OK, so I’ve got a WinVista laptop – and it’s dire, at least the OS is. As well as lots of annoying crapware features well described here, it’s also got some really annoying bugs. For example, I quite regularly encounter an error condition in which the WLAN client goes out of kilter, failing to complete DHCP registration and get a routable IP address. Then, after some cursing, it fails to detect the network at all. The best idea I can think is to shut down the Intel wireless LAN client and start it up again; but when I try to disable it through Windows Device Manager, the Management Console application hangs, using 80-90 per cent of CPU (how? this thing has 2×1.8GHz processors! its thrashing is so awful that it’s pulling 2.88GHz of processing power!). It has to be killed through the task manager, and the computer rebooted; but the shutdown process then hangs for ages, too.
I’ve got a copy of Mandriva Métisse Linux on the D: drive; dare I install it? All that holds me back is concern regarding the drive partitioning process – I have two Windows drives, both actually partitions of equal size on a 120GB hard disk. I’d quite like to install the Linux build in D: and dual-boot, but I’m not at all sure how to map the Windows and Unix file systems – I understand that the two are very different, but not how to get around this.
I’ve got a WinVista laptop
You have my commiserations.
Re installing Linux: It needs a whole partition to itself, that will then be rendered inaccessible to windows. Just delete everything from D:, and install Linux from CD. It should ask you to delete one of your partitions: be sure to choose the right one to delete (probably called sda2)…
Worth trying a Linux live CD (ie, it will boot from the CD into a fully working Linux system without touching the hard drive) to see if all your hardware is supported. The Ubuntu install CD is actually a Live CD IIRC & Ubuntu is definitely my preferred end-user Linux install these days.
cheers, Phil
Phil’s tip about Live CDs is good, although I differ slightly as to my preferred distro: I’d suggest you give PCLinuxOS 2007 a try. More things just work for me than with my previous Ubuntu installation.