Gentlemen,

Unfortunately, I have a problem. I acquired a new computer ten months ago; I have just paid the last installment. My computer is a Dell Inspiron 410; AMD Athlon II Dual Core; Windows 7 Ultimate. I used to have a Celeron with the Windows XP. My intention was to change to Linux as soon as I had this computer of mine. However, I haven't been able to do so. When I had my old Celeron, I could use my Ubuntu OS together with Windows XP on it, but now with the new computer I can't. Neither together with the Windows 7 nor alone. I have already contacted the people of Telefonica with which I have subscribed Speedy, but they don't know. I can't say for sure, but I think this model of mine was made in such a way that it can't accept Linux! What I want is that if anybody has any idea about my problem just let me know. Appreciate any help very much.

Hi Fernando and welcome to LQ!
I'm sorry about your troubles but I'm not sure if you are asking a question or just lamenting your fate. If you are looking for some help to connect to the web could you give us some information about your system's network card and/or wifi adapter. Can you explain what steps you took during the installation of Ubuntu(?) on your new system to install the adapter drivers?
Ciao,
jdk

Firstly, your post has nothing to do with the thread title. This is important, because people who know an awful lot about installing (your real problem), may not know anything about internet connectivity, thus they will overlook your post because your title is misleading.. That being said:

You have not given any real information about your problem....

What happens when you try to install Ubuntu?

Can you boot to the CD? Can you start the install process?

Do you get errors? If so what are they?

Dell is one of the fewer OEM manufacturers that provide their hardware with linux, and a quick google search showed a number of sites related to installing ubuntu on a "inspiron 410", so it sounds like it is certainly possible.

Perhaps you should read: http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...Ask_a_Question
and try again...

I'm going to try and push you in the direction of giving enough information, so that this problem may become soluble....may...

All irrelevant padding, or am I missing something?

OK, so this problem entirely concerns the new computer (very brief spec above); you mention this old celeron computer, and although you may have been dual booting this computer (or something? virtualising one of the OSs?), this is irrelevant, as the problem that you have now does not concern the older computer, in any way. Well, except, maybe, that you have once had success in doing whatever it is that you are trying to do (dual-boot?) on one set of hardware, and you can't repeat the trick now using the newer hardware.

If my guess that you are trying to dual boot is correct, then I don't understand the 'Neither together with the Windows 7 nor alone' comment. Clarification, please.

I don't understand the bit about Telefonica or Speedy (whatever that is) either, but I can't see how they are relevant. And, I am unsurprised that they don't know anything useful about this situation.

It would be unusual for a commodity computer to be made in such a way that Linux can't be installed or run, however there may be quite a number of individual aspects that can cause difficulties. You are really going to have to do quite a bit more here, because we don't yet have a clue of which avenues to explore unless you start telling us exactly what you tried (including software versions) and exactly what happened (error messages would be good here, but anything you can us about what happened will be better than what we have now, which is so close to nothing that we can't really start).

And, by the way, it would also be good to know if you have been trying to install to a hard disk, or whether you have been trying to run a live CD. It would also be nice to be sure that whatever you are trying to install (assuming that you are trying to install) is more recent than the hardware that you are trying to install on, as there may well be problems on this more recent computer with older software.

1 members found this post helpful.

I am sorry for my post having not been elucidative. So let me try to make it clear now:

There were three operating systems in my old computer: Windows X, Ubuntu, and Slackware.
I could enter Internet with Windows XP and Ubuntu; but I could never enter Internet with Slackware; and I have been trying to do this since 2001; I hope I can succeed before man get to Mars.
Now, with my new computer, the Dell one, I have installed all the three operating systems on it. There are no problem about installing the operating systems. I have been installing these operating systems for ten years, however, now with my new computer I can only enter Internet with Windows 7.
I used to use dial-up. Now through Telefonica I use Speedy that is DSL, broadband. I think they should know how to solve my problem, however the guy with whom I spoke didn't even know what Slackware was! They helped me with Ubuntu. They know what Ubuntu is. However, they helped me with Ubuntu when it was installed on the Celeron, but they cannot help me now that it is installed on the Dell. I have installed and uninstalled the Ubuntu on my computer several times, but it won't work.
I have already been here asking for information on how to make me enter Internet using Slackware but I did not get enough information so I gave up. In spite of the fact that I have been acquainted with the existence of Linux for ten years, being Vector Linux my first Linux distribution, I am a little bit frustrated by its user-unfrindliness. During these years I have worked with Windows 98, Millennium, Windows XP, and now Windows 7 without any problem, however I am sure that when I learn how to work properly with Linux I will like it very much...LOVL ( laughing out very loud ).

I'm puzzled (even a bit troubled) by this.

There's not enough detail to really tie anything down.

