Re: LINUX ON LAPTOP

[Gil Andre <gandre@arkeia.com>]

Michael,

When posting an help request, I really think you should
also provide more information. For instance, what are the
error messages? What are they related to? What is the model
of your laptop? Its memory? Hard disk size?

Nevertheless, here are some quick answers:

1. Try another distribution than RedHat. For instance,
Slackware or SuSE. If you have to stick to RedHat, you
may as well stick to 7.2, as I don't think the problem
you describe is distribution-related. For your
information, I installed RedHat 7.2 without any problem
on my IBM Thinkpad laptop -- but it's probably a much
newer machine than yours.

2. On many laptops (not all), there is a special cable
that allow you to connect your floppy drive to the 
parallel port. Do you have one of these? If that is the
case, you can boot off the floppy and use the CDROM
drive at the same time.

3. The error messages may be due to the fact that RedHat
installation needs a second floppy to complete the boot
process. Try to refer to the RedHat documentation for
this. This second floppy, for instance, is necessary for
Slackware. I think that Mandrake also requires this.

4. Check that your laptop BIOS can boot off the CDROM
drive instead of booting from the floppy drive. That 
would solve all your problems. This is what I used for
my laptop, and it's really the easiest way to do it.

5. Before installing anything, please check that your
laptop is supported by searching for its brand and model
on the following site: http://www.linux-laptop.net
(Just doing this will probably save you a lot of time
and effort). Please also check with Compaq Tech Support
and ask them if RedHat is supported on that model. On
the site I mentioned, you also have tons of advice to
install Linux on just about every machine you can think
of.

6. If all else fails, but you have network access once
you have booted the RedHat floppy, try installing the
entire RedHat distribution over the network. This, of
course, requires you to have a second computer to create
an FTP, or NFS, server. Not the easiest way to do it,
but it works. Any machine will do, as long as it has
a network and your laptop has a network card as well.

That's about it. Hope this helps!

-- 

Gil Andre          gandre@arkeia.com
         Technical Writer
Arkeia Corp.   http://www.arkeia.com