[Sderby] Linux on a laptop.

[Harry Sheppard]

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Hi Graham,

> The rest it still stops at
> Partition check:
>  hda:
Hmmm - at the point it hangs, if you toggle NumLock, does the NumLock LED / 
incicator / whatever toggle on and off? As stupid as it sounds, toggling 
NumLock is a very reliable way of knowing if a system has really frozen or is 
just timing out repetitively. If the machine's using an old (read "obscure") 
IDE chipset, it may well be arguing over DMA and timing out. You can normally 
force DMA off with a kernel parameter at boot time which, while making your 
processor very aware of every disk operation that happens, is usually quite 
failsafe.

> The hard drive is IBM-DLGA-23080, ATA Disk Drive
> The CDROM Toshiba CD-ROM XM-2402B, Atapi.
Both standard parts - they themselves shouldn't be causing a problem...

> Ok I had this one to have a play just to see if it was worth having a
> laptop next time round cos I have an old box which needs replacing and
> if the answer is a load of problems then ir's No but I liked the idea.
It can be a bit of a minefield, however there are various listings on the web 
that list tested laptop systems. Try Googling for 'linux laptop compatible 
list' and see what it dredges up.

I had a right song-and-dance trying to coax Linux on to my Sony Vaio 
(PGC-FX201 Duron 700) - it was done eventually (and has since been extremely 
reliable) but it took a patched, custom-compiled kernel and a lot of prodding 
of XFree86 to get anything that even resembled a working system. Laptop 
chipsets seem to be quite literally "flavour of the month" - the 
specification being so nebulus that developing for them is a pain in the back 
side...

> I think this laptop is designed expressly for Windows and if so it's a
> bin job.
I suppose it all boils down to the amount of time you're willing to spend on 
it - I'm sure you could probably compile a custom kernel that will work (e.g. 
one that includes a patch for a flawed IDE chipset - can we say "CMD640"?) 
but it is highly frustrating and time consuming. A more recent laptop is more 
likely to work, however if you went for a bleeding-edge one, the chances of 
getting every device working immediately become more unlikely once again.

Just as a thought, does the boot disc you're using have the PCIutils package 
available? Try

# lspci

If it's there, you'll get a complete PCI device listing which, hopefully, 
includes your IDE controller, e.g:

00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. 
VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT8233/A/C/VT8235 PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10)

If it _IS_ a CMD chipset, then you might have found the problem...

Anyway, best of luck,
- --Harry
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