[Sussex] Not managing to comlete an install by myself.

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

ANDRE ORCHISON wrote:
> Hi All.
>  
> I'm very very new to Linux, so bear with my inexperience please.
> I have an old laptop I want to use to get to know linux a bit better. 
> It's not very hi-spec, but it can and does run WinXP with no 
> complaints whatsoever. So I have bought Linux Format to get a bit of a 
> read, and some of the distro's on the cover disc. I also requested a 
> copy of Ubuntu as it appears to be one of the best to learn on gently. 
> So the live CD's work like a charm, but when it comes time to install, 
> everything just seems to stand still halfway through. And that is 
> where I need to now tap your collective knowledge. What on earth will 
> make an install 'go to sleep' so to speak. While booting up a live CD, 
> and double clicking the install icon, all goes well until step '3 of 
> 6'. Then calling up task manager all processes except for the task 
> manager report status:'sleeping'. This happens with Ubuntu and New 
> Sense, I assume the same happens with Mandriva as it does not repond 
> during the text only phase, and also after just showing a beautiful 
> orange desktop, no icons or interface at all.
>  
> Please help, as I am keen to learn and use Linux.
>  
> Andre.
> orchison at btinternet.com <mailto:orchison at btinternet.com>
> 07775607358
ACPI  and other power management tools are delightful fun for 
hibernating laptops. I actually wouldn't use them at *all* until you've 
got everything worked out in hardware specs, gotten bht BIOS up to date, 
etc.

And hmm. You know..... Does the laptop have an external video port? I 
have an Acer laptop I had to connect an external monitor to do do 
installations, because the X configuration tools would auto-detect the 
second display and assume the external one was the primary. Darned thing 
drove me *nuts* until I worked out a hand-off PXE installation for all 
IDE based machines on our local network.

Also, a lot of weird, one-off graphics chipsets (as are common on 
laptops) have some very odd video settings: some of them require the 
kernel to have various flags set to correctly use the standard, very 
modest text-mode display settings common in installation systems.