I recently got hold of a laptop, a Toshiba Tecra 550CDT. It came with windows 95 preinstalled, which also meant that out of the 4 GB hard disk only 2 GB was partitioned. Furthermore, it sported 96 MB of
RAM and a p266mmx processor. Visions of watching VCDs on the train flashed before my eyes. The time had come to install a real OS. At first I was naive enough to think I could get Linux running without using that hated medium, the floppy disk. Using the no-floppy
approach I tried to install Debian 2.1, BeOS professional 5, FreeBSD 4.0 and Slackware 7.1. Only the Debian and BeOS disks booted correctly, and not one of them came past the first boot screen. In desperation I installed Mandrake 7.0-2, which installed correctly, autodetected the graphic card and the network card and ran X without any extra persuasion. Unfortunately, the dist in itself was very buggy, missing several important files which could not be added easily. It was time to find a new way of doing things.
Descent
This time around I read the Linux on Laptops FAQ pretty thoroughly. It claimed that Debian was the best distribution around for laptops. I decided to trust it, for now. The ancient floppy disk drive was brought forth and Debian 2.2r2 boot disks made. This time it installed like a charm, although the network adapter didn't autodetect, and the graphics needed to be set up in XF86Config(the program that won the Sjoerd award for requiring the most obscure hardware information ever). It still gives me that nostalgic 1994 feeling when I need to specify the monitor sync ranges, especially since most distros carefully hide such insanely impractical things from their users. Careful questioning of people on IRC revealed that they considered Mandrