Court Thomas wrote: > I have a new computer and am having a hard time installing linux. > The computer is a Dell XPS pentium 4 system. The BIOS identifies > the system as a 64 bit system. That is Intel's implementation of the amd64 architecture previously known as x86-64. This is also known as Intel EM64T. Not to be confused with ia64 which is a different architecture. Intel has recently started rebranding these as "64-bit Xeons". > I've tried installing SUSE 9.3 but with little luck. Strange. Should work fine. I assume that is a 32-bit i686 system? > My computer is capable of booting from the CD drive, but when I try booting > the system with the Debian ia64 disk, the system states that it can't boot > from the disk. That is one problem right there. The ia64 is a completely different architecture unrelated to amd64. Your computer is speaking Klingon and your boot disk is speaking Ferengi. They don't mix. You cannot boot an ia64 disk on your machine. Debian does not officially support the 64-bit amd64 architecture. But there is a thriving unofficial community. I am typing this message on an unofficial 64-bit Debian amd64 system. See this howto for more information. http://alioth.debian.org/docman/view.php/30192/21/debian-amd64-howto.html But even though the amd64 project is alive and well I recommend that you stick to a 32-bit installation. You don't seem to need the 64-bit system. Unless you have more than 4GB of ram or are developing for a platform that does then you won't really be able to use the large memory capabilities. And quite frankly (please don't take offense) because you are confused by the architectures I think I would recommend that you keep it simple and stick to the mainstream i386/i686 installation. It will run fine on your machine and it is a tried and true performer. > When I try booting with the Debian i386 disk, the installation > processing can't find the hard disks. To solve this problem we will need more information. What type of disks are in the machine? Serial ATA? You are trying to use a released sarge/stable installation disk? When you boot Knoppix you should be able to determine what type of interface is in the machine with 'lspci'. At the Debian installer prompt you have a choice of either installing the linux 2.4 kernel or the linux 2.6 kernel. The default is the linux 2.4 kernel. Instead I highly recommend installing the linux 2.6 kernel. I am guessing you have SATA drives and will need the newer kernel. > I know that the computer can boot from the CD drive because I can > boot Knoppix 3.9. Debian is using the same technology that Knoppix is using. Namely the 'discover' package. Presumably anything that Knoppix boots on the Debian installer disk should also be able to detect. (But of course it is not perfect.) However it makes me wonder if your Debian install disk is really the latest version available. > I've tried using debootstrap from Knoppix (since it's based on > Debian) but when I debootstraping the i386 Debian 3.1, the system > dies and when I try debootstrapping the ia64 Debian 3.1, the system > fails trying to mount proc. Try debootstrapping the i386 architecture. (Or the amd64 architecture.) The ia64 will not run on your amd64 machine. > I'm not happy with the SUSE installation as I can only acheive a very low > screen resolution and the mouse pointer is invisible. I've tried fixing it > but with no success. I know that the Debian version would work better since > Knoppix provides better screen resolution and the mouse pointer is visible. > I would be happy to provide any details necessary to facilitate your > assistance. Of course over here on the Debian lists we will all agree that you have made a good choice to install on your computer. But from a practical standpoint SuSE's X11 installation should be fine too. I think making a distro choice based upon screen resolution is the wrong criteria. I think you are making the right choice but for the wrong reasons and because of this won't be happy with Debian either. Bob
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