Linux distribution for my DV9208 Turion x2

[John Rowan_2]

I purchased a laptop several months ago. It came with Vista Home Premium (ho hum). I added a second disk using the spare bay and have been trying to get some distribution of Linux to run in graphic mode. SuSE 9 and CentOS 4 would not install either for not being able to find a disk or the touch pad. CentOS 5 installed but refuses to run in graphic mode and the Broadcom wireless doesn't work. I tried the Ubuntu LiveCD yesterday, that hangs during boot.
Does anyone know of a Linux distribution that will install and run the graphic interface and wireless?

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Ubuntu has the best hardware support I have ever seen. I use it on my Toshiba laptop and it detects all.

If Ubuntu won't work with your laptop, you probably need another laptop.

SEP

[John Rowan_2]

I have another laptop, an old Fujitsu 6631C 1GHz unit I'm running SuSE 9.1 on, it works great and has no trouble with the PCMCIA Cisco 802.11/a/b/g card. I bought the DV9208 so I could have the larger screen, DVD burner and Turion 64x2 processor. I never thought I'd have so much trouble finding a Linux distribution to install and get working on the new HP laptop.

[John Collier]

John,

I don't know the specs on your notebook, but I would suggest that you try one of the Fedora Live CDs and see if it detects/uses all of your hardware.

Personally, I have the DV9335nr and it loaded up and ran beautifully.

One word of advice, though. You will be offered to install directly from the Live CD. I strongly advise that you resist the urge to do so and that you take the extra time to bring down the ISO for the install media.

I won't go into details as to why, but I promise that it will be a much better decision.

[John Rowan_2]

I had tried using Fedora back in the v 1 & 2 releases but had trouble with it since it did not provide support for "raw devices" which a proprietary application I support requires. Since I am looking for this only for the laptop I guess I can venture back into the Fedora waters again. Thanks I will give it a try.

[John Collier]

Much has changed since the FC1 & 2 days.

Fedora 7 (Moonshine) loaded like a champ on my DV9000 series notebook and I have been very pleased with it since.

Just my $.02

Your milage may vary...

[John Rowan_2]

Thanks John. I just finished downloading the live cd and will burn the image in a few minutes. Once I verify the version works on my dv9208 I'll download the regular install iso and overwrite my CentOS install which has been disappointing on this laptop.

[John Rowan_2]

Well the Fedora Live x64 does the same as CentOS on my dv9208. Just before the screen went blank (going into graphical mode) there were errors on the screen about bcm something which I think is the wireless card. At this point I have one option, the power switch as nothing is working. I only have 1GB RAM so the run from RAM option is not available. I'll try the verify and run from DVD next.

[John Collier]

That's interesting.

The only real difference you and I have on that front is that my graphics card has dedicated memory and yours has shared. However I can't see that as a good reason for it to fail as you describe.

I'm at work right now so my time is limited. If you have a little more time freedom you might want to check out http://www.fedoraforum.org/ and see if they have your issue listed there.

I would be willing to bet that this is not a conspiracy against you personally and that someone else has been here and done this as well...

[John Rowan_2]

Well, after using the verify and run from CD option and specify Linux come up in single user mode it booted to init 1 level. I was out for an hour and came back to see it at the shell prompt. I issued the init 3 command to get the network running in text mode but I'm getting the error:
bcm43xx_mac80211: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed. That pops up every so often at the localhost login: prompt. The build in Ethernet is up as eth1.
Out of curiosity I tried issuing the command
ifup eth0
the system responded
/sbin/ifup: configuration for eth0 not found.
and promptly locked up.

I'll have to spend some time on the Fedora web site to see if others there have solved this problem.