[YLUG] social tonight ? / Running Linux on an Acer Aspire 5551

[Gaffer.]

Hi Alex,

On Tuesday 29 March 2011 14:27:49 ALEX ARMANI wrote:

> I've recently bought a laptop (Acer  Aspire 5551 running Windows 7
> Home Premium), from Cash Convertors,  and whilst it is second hand,
> Cash Convertors have given it a 1 year  warranty. They said though,
> that if I put Linux on it, it will void  the warranty. Can they
> legally do that?

I wouldn't think so, but you need to ask that question at your local 
consumer protection !

> I'm a bit wary of  repartitioning it since I have no install disks,
> and it has a hidden  partition which can be used to reinstall the 
> factory settings. 

I would do a full factory restore first, then you should get the 
opportunity to make the recovery disks.  Based upon your comments below 
with respect to getting a live CD to boot and run, leads me to suspect 
that the CD rom drive is faulty.  If this is the case then you might 
find that the machine won't make the recovery CD's !

> Also 
> I'm yet to manage to get a Live install to run. The Laptop doesn't
> seem to want to boot from the internal DVD drive at all, even when I
> change the settings in the bios), 

See comment above !

> but it will boot off my external LightScribe (Does Linux support
> LightScribe?) DVD burner

If the BIOS supports booting from USB devices, which this laptop does, 
then you should have no problems booting a live CD from it.  This Acer 
will run Linux, though depending upon which WiFi card its got fitted 
might cause problems.

> (if I hold  
> down F12 to get to the boot menu after a reset) but ends up not
> working. Even the failsafe Debian on LXF. Does anybody have any
> experience running Linux on this Laptop? Thanks, from Alex.

There are any number of reasons why Linux is failing.  Bad CD !  Have 
you checked the MD5 sum ?  Bad CD drive !  Either of these will give an 
MD5 sum that is wrong.

I'm sure that others will give you many more reasons...

HTH.

-- 
Best Regards:
             Derrick.