Re: Laptop choice, first boot issues
On 24 Nov 2004, Victor Munoz wrote:
>
> Hello. I'm thinking of buying a new laptop. I don't know much about the
> subject (I've only had one old laptop, which I bought from a friend, and he
> had already installed sid). From what I've learned googling, IBM Thinkpads
> seem to be one of the best options. I live in Japan, and Japanese brands are
> cheaper, but IBM looks like a safer bet.
>
> Currently I'm considering R50, T41, T42 models, but I'm open to suggestions!
>
> It will probably not be possible to buy a laptop without XP installed. I've
> read that one has to be very careful when first booting, because Windows XP
> converts the file system from VFAT to NTFS. There's also the issue of the
> special "recovery" partition somewhere in the hard disk. And there's the
> issue of hardware detection.
>
> As I still don't have the big picture, my questions:
>
> 1. If I naively do a normal boot, then filesystem conversion will take
> place, and I will not be able to (easily) resize partitions to make room for
> Linux later? Or the only problem with NTFS is that they're read-only?
>
> 2. If I keep XP, then I also have to keep the "recovery" partition. Right?
>
> 3. If I keep XP, what would be a suitable partition size for it? I will not
> really use it, just a backup in case I need to know about some hardware,
> until I'm sure sid is working properly with all hardware.
>
> 4. A simpler alternative would be to boot first time with Knoppix, which
> seems to do a very good job detecting hardware. Learn all I have to learn
> with Knoppix, and then delete all partitions and start with a pure Debian
> system. Any horror stories out there?
>
> 5. This recovery partition, is of use only to Windows? The "delete all
> partitions" part above is safe if I intend to have Debian only?
>
> Sorry for all the "if" questions, but I'm trying to get some advice and
> information beforehand.
>
>
Useful link: http://jriddell.org/thinkpad-r40e.html which describes
installing Linux on a Thinkpad R40e using Knoppix.
I just installed Sid on a new Thinkpad R40e, using the new Debian
installer. I didn't think I'd ever want to use Windows so I wiped the
whole disk. Using the installer it booted easily with the 2.6 kernel and
noacpi. After that everything was recognized automatically, including
sound and the wireless PCMCIA card. The only slight hiccup was that I
needed to change /etc/network/interfaces to point to eth1 instead of
wireless, but that may have been due to my answering a question wrongly
during the installation. After that I could connect to the internet and
run apt-get to install whatever I needed.
I haven't even needed to recompile my kernel. I downloaded the 2.6.9
kernel package and grub picked that up automatically, so now I can boot
to whichever kernel I want via a menu.
The whole thing could hardly have been easier. I'm sure that if I wanted
XP I could have left it in place without problems.
Anthony
--
ac@acampbell.org.uk || http://www.acampbell.org.uk
using Linux GNU/Debian || for book reviews, electronic
Windows-free zone || books and skeptical articles
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