installing linux on laptop

[chinna_1]

hi
can anybody tell me what are the (hardware and software) requirements for installing linux on laptop
any documents may also be useful.
thanks
chinna

[Matti_Kurkela]

Which Linux distribution do you intend to use? Debian, Gentoo, Mandriva, RedHat, Slackware, SuSE, Ubuntu or something else? Or have you not decided yet?
Different distributions can have very different hardware requirements.

Do you already have the laptop or are you just planning to buy one?

www.linux-laptop.net has a large collection of information about varions laptop brands and models. If a special configuration is needed for a specific laptop, this would be a good place to find the instructions for that.

Check out knoppix.org: they have a great Linux Live CD/DVD. You can boot a laptop from it without writing anything to the hard drive, so you could use it to test a laptop for Linux compatibility in the shop before you buy it.

[Bill Thorsteinson]

Ubuntu or Kubuntu install nicely onto laptops.
These are basicly the same distibution with
different desktops. Latest release is due
later this week. Recognizes many wireless
cards out of the box (off the disk).
Live disk is available, which should support
install as of the latest release.

Debian, which is the base for Ubuntu work
well on laptops. The installer can resize
the initial Windows partition to make room.

Laptops tend to have WinModems as part of
the hardware, and these have been poorly
supported on Linux due to scarcity of
drivers and documentation to create drivers.

Built-in wireless cards have been a problem
but are now better supported.

In general, laptops tend to have proprietory
undocumented hardware which may not be
supported by any open-source O/S.
However, I have been running Linux on laptops
for years with no major problems.
Check to ensure that the hardware you most
want to use is supported.

[V S Chakravarthi]

check

http://www.linux-laptop.net/

[V S Chakravarthi]

make a habit to assign points

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

The hard part with Linux is usually modem and video card compatability. Sometimes the monitor type can be tricky, but not so much these days with modern Linux.

Ubuntu has the best wireless support out of the box, case your laptop will be used for this.

Generally, the low end hp laptops won't run Linux properly at all. A more expensive box with explicit support for Linux from HP will do well.

SEP

[chinna_1]

thanks for reply,i want to install Redhat9.0 on HP laptop

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

installation of Redhat9 isn't a good idea for two reasons:
- this is unsupported distro (== without security updates/ bugfixes)
- this is relative old distro (== bad support for new hardware)

I'll suggest you to go with Fedora Core 5, if you would like to stay with "RHL-like" distro.

[Alan_152]

I'd recommend using Ubuntu or Knoppix for a laptop install, because they have very generic kernels with drivers for a vast majority of hardware. Once you become experienced with that, then you could move on to a customized Gentoo install, or one of the mainline installs like RedHat, Debian, or SuSE.

[Al_56]

l've been running RedHat Fedora for over 1 year now on a ZV6000.

Aparently people have had good success with Suse and ubuntu as well.

The issues are usually found with the video drivers, the wireless cards and the internal SD/Compact Flash memory readers.

The wireless issue is fixed using ndiswrapper, video (for the ATI graphics is via the ATI-FGLRX driver). The flash memory reader l have not tested, so don't know if it works or not.

If you need support for Linux on an HP laptop, try http://notebookanalysis.com. they have a great Linux forum.