I purchased a hp pavilion g6 with windows 7 on it and I would like to use linux on it instead. I have tried using fedora 16 live from a dvd, but the screen goes completely black. I have also tried knoppix 6.4 and a some of the hardware isn't recognized, the wifi, webcam, and touchpad. I would like to use linux os on a flashdrive and keep the awful windows in the background until it is needed. I don't have enough experience yet to use a cross over or a virtual box to run needed windows programs, but in time I will. I also have the same problem of a black screen with ubuntu and open suse. I am using iso live dvd to install.

Thank you for your help;
Jonnynitro138

It should work your hardware is relatively new, when you say black screen what exactly do you mean? Is there any text about errors or something? Please give more details. Have you tried Debian Live ?

Regards

The black screen typically occurs when the autoselected video driver and/or resolution doesn't work on your system. Wyhen the boot screen appears, you can press the <E> key (I think it's the <E> key; it may be <ESC> or even something else; read the screen)to edit the kernel line in the boot configuration file. Adding "nomodeset" (without the quotes) should enable the screen. Personally, I also like to delete "quiet" and "rhgb" so that I can see what's happening during the boot process. HTH

You wouldn't happen to have duel radeon graphics cards and a ralink 5390 wireless card. If so at the grub prompt edit the linux line to add nomodeset to get to boot without black screen. If you got said wireless card the driver for it didn't show up in the kernel until version 3.1 or somewhere about there.

When I start up the live fedora 16 dvd and boot from cd drive, fedora starts up with its typical boot screen "will start in 10 seconds" after which the screen goes black and doesn't show anything. I can hear the cd drive run when I wait for it to stop and press any key but the screen still stays black.

I purchased this laptop from a pawn shop and have no idea what kind of hardware it has. How do I find out? I tried looking online but there are quite a few different options available on the market. I have not tried Debian live; which version would you suggest?

To RockDoctor's reply. When do I press <E> or <ESC>? When the fedora screen comes up saying that it will boot in 10 seconds or before that?

Again thank you for your help
Jonnnitro138

When the fedora boot screen comes up, press tab key. You will see the boot text in lower right and your cursor will be there. Type nomodeset and press enter. You should see a blue and white progress bar. I had to use the nomodeset for my HP desktop.

To find out what the laptop hardware is you can use the data plate for model and such and just do a google search. Once you finish booting to Fedora's desktop you can check then via some terminal commands; let's get you booted up and running first .

Link to HP G6: HP Pavillion G6

Thank you.
I got the fedora up. Now for the setup of it. The hardware that I have is the hp pavilion g6, synaptics ps/2 port touchpad, ranlink rt5390 800.11/g/n wifi adapter, realtek pcie fe family controller, hp webcam, standard ps/2 keyboard, intel core i3, intel hd graphics.
How to I get fedora to recognize the wifi, the key board, and the touchpad?

Thank you
Jonnynitro138

I almost forgot my other question that is probably the most important. How do I install fedora 16 to a flash drive? I can do other linux os only because there is a prompt to install to flash drive, I don't see one for fedora.
Again thank you
Jonnynitro138

Installation to a flash drive can be done several ways. The following all all basically give you the live cd on a flash drive:
1. use livecd-iso-to-disk (in the livecd-tools rpm; allows persistence)
2. use dd (no persistence, but almost mindless)
3. use unetbootin (nice because it also works with many other distros)

The other major option is to just install to a flash drive (4GB or larger). The nice thing is it's fully updatable and limited only by the size of the flash drive, whereas installing the live cd image with persistence imposes limits on the space occupied by any updates to the system.

Thank you
I have an 8 gig flash drive to use for fedora. Ive ran into the problem of not knowing how to install fedora to it. I have a live dvd burned from an iso.
I got the screen to work with nomodeset. What or how does fedora mount to a flash drive? I'm a bit nervous to try to install to hd without having instructions. Theres a funny story to that involving knoppix, ubuntu, windows xp, and a lot of erased files
I was glad everything got backed up to disk the day before.
Thank you
Jonnynitro138

Thank you
UNetbootin is very easy and simple to use. I thought I was going to have to manually install the os to the flash drive.
Very appreciative
Jonnynitro138

Okay next question When using Unetbootin how do you get the os on the flash-drive to act like a real os and not a live dvd? Will I have to use nomodeset everytime I want to use the fedora os on the flash-drive and how to I get is to save new software and os setups?
Thank you
Jonnynitro138

I haven't used unetbootin with Fedora for quite a while now, but looking at the images on unetbootin website, it appears that unetbootin only provides persistence with Ubuntu. Persistence is done differently in Ubuntu and Fedora - apparently the Fedora mechanism is not supported
Maybe this will help

FYI: I've recently been asked by a friend to install linux on this model of a laptop. Tried Ubuntu 11.04 and Fedora 16 but had problems with display. What worked out of the box was Ubuntu 10.04. Well, the only thing I had to do was install backports-wifi (I think that was the name of the package) to get the wifi card recognised.

Thank you.
I think for a future laptop purchase I may need to a bit more research on itfirst to see what types of OS it is compatible with.
Jonnynitro138