[Glastonbury] Mini install fest on my laptop

[peter cole]

I have been try to wrote this email for the last 2 weeks but things have
been a bit hetic.


2 weeks ago i had my own mini insatall fest on my laptop.

The laptop is an IBM 600e 128 meg 6 gig hd and a p300 ish processor


Many moons ago when i go the latop i insatlled mandrake 9. the sound
would not work. 

I upgarded to mandrake 10 when it cam out and forund that this was very
flakey installed new packages from the DVD and the menus in KDE went up
the spout.

I had at this time heard a lot about Knoppix so did my first HD insatll
of it. 
Problems, sound would not work, Webcam would not work either, not able
to access the dvd after the hd install. Digital camera would not work. 

OK i got the sound working after a few weeks of surching on the knoppix
forums, Like wise the digital camera, re set up the short cut on the
desktop for access to the DVD, no web cam. 
Next i did a silly thing apt dist upgrade. Oh dear. this bombed out my
pcmcia card so not access to the net.

I did try Fedora core 1 took 1 look and uninstalled it 

I also installed the newer version of knoppix 3.6 the sound would not
work on this as the previous scripts did not work with the 2.6 kernel.

Next uo Kanotix

Did an HD install wow the sound worked after using the alsa conf web cam
worked, no digital camera working. access to the DVD not working .
so set up the DVD access again this was fine but no way could i get the
digital camera to initilise under a user fine for root.
I was feeling brave so did an apt dist upgrade 
this bombed out the sound could not get this workng ( this may have been
an issue with hardware detection as alsa said it could not find a sound
card. 
the main probelm was the laptop was running very slooow.

heads up what next.

I had heard quite a few people singing the parises of Ubuntu.
so i installed it.
it's Gnome i'm a KDE person so i hated it, 
sound was not working i don't think i tred the web cam or digital
camera.
Right lets run alsa conf oops not there, OK lets install it, it was not
in the sources lsit, I was looking for some thing that was going to be
quick to sort out. 

So next up Mepis

Installed fine DVD access working fine, sound working web cam working, 
apt dist upgrade went fine no issues every thing was working afterward
this is using the 2.4 kernerl as the 2.6 caused Kernel panic.

this seems to be the way to go the only thing i need to sort out is to
make sue the digital camera i working and get cups to work which is not
at the moment. 

So it was an install of Ubuntu, and Mepis that happened that weekend
will keep you posted on progress 

Peter