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Diving Into Linux... and sinking

Discussion in 'Computers & Technology Forum' started by mnw, Apr 29, 2006.

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  1. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    Recently I have decided to give linux a try and so far have had little success. My main problem seems to be with the graphics card. It all installs, says something about the graphics not working and then defaults to a dos like setup. I have been using Ubuntu so far.

    Is there another version of linux that might be better? Is there a way of getting Ubuntu to work? It is on Dell laptop... about 3 or 4 years old.

    I'd appreciate any help.
     
    #1 mnw, Apr 29, 2006
  2. James_Newman

    James_Newman New Member

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    What graphics chipset is on the laptop?
     
    #2 James_Newman, Apr 29, 2006
  3. Magnetic Poles

    Magnetic Poles New Member

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    I have been using Ubuntu and really love it. Lots of help at www.ubuntuforums.org.

    I recently tried out the beta of the next Ubuntu, and had some problems, but rather than going back to the Breezy Badger version, decided to try Fedora Core 5. It is what I am on now. It is also very nice, but I think I prefer Ubuntu.

    I did have some problems on some older systems with Ubuntu's graphics not working. You also might want to try Linspire or Mandriva. Linspire is the former Lindows, and is very "windows-like". Mandriva is the former Mandrake, and has been known as a newbie-friendly distribution.
     
    #3 Magnetic Poles, Apr 29, 2006
  4. Magnetic Poles

    Magnetic Poles New Member

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    BTW, I have Ubuntu working on my Dell laptop and it works perfectly. It even found my D-Link wireless network card without using NDIS Wrapper.
     
    #4 Magnetic Poles, Apr 29, 2006
  5. Magnetic Poles

    Magnetic Poles New Member

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    One more thought...try out some of the live Linux CDs to see if a particular distro will work on your machine before installing to a HDD partition.
     
    #5 Magnetic Poles, Apr 30, 2006
  6. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    I'm not sure of the chipset, I'll look later. The live CD didn't work for the laptop either so I should have probably learned from that. [​IMG]
     
    #6 mnw, Apr 30, 2006
  7. Magnetic Poles

    Magnetic Poles New Member

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    mnw, Here are some live / install distros to try:

    PCLinuxOS
    Slax
    Knoppix
    Mepis

    Give those a shot. Also, head over to www.distrowatch.com. Good resource on all the various flavors of Linux out there.
     
    #7 Magnetic Poles, May 1, 2006
  8. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    Thanks for the info. However, the laptop has developed a problem with the backlight only working randomly. So, any OS installation is a nightmare at present.

    I am going to keep all the info given here and try to get an external harddrive to experiment with... or a cheap pc to hook up to my screen.
     
    #8 mnw, May 1, 2006
  9. nate

    nate New Member

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    I am going to run Knoppix and Sante Fe Linux on my new system you may try those my friend uses both and they work great.
     
    #9 nate, May 3, 2006
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