Linux on laptop instead of windows

Oxy said:
By using the latest 8.04 that may saolve it, I know I had huge trouble getting 7.10 to work on my then new 8800GT, I had to add loads of launch parameters to get ubuntu installed and then to boot.
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yes, but your hardware is substantially newer than llwaynio's. His hardware is in the 2001-2002 era (1.1GHz proc... if that's an intel, it's a p3 tuatalin core. don't know what the amd equivalent is).

Oxy said:
EDIT: MAKE SURE ITS 32 BIT FOR SIMPLICITY
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Word!!!

llwayneio said:
well i have tried the 8.04 one before i tried the 7.10 one after just to see if an older version would work. But yeh i will do it now, im downloading as i type.
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8.04 will still have the same problem (especially if it is the acpi issue), but at least you will be comparing apples to apples when it comes to Oxy's descriptions of what to do.
 
Oxy - can you please reboot your box and see if the article I linked earlier will allow you to add
Code: 
acpi=noacpi
to the kernel line of grub from the live cd?
 
.walls said:
Oxy - can you please reboot your box and see if the article I linked earlier will allow you to add
Code: 
acpi=noacpi
to the kernel line of grub from the live cd?
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it booted on mine with Kernel blah blah blah/casper/initrd.gz quiet nosplash -- acpi=off apic=noapic
 
.walls said:
cool - so we know the article is good, i suspect there were changes to the boot loader menu between 7.10 and 8.04
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yeh could be it will be a while to download its at 35% at the moment at about 150kbs and its a intel celeron i do believe with 256ram and some low end ati card maybe onboard not too sure
 
.walls said:
cool - so we know the article is good, i suspect there were changes to the boot loader menu between 7.10 and 8.04
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i was trying to find a list of the parameters which explained what each of these commands did, but I cant think where I saw them, that may have helped.
 
llwayneio said:
yeh could be it will be a while to download its at 35% at the moment at about 150kbs and its a intel celeron i do believe with 256ram and some low end ati card maybe onboard not too sure
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If you get an error during the install again, could you scribble the error message down and post it on dude?
 
Oxy said:
i was trying to find a list of the parameters which explained what each of these commands did, but I cant think where I saw them, that may have helped.
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How is:
Option
Impact

vga=xxx
Set your framebuffer resolution to VESA mode xxx. Check here for a list of possible modes.

acpi=off OR noacpi
This parameter disables the whole ACPI system. This may prove very useful, for example, if your computer does not support ACPI or if you think the ACPI implementation might cause some problems (for instance random reboots or system lockups).

acpi=force
Activates the ACPI system even if your computer BIOS date is older than 2000. This parameter overwrites acpi=off and can also be used with current hardware if the ACPI support is not activated despite apm=off.

pci=noacpi OR acpi=noirq
These parameters disable the PCI IRQ routing

pci=acpi
This parameter activates the PCI IRQ routing

acpi_irq_balance
ACPI is allowed to use PIC interrupts to minimize the common use of IRQs.

acpi_irq_nobalance
ACPI is not allowed to use PIC interrupts.

acpi=oldboot
Deactivates the ACPI system almost completely; only the components required for the boot process will be used.

acpi=ht
Impact Deactivates the ACPI system almost completely; only the components required for hyper threading will be used.

noapic
Disable the "Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC)".

nolapic
Disable the "local APIC".

apm=off OR noapm
Disable the Advanced Power Management.

irqpoll
Changes the way the kernel handles interrupt calls (set it to polling). Can be useful in case of hardware interrupt issues.

(from an earlier post ;))
 
Oxy said:
If you get an error during the install again, could you scribble the error message down and post it on dude?
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Good call - we're currently running off:
llwayneio said:
yeh the initial error message mentions something about the acpi but i have no idea how to turn it off. It is a toshiba sattelitte not sure of the exact model though. Can you actually install linux and use it just as you would windows then?
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Fuller details would help!!
 
.walls said:
Good call - we're currently running off:

Fuller details would help!!
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lol fair point. But it does flash up pretty quick, see initially there was a quick error as such... MP-BIOS Bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC but it seemed to just bypass it can carry on anyway, i then got to the actual like desktop style thing i then clicked the install icon and it crashed. I then tried just the install with out the "try it" part and it got to 75% after about an hour n half and then crashed saying error. It listed a load of reasons why, about the length of my arm such as, the disc might be burnt too fast (even though i burnt it at x2) also the laptop might be too hot, corrupted cd.. and a few others that i cant remember.
 
llwayneio said:
initially there was a quick error as such... MP-BIOS Bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC but it seemed to just bypass it can carry on anyway
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yip - seems to be related to acpi or apic problems. :EDIT: (not the same)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=191355

llwayneio said:
i then got to the actual like desktop style thing i then clicked the install icon and it crashed. I then tried just the install with out the "try it" part and it got to 75% after about an hour n half and then crashed saying error. It listed a load of reasons why, about the length of my arm such as, the disc might be burnt too fast (even though i burnt it at x2) also the laptop might be too hot, corrupted cd.. and a few others that i cant remember.
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Yada yada - generic rubbish. Not really any use to us.

Most likely, if you can work out how to add acpi=noacpi to the kernel line, you'll be laughing.

:EDIT: might be worth trying noapic as well.

I'm off now - so best of luck. Remember - google is your friend :)
 
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okay i added the noapic thing and i no longer get the mp-bios bug error but it does get so far and then come up with lots of Squashfs Errors and then finally a load of buffer i/o error on device hdc so it still doesnt want to work. after googling i have determined it could be the burn speed, i burnt it at x4 so i will try x2 this time..."edit" okay it got all the way to the final next for the install and it just stopped i waited for ages but it just didnt do anything, the hdd or cdrom showed no signs of life for a good 20mins so i just dont know what to do :(
 
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only things i can suggest that people havent already are to have the laptop running off the mains adapter and to disable (or set it to its simplest form) pretty much everything non-essential to the install progress in the BIOS (power management, infrared, bluetooth, wireless, network, usb, cpu stepping)
then when you have a working install you can re-enable the features one by one.

also one more troubleshooting essential is to have an external monitor attached, many of the modified [to run on a PC] versions of OSX have a problem where everything seem to work fine until it boots into a full graphics mode where it switches to the external output (even if no display is attached) leaving the laptop with just a blank screen
 
well i gave up in the end and just installed xp again. But i have installed xubuntu on my desktop in VMmare workstation virtual pc thing which worked first time. At least this gives me a chance to have a little fiddle with a linux distro for the first time. In all seriousness (and not trying to be a *****) why do people choose to use linux? What are the main advantages of using.
 
well i have put xp on his laptop now, he was starting to get annoyed, and so was i. I am messing about with it under a virtual machine on my desktop though. And i burnt it at x2 and got past the squashfs errors but it still went really really slow and then just stopped at the actual installation part.
 
like I said... Sounds like a ram issue.
I had similar install issues with ubuntu/edubuntu..all sorts of buntu on my nieces machine.

Damn thing installed XP hokey Cokey but threw all sorts of hissy fits with linux. raided one of my daughters machines for a stick of ram and it installed perfectly. ( Yes I did remove that ram after install !!)
 
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