[plug] Errors with Linux Installs

[Tomasz Grzegurzko]

On 2/5/07, Josh Fletcher <joshyf at nerdsarefordorks.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I recently got lonely for the feel of Linux on my laptop again, and wanted
> to do a dual-boot install.
>
> I had previously had Ubuntu Dapper running on my machine which worked fine.
> However, the install LiveCD had seemed finicky (needed a few tries before I
> could get the install working properly).
>
> So I decided to give the same Ubuntu version another try. On first try, the
> install got 25% through and then hung. After rebooting, the CD stopped
> working.
>
> Giving up, I grabbed another distro I had on a pc-magazine disc, Gentoo.
> That all worked fine, but syncing the Portage tree took ages (I got shaped
> recently), so I left it running overnight. Woke up in the morning and it had
> crapped out installing the bootloader.
>
> Meaning that I couldn't boot into Windows anymore. This isn't the first time
> this has happened to me, and I was wondering what other PLUG users had done
> to prevent these problems, or maybe this is a unique problem?
>
> So I'm now tossing up whether to try Ubuntu Edgy or OpenSUSE 10.2 (both are
> which available on Westnet's file server...)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Josh
>

Hard freezes like that are usually hardware related or hardware
related in terms of software interactions. On a laptop like a
thinkpad, there are many devices that could be causing it. Try
disabling some stuff in the BIOS (as much as possible) and stick to
onboard as much as possible (no USB keyboard/mice for example) and
check out thinkwiki, a site dedicated to Linux on Thinkpads.

Otherwise, I've had no such troubles installing Linux on four
varieties of Thinkpad.

Tomasz