you to these very forums, which have provided me with the start of an education (and maybe obsession?) and continue to answer my questions with a simple search.

Oh, and for all you other frustrated linux newbies? This is all within the space of a week and a half that I learned how to do this.

PEACE!

-olly

Thanks Olly,
You are an encouragement to a fellow newbie!

no prob!

how's Mandrake 10.1 working for you? The last time I tried a Mandrake install was 8.x (not sure which) and it didn't work that well for me... mostly because i didn't take the time to learn it.

-olly

Hi Olly,

Mandrake is working well, the first install went smooth. Everything worked, except I have not tried the modem (I don't have wireless yet). I have a lot to learn, the main reason I decided to load Linux. I would like to use dual boot after I get more smarts (don't want to chance blowing my XP load so for now I'm using a spare drive). But, by then I might be comfortable just dropping XP.

I have also loaded Mandrake on an HP 7940 in addition to the Thinkpad 600x. It took me three installs to figure out how to setup printing to a printer on XP (finally got it), we have a small home network and are hooked to ADSL.

I purchased Mandrake 7.0 years ago and never got around to it. I was introduced (barely) to AIX about 15 years ago, but did not have the chance to pursue that.

The Mandrake package (I downloaded it) seems to be a good one, but I have nothing that I can compare it to.

One disappointment that I had, I purchased an after market CD burner combo DVD rom for the Thinkpad. It can't boot Linux but it can boot XP and won't burn CD-r but will burn CD-rw (in XP). :confused:

that's really wierd about your burner... driver problem maybe?

anyway, i might put Mandrake on my desktop and see what i think... i've heard good things about it... in the past i have tried SuSE and RedHat, both with little success (not enough patience on my part).

-olly

I think maybe driver. I'm gonna call and see if I can get it. Driver did not come with the drive. Still think it might be a bum drive. Time will tell. It fails the same on both of my Thinkpads.

I think you will like Mandrake, but I'm a newbie, what do I know, cept Lux is cute.