[ale] Installing Linux on laptop on New Years Eve

[Daniel Howard]

My wife asked me to put Linux on her Win 2K laptop, which now slows down 
within days of my reinstalling Win 2K.

I first tried K12LTSP w/o the LTSP component, which installed fine, but 
on initial boot up gave a screenfull of jibberish text and finally 
booted in a text shell.  I presumed that since she only had 256MB of 
RAM, that the X window launch failed due to lack of RAM.  So, I 
downloaded the netinst version of Debian, which started fine, but then 
informed me after I selected keyboard layout that the CD was not a 
Debian CD.  OK, I downloaded the business card version of Debian netinst 
and again, the CD ROM read error after selecting keyboard layout.  I 
tried booting in expert mode, and it does detect the CD ROM, but for 
some reason still ends up claiming CD ROM read errors.  I checked the 
checksum on the iso's and they check out fine.  I then downloaded the 
first binary iso for Debian full install, same symptom.  WTF?

I'm about to try PuppyLinux, but am I missing something here?  How come 
it reads the CD ROM OK at first for the install and then dies at the 
same point?  Note that it reads the Win 2K CD and installs just fine, I 
just hate to keep reinstalling it after it gets malware when I could 
remove the real problem, not just the symptom.

Wait a minute, that was supposed to be "So I'll remove the cause...but 
not the symptom!"

Happy New Year to All!

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation