Installing linux on hp pavillion 9780c

[Brian Bailey]

Hi, everybody...I've been trying to install linux on my HP Pavilion 9870C for a couple of months now and have been unable to find a distro that will recognize my USB keyboard and mouse. I thought maybe it had something to do with the way the mouse and keyboard connected to the computer (mouse connects to keyboard and keyboard connects to USB port), so i jsut tried connecting the mouse directly to the back of the computer and it made no difference at all. If anybody has any idea what the problem might be, or if you know of a different distro that has better USB support, let me know. My next chance was gonna be red hat wolverine, but we'll see how it goes. Thanks in advance!

[Tim Malnati]

The official line from HP regarding Pavillion pc's is that they are designed to be home based machines. With this in mind, they don't seem to support anything other than the os that came with the box. From what I can see there is also some evidence that HP has carried this even further with oem modifications to the Pavillions that make it difficult to install anything else. I don't know specifically about a 9780, but it sure would not starttle me.

Next... USB support is generally poor everywhere (any os) but Linux seems to be further behind in this area than the MS products. I've found that Linux is happiest with technology that is totally mainstream.
Not exactly the answer you are looking for, I know.