Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : Which Kernel Settings are Good for my Laptop?


Atealtha
04-25-2003, 05:46 PM
I know I have been writing often about my laptop. I recently gave up and went back to Win XP Home. Well I want to give it another shot. The first time there was a kernel panic regarding PnP (common problem, I found out). So I go ahead to /usr/src/linux and do make menuconfig (I always use Gentoo, btw). I take out PnP, recompile, and reboot. Surprise surprise, the kernel panic disappears. But now I get a new message. It says something about my PCI.

I admit I don't know much about laptops as I do with desktops. I went to both linux-on-laptops and tuxmobil to do some reading, but I still do not know how to fix this problem. Is it safe to disable PCI on a laptop? Do laptops even use PCI? I got no idea, and can't find the right info I need on these sites.

Again, I want to give Linux another try on my laptop, but it gets very tiring, working days at a time to install Gentoo. So I want to get this right. Other distros wont even install. RedHat 9 wouldn't even get past the "check media" stage. And my BIOS is so crappy that all I can configure is stuff like date, time, and bootup order. My keyboard layout is messed up. | is @ and # is ~ and iunno whats going on. This would make it difficult for me to edit my conf files before I can install a keymapping app. Is there anyone who would like to help me out and finally bring my laptop to the linux family? Thanks in advance.

bskahan
04-26-2003, 03:41 AM
have you tried mandrake?

mandrake and openBSD are things that have played nice with my laptop.

Atealtha
04-27-2003, 11:23 AM
BSD works great! But I cant find an ISO image for OpenBSD. I tried the FreeBSD release and that works. How can I find an image for OpenBSD? I just find a bunch of files on the mirrors.

Also, BSD feels very foreign to me. Is there a good book to help me brush up on all these things? They can install everything from source just like my Gentoo can, right?