I'd suggest you write down your passkey for your broadband. Use Windows to download and burn a copy of the live Knoppix CD. Boot it with the option: knoppix desktop=kde. My best guess is it'll simply work. If Knoppix runs and connects to the broadband, then Debian Squeeze will work just fine, so install this rather than Ubuntu.

This isn't another anti-Ubuntu rant -- there are some good things the Ubuntu crews have come up with. But I've found it so flaky that I've done with playing, and can't really see the point in using a Debian fork instead of plain old Debian.

With two functioning OSes, you can probably talk to the Slackistas here and get that going.

try some LiveCD distro first and see if your connection to the internet is succesful
(perhaps your DSL connection needs PPPoE connection manually established, which is a kind of old Dial-up connections used on modems years ago and you need to do it manually also in Windows 7, or if your DSL connection modem is also a router, then it should provide you DHCP which is kind of enough for any OS to connect to internet or your LAN )

Because your description of My computer is a Dell Inspiron 410 doesn't give that much needed information about the network card type that is needed to connect to internet.

Although you have installed/uninstalled linux many times still it doesn't give you that needed skill to provide the information about your computer that salasi and fukawi1 asked you.

Please do read and provide that needed information

So, there is rather more pushing required.

While all this is nice, all it really tells us is that you succeeded in what you were trying to do with Ubuntu and you failed (over an extended period) with Slackware. Given that Ubuntu tries to put efforts into easy set-up, and Slackware more doesn't, this isn't really the bigest of shocks...not that Slackware is necessarily 'hard' or 'bad to use' or anything, its just that the Slack way is more 'it is easier to do it yourself', and it may well be if you understand well what you are doing, but if you don't, then it is usually much easier to use something that tries to make it easy for you.

That said, if you can get one Linux Distro to set up for the Internet, you can often copy the settings to another and get that working, This applies with, eg, Live CDs like Knoppix, too, by the way, and Knopix is often good for doing this kind of thing.

And, by the way, I have a limited level of patience for these kind of things, so if you do take as long as it takes man to get to Mars, be assured that I will be long beyond my limit. And, if you don't want it to take that long, you had better start giving useful answers pretty soon, otherwise other people will give up too, probably including yourself.

So:

• you have decided on the same three OSs
• that includes the one that you could never use with the internet before
• this time, the Linux system that had previously worked with the Internet, now has not been able to access the internet

Are all of those correct?

(by the way, 'enter the internet' is unclear; you may mean something like 'access the World Wide Web with a browser'; this is different 'I have no access to the internet', and the cures will be different, so it is good to be as clear as you can. In one case, it could be a just a browser problem, in the other case, something more deep lying is to blame.)

And, when you said 'I have been installing these operating systems for ten years' that, presumably, does not mean that you are now trying to install the same version of the Linux OSs that you were trying to install ten years ago? (There is not necessarily a 'correct' answer, but the ten year old distro probably won't support your new hardware, but it did get the set-up correct; the newer distro should support your hardware, but there may be new problems with the set-up. But, we won't make progress unless you let us know what is going on.)

So, 'what did you do, and what happened'. Be specific, ie, 'I installed Ununtu 11.10, installation ran successfully, but when i try to use Firefox (give version) I get this error message (give the message...just saying 'it doesn't work' isn't sufficiently helpful to allow us to move you forward) after 60 seconds. There are many things that can be going wrong at this stage, and we need clues for you in order to make progress.

Of course, if your only intent is to gripe about the problem and not make progress, then not giving the information needed to make progress is fine...

So, you now have DSL, which seems to imply some kind of modem/router kind of box sitting between your network (whether that is one computer or several) and the internet. Or, possibly a more complex system with, eg, a switch, sitting between your computer and the box that does the DSL. So far, we don't know

• whether the connection is wired or wireless
• whether you can ping the box that does the interfacing
• whether you can ping anything else, on the wider internet, either by ip address or by name (eg, www.google.com)

and those are pretty fundamental. (Oh, and has DSL ever worked for you with Linux; I am unclear whether you are saying that you had Ubuntu working with dial up, but never DSL, or whether you are saying that Ubuntu worked with DSL at one point?)

You are exceptionally lucky to have had that much help from an ISP; whether they should, or should not, know how to solve your problem, they more usually will not do anything, at least officially, once you have mentioned Linux to them.

Repeatedly un-installing and re-installing an OS is usually a symptom of not knowing what you are doing, and knowing what you are doing is usually better. Some Windows users find that this works for them, but it isn't to be advised, unless you know that you have messed up something specific and you know exactly what you want to do differently and are doing it for a reason.

So, here is the take-away; unless you start giving useful information pretty fast (I did exactly this, exactly this happened, with, eg, error messages, these are exactly the symptoms), then this thread will remain unsolved until man leaves the Solar System for far more exotic destinations. While this may not be desirable, it is what will happen, without something of a change of direction.

What did you try and what happened? With all the information required to do de-bugging (eg, error messages, or other symptoms).