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Has anyone been able to install Mandrake 10.x or Fedora on a Thinkpad T40?

M

MuffD

Diamond Member
I have tried both and failed miserably each time.

Fedora: I can't even get the drives to format. I downloaded the dvd image from Linuniso.org but when I try to install it, it has a problem trying to partition the hard drive. I have a 60gb hard drive and left 15gb of space unformatted and with no partition created. I'm pretty sure this is ample space but seems like Fedora wants me to erase the entire hard drive which I am not willing to do since I am installing only to get more familiar with this OS.

Mandrake: I can install with no errors but after the installation and configuration is complete the system reboots and then I get to this screen where it says to press "I" to enter interactive startup. Only thing is I can't get it to enter anything outside of this screen.

System is Thinkpad T40 2373-92u 1.6ghz Pentium M. 60gb hd. 1.5gb DDR

Thanks for your help.
 
If you go to linux-on-laptops.net you can find examples of people installing this stuff on their laptops. here

For Fedora (Core3 I am assuming), it is probably detecting something wrong with your partition setup. I saw a couple other people with this problem and I am guessing that Fedora has set it up so that the installer is much more finiky about getting things correct. Partitioning scemes is one of those things that have a awfull lot of little variations and glitches and such. Not sure what you'd have to do to correct this.

How did you get the free space on your harddrive? If you used a resizer tool like partition magic, I wouldn't be suprised, since resizing partitions is far from a exact science. Not saying that partition magic (or any other tool) is not good, far from it, but that partitions were never realy ment to be resized.

Now unless you have a lot of stuff on your WinXP machine normally the easiest thing to do would be to erase the harddrive and start from scratch. However I was looking at the installation notes from various people and IBM has this "predesktop" area on the last 3gigs of the system harddrive. It's not formatted, it just has some files that sit in empty space and they are used to help the laptop restore the WinXP installation. Very weird stuff. I have no idea what that sort of thing is about. But it does complicate things.

For the Mandrake thing, I am guessing that it is hanging up on hardware detection. But I can't be sure I don't know much about the order of things that Mandrake does things when it boots up.

Most Linux distros are very attentive on installation problems, however. check out mandrakeusers they have a entire forum dedicated to resolving installation problems.
 
Thanks a bunch. I took your advice and started from scratch. First I installed Windows then installed Fedora. Everything worked out great. I just need to figure out how to get the wireless drivers working.

I'm gonna check out that site you mentioned up top.

 
If you have Centrino Wireless, check this out. Pretty easy to set up with core 3. Core 3 has the wireless tools preinstalled so all you have to do is stick the firmware files in your firmware directory, which in core 3 is lib/firmware I believe. Its different than the other cores. Anyway, after that, just install the drivers as per the instructions in the readme and you should have wireless on linux 🙂


Oh yeah, and the link above is for the Centrino 802.11b/g (2200). The link for just 802.11b (2100) is here.
 
I actually chose the first option, I believe personal or something. Can't remember off the top of my head. Gonna check out EvanB's link to try and get my wireless working. Couldn't figure this out last night so I took it to work with me today to ask someone here.
 
Originally posted by: MuffD
I actually chose the first option, I believe personal or something. Can't remember off the top of my head. Gonna check out EvanB's link to try and get my wireless working. Couldn't figure this out last night so I took it to work with me today to ask someone here.
Click to expand...

You have to select custom to be able to specify what space to use
 
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