Linux on the laptop

I had bought the laptop with the intention to run a 64-bit Linux kernel on it. I had not had a chance to do it until last week. I downloaded Fedora Core 4 (since I had been a fan of the RH distro, this seemed like a logical step) dvd iso image and burned it onto disk. (This, incidently, is the first dvd that I burned :-) ). Popped the disk in and rebooted, the linux install prompt came up, I hit enter, some text scrolled by rapidly, and then.... nothing. The installation hung.

Googled and found that many people were facing the same issue. On the advice of members of PUG-OT (one of the yahoo groups that I subscribe to), I downloaded Suse 10. One major irritant with Suse was that they did not have a DVD image, only a 5 CD version. I burned the first image onto disk and found that the Suse intall also bombed midway.

Frustrated, I tried all kinds of kernel parameters that I found on the web but none helped.

Decided to try out other distros. Downloaded Kubuntu. Popped the disc in and rebooted. Install hung during ACPI configuration. Googled and found this. Used it and the install went through fine. Some twenty minutes later, I had the familiar linux boot prompt staring back at me. Only one problem, it was in text mode. I was trying to figure out what needs to be done and thought it might be a boot parameter that I'd have to set so rebooted, but Kubuntu failed to boot, it hung at "Checking battery state". (This makes it obvious that linux -- or maybe Kubuntu -- doesnt have adequate laptop power management support yet).

More frustration. Popped in the FC4 disk and used the same kernel parameters linux vga=771 noapic nolapic and it worked! A few seconds later I had the FC4 setup screen up on my laptop. Chose the partition, the packages, and 30 minutes later, FC4 was up and running. Sadly, I have to run to work, so I'll have to wait a while before I can play with it. Watch this space.