nujinini

Hi everybody,

About 3 months ago, I bought this new laptop without any OS. I installed Fedora 10 and encountered some issues.

1) The tracking pad does not work and appears to be frozen. I still have to Fn + F8 twice. Which 1 out of 10 times also fails and I have to do a reboot.
2) My screen freezes once in a while. Again I have to resort to reboot via the power button. (A friend told me it might be the CCSM)
3) Booting failure 1 out of 10 tries.
4) The keyboard brightness command does not work.
5) Does not accept Ubuntu 9.04 (my first OS option) when I tried to install but only gives me a black screen somewhere along in the installation.

I thought it was the Ubuntu and the other issues was due to Fedora 10.

Until I tried to use a Live CD of PCLinux. I encoutered Problem #1 above.
And when I tried to install to triple boot, I got an error and a workaround blahblahblah about SATA something.

Now i realize its not the OS. The issue is with Lenovo. Did somebody experience the same on their laptop? or is this problem unique to my Lenovo. I enjoy this brand since this is the very first laptop i bought with my hard earned money and a friend recommended it because of the supposedly "good ibm hardware support". Would have I encountered the same problems with a Dell, Asus, or Acer etc?

Thanks for your time, cheers!

nujinini

b2bwild

There can be few models which may give troubles running Linux..
So it's more depended on system specification. not the make.

I have tried many Linux distros on different laptops from HP/Compaq, Lenovo, Dell and Acer..without any problems.

You can run Linux on your specification too, but you need to figure out where its failing to boot, then you can use another option to boot which may provide more compatibility.

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Rubberman

How much memory (RAM) is in this system? Too little will cause most current versions of major distributions such as Fedora or Ubuntu to fail to boot and install.

Other issues are BIOS related. Check to see if the Legacy USB keyboard/input device option is set. If not, set it. If so, unset it. Also, check for a BIOS update. This is often a problem for installing Linux.

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nujinini

3 G RAM
Can you kindly tell me how to check Legacy USB keyboard/input device option please?


thanks man! Cheers!

Rubberman

Well, you have plenty of memory, so that is not the likely culprit. To check for USB settings, boot into the BIOS. I don't know where you would find the page to change the USB settings on your system, but on my Dell laptop it is found in the "USB Emulation" page under "POST Behavior". There might be other settings that would affect how a Linux OS would behave as well. You need to look at the available settings to see if there are any, mostly performance "optimization" ones, that might be relevant. The more "vanilla" you have your BIOS set, the better it will work with non-Windows operating systems.

Also, as I mentioned before, do check with the manufacturer/distributor about the availability of a BIOS update as well. I had to update the BIOS on my Intel motherboard before I could use it with Linux.

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nujinini

i think you place the correct words in my mouth, its not the make, its the specs, thanks, much appreciated

nujinini

Thanks! I tried to download a BIOS updater something and it found out that my BIOS and some drivers need updating. But when I was about to do the final step, they wanted me to buy something. So I guess I have to continue to look into how I can do it myself, with all the help I can get