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Some flavors of Nix install on your desk-top, but won't install on your portable - others are for installing on a pentium architecture instead of an AMD/Intel arcitecture, and some (not that you'll run into this) are built for dual CPUs.
Try another flavor of Nix, and see if the problem goes away - you can always go back to your primary choice and just re-install it.... or just see if Knoppix will install in RAM and give you an internet connection (or whatever you do on your system) - in that case, if it does, it's a version problem - just pick another version of Nix (like 9.0 instead of 10.0).
If it doesn't work for you, you'll have to go to a compatibility chart, and start matching your system with any requirements the version you pick is homogenous with....
All in all, it sounds like a graphics problem, your resolution isn't resolving, so it hangs up, and the system is either looping at that point or locked into a partial install (Nix "installs" every time you turn on your system).
That would be a graphics card problem - you got a newfanged whiz-bang 5000 ??
Or are you using something standard, like a generic 16 bit graphics card ??
Nvidia drivers have problems sometimes with Nix, others report problems with the ATI Radeon series cards.
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I never had problems with either card, but some Nix systems don't like their drivers for some reason - any time I can't get a system to load-up and run right from the first install, I either install Red Hat 8.0 or Mandrake 9.0 - they're pretty stable releases, and that usually takes care of the problem, then I know it's a version problem.... sometimes I just leave 8.0 or 9.0 on the system, and I have no problems after that - I haven't even tried 10.1 community release yet....
BTW - there are a
LOT pf good graphics .pgms out there for Nix - Gimp even does layers, and there are some 3D Rendering .pgms out there that will knock your sox off... just remember - Google is your friend....
(I Googled "3D Rendering Linux" and got 400,000 replies - including VeriCAD - and dozens of great Nix graphic animation links too...)
Here's two of my favorites:
www.tucows.com and
www.sourceforge.net
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