ok to start I am a total noob to linux. As I type this im D/Ling mandrake 9.2 iso's. 1st question is .. is there anything major i need to know before i start to try to install it. 2nd question... do most of the drivers come with the iso. I have a ton of questions but ill stop at these 2 for now.







sager laptop
3.02 p4 w/ hyperthreading enabled
1 gig memory
40 gig 7200 rpm HDD
ati 9000 moble w128 mb ram
dvd rom
cdrw
floppy
TV card
pcmcia x 2


everything built in

ok tried to install mandrake 3 dif times and kept locking up at the pcmcia driver install. tried to do text install same thing. tried to type in "nopcmcia" and says it cant find kernel nopcmcia .

guess ill just keep searching the forums:




study:

Hey,
I have the almost exact same laptop that you have except 80gig and 2 dvd/cdrw drives. I have not wiped winxp yet but I have used knoppix 3.3 live cd on it. I tried to use the suse 8.0, 8.1, 8.2 and 9.0 live eval cd's and none of them worked. I had a similar problem with the boot process hanging while detecting firewire. With knoppix 3.3 live cd, I had no such problems. Check with mandrake's documentation, see if there is a parameter you can enter when it asks for the kernel you want to boot, try "linux nopcmcia" or something similar. Knoppix has many specific options you can type in to allow it to work on most any system. Incidentally, I just installed mandrake 9.2 on a Panasonic toughbook I have and it went flawlessly. But, it's and older unit and the sager's we have are all pretty much cutting edge so it's no surprise there are some hangups. Also, there is the option of:
boot: linux noauto
or
boot: noauto
this will tell the install program to bypass hardware detection. The installer will not scan for hardware, so you'll need to manually select your hardware later in your install.
Good luck,
Ken Gutkowski

One more thing, maybe try your install using "expert" instead of the standard one.
Ken Gutkowski

This is how I got Redhat 9 to work on a Prostar 8894. I believe it is the same setup as yours. It uses an ATI Radeon 9000m, TV, MP3 Player,

I am sure you can get other distro's to work using this info.

The only thing I haven't got working is the volume buttons on front, But I wrote a few scripts to use the F11 and F12 Keys to volume up and down. That info is somewhere on this site.

Forgive me if I missed something here. I haven't needed to install Linux for over 6 months now. This is what I remember now.

Fresh install of RedHat 9
* Start off booting off the Redhat 9 CD1 type ' linux noprobe nofirewire '
* Install should work fine, except it will not ask you to setup networking.
* After Install and system reboots reinsert CD1 and type ' linux rescue nofirewire ' can't remember if I need noprobe here or not.
* Let it mount the Harddrive.
* Edit using pico command, /mnt/sysimage/etc/modules.conf and "# " the lines for USB & Firewire
* Edit using pico command, /mnt/sysimage/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia and edit line from from yes to no
* Shutdown and reboot, Do Not Use Redhat Update App, I use Synaptic and Apt. Also don't setup auto time sync since networking is not setup.
* System should boot up fine from here.
* You can now use Redhat Networking Config Tools to setup up the internal nic.

* For Pcmcia download http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/p...s-3.2.5.tar.gz and follow the directions.

* To get USB working disable kudzu chkconfig --level 345 kudzu off
unrem usb modules in /etc/modules.conf

* Install HotPlug goto http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...group_id=17679
file:/storage/hotplug-2003_08_05-1_rh9.noarch.rpm
file:/storage/hotplug-base-2003_08_05-1_rh9.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh *.rpm

* To get Firewire to work leave it remmed out in /etc/modules.conf and add this line to /etc/rc.local modprobe ieee1394. Add other firewire modules to this script.

*Reboot


Options:
* Update kernel
* Install Apt & Synaptic using rpm -Uvh *.rpm


Hope this helps you out
Brian1

thx a ton ill try that