I have recently picked up a distro of Redhat 9.
I want to install it on a laptop.

Has anyone had any problems? Driver issues?

Does anyone have suggestions for model of laptop?

Does anyone have general tips for laptop installs?

Moved: Seems suitable for the Laptop forum.

I'm not expert of Laptops, but if you visit www.linux-laptops.net you will find tons of info on people installing on particular laptops.

Trickykid - spotted a typo in your post - should be www.linux-laptop.net (no 's')

Humble apologies for correcting you.......

Thanx guys.......anybody else have opinions please let me know....



I'm trying to join the Linux revolution, I realize I will havfe to make sacrifices...

Linux on a laptop...yum
here's a few tips learned from trial and error and error and error

Don't rely on ANY friewire devices.
Don't erase the windows partition until you have all your linux bugs worked out.
During install/X configuration don't set your screen resolution higher than 800x640 until you get the true type fonts installed and configured.
APCI isn't going to work 'out of the box'.
DVD movies arent going to play 'out of the box'.
CD music isn't going to play 'out of the box'

I'm sure I missed alot of issues, but these are the ones that I can remember. Don't let me scare you away from a linux laptop tho...all these issues are fixable in one way or another.

I've installed RH 9 Pro on a Sony Vaio PCG-FX170 and it is running great. All of my hardware was recognized without any problems:

Logitech Wireless Keyboard & Mouse
160gig Maxtor External Drive (Firewire)
External Sony LCD Flatscreen

The only problem I had was with Samba. Setting up Samba to connect to my Win2k machine. Moving files from there to my laptop seemed to corrupt my root filesystem. I've had to reload 2-3 times until I figured out what was really causing the problem. With some research, it seems to be a problem with caching on some laptop hard drives. I have Samba running and use it as a print server, but that's it.

I also want to mention that my laptop is dual-boot with WinME. I can access my windows partition as well as the fat32 on my Maxtor drive. Coping files back and forth is seamless.

just like to add that i tried several distros and with mdk all these problem areas ran 'out of the box' like cd's and acpi and dvd's (almost) and samba and printing. everything except full support of the graphics chip( too new)
havent had good luck on linux-laptop site, too outdated.

If you go to some stores that sell notebooks, maybe they will let you use a knoppix disc to boot up the notebook with. Then you can see what kind of problems you will run into.

Brian1

Linux and newer-new notebook computers, best advice of all..
Don't install Redhat!
Almost all the laptops out there now have a few features like ACPI and special hardware that Redhat just isnt set up for by default.
Since Suse 8.1 and 8.2, and Mandrake 9.1 are set up for this by default, they make better laptop installs.

i installed redhat 9 on my laptop and had lots of trouble with halt, reboot and wlan card. Now i have severn installed, much better! detected the wlan card and now halt works ,) a reboot won't work though....

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro A10 and I can tell you that the following distros installed correctly (with no configuring or editing files), picked up my ethernet connection to the internet and picked up my usb floppy drive:

Red Hat 9, Mandrake 9.1, Slackware 9, JAMD Linux 0.6, Slackware Live. Debian installed but needed configuring.

SuSE 8.2 installed "out of the box" on my Compaq 2170. Acpi had to be turned on manually through YAST, but works just fine. DVD's took a little work, but just to the extent of adding a few packages and setting up a link between /dev/cdrecorder and /dev/dvd.
Most of the problems talked about here seem to be with RedHat.
Zane

I've installed RH9 onto an aging Dell Latitude CPiA (P2-400). It installed and runs fine. I have three PCMCIA networks cards (two wired and one wireless and it recognizes them all. The only problem I have is that suspend/resume is a little intermittent, but as its no worse than it was under Windows I'll assume that the problem is unrelated to the RH9 install.

I have contacted a Dell sales rep and had asked him to look for a unit that will support Linux RH 9. He said he would look in to it (yeah....right...) but they all seem to want me to keep Win XP on it in a dual boot mode.

My whole idea of using linux is to get away from windoze all together.....

All I want to do with this laptop is use it for word processing for writing a book and maybe email client with some web browsing, it would be nice to play a CD for music but that is not necessary.

Remember, the Windows EULA states (and this is not a quote) that if you return the cds and books for MS apps and OS unopenend and remove Windows from the pc, you can claim a refund.

Install Linux, send the recovery cds, etc back and get some dosh back!

Make the EULA work for the end user!!