Mandrake has a laptop install, also, it's been the best distro I've found at recognizing hardware for you. You don't need to worry about selecting the correct devices as it discovers them for you. In the rare-occasion that you don't get a good detection, the choices are well defined so that you will be aware of what to pick.

Cool

The only way to be "absolutely sure" is to install Linux on a different computer. But I'm an idiot and I've dual booted various Linuxes with DOS, 9x, and NT and haven't lost a system yet. I use fdisk, parted, LILO, and DOS tools where necessary. I always let LILO boot the systems, rather than Windows. That's about it.

Oh. I see your last post at the bottom of this reply screen. I've never had a laptop. Still, as long as you don't get too creative, you should be fine.

Yes MasterC. For example I use the SIS630ST chipset in my video card. I have searched on their website and they indeed have a driver for Linux. However, I need to recompile Xfree86 with this driver. At that moment I have only RH7.1 (2 CDs) and I do not have enough space to recompile it. (of course as you know, I am really new to Linux and I am alway trying to do it step by step, from the easier approch). What's more, I am suspecting the compatibility of Xfree86 4.3.0 and the Kernel of RH7.1 (or they are irrelevent?)

But for this topic, I think there should already be several threads on windowsXp and RH9. If I remember it correctly, it does not have much difference to win2000. To be caucious, please search on this forum (there is a "search" button on upper-right) and I think that would be helpful.

ah crap i just read your post. i'm in the middle of downloading redhat. now i'm not sure if i shoudl continue with that or go and download mandrake. you said that i didnt' have to worry about selecting the correct devices because it discovers them for me, would redhat do the same?

It could, and if you are that concerned with the time dedicated to the download, then I'd say just keep going. If, at worst, it turns out to suck horribly, you always have a next step to go to:
www.mandrake.com

Cool

ok i finally downloaded and successfully installed Redhat. HOWEVER, i set up the LILO to dual boot windows XP and linux, with linux being the default. problem is, whenever i restart my computer, i never even get to the dual boot prompt. it just ends up booting into windows.

Most likely you didn't install your boot loader (LILO) into the MBR. Sometimes the rescue mode will do this for you, I know Mandrake's does. Boot up into rescue mode and see if that's an option, if not, use your boot disk you made during the install and get into linux, then, as root run:
/sbin/lilo -v
to install it into the MBR.

Cool

//moderator note:
In the future if you could use more helpful thread titles it will not only help us to distinguish your situation, but also encourage others to participate in the discussion. Thank you!

i couldn't create a boot disk because my laptop doesn't have a floppy drive. i can get into rescue mode in redhat and it gets me to some kind of weird command prompt

i got to a command prompt sh-2.05b# and i did what the computer told me and typed in chroot /mnt/sysimage and got into the root "environment"

i typed in /sbin/lilo -v and it said

Reading boot sector from /dev/hda
Merging with /boot/boot.b
Warning: device 0x0302 exceeds 1024 cylinder limit
Fatal: sector 96720161 too large for linear mode (try 'lba32' instead)

my god .... i've been awake for almost 40 hours

right now i'm reinstalling linux using grub and using force lba32, hopefully it'll work, and also there doesn't seem to be a way for me to disabled pnp in my bios.

Too late now but sometimes, if LILO isn't in the mbr, you just need to change the boot flag. Like if LILO's installed to /dev/hda2 and /dev/hda1 is your Windows and *it's* flagged as bootable, you'll never see LILO. But if you remove the boot flag from /dev/hda1 and flag /dev/hda2, LILO will take over. Or you can mess with boot.ini and try to make Windows boot Linux but I've never wanted to do that.

Or maybe I'm misreading - I'm not too coherent yet. *g*

question...i have an ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 graphics card on my computer. In Windows XP I get 150fps in Quake 3 benchmark, but in Linux, I get less than 3FPS running simply TuxRacer??? I used wine to try to run Quake 3, it started up, but it was soooooooooooooooooooooooo damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn sloooooooooooooooooowwwwwww...

????

Will this(/sbin/lilo -v) alone install LILO into MBR even if it was originally installed in the first sector of /boot partition. What I understand is that we first have to change the /etc/lilo.conf file to tell it where to install LILO. Please correct if I am wrong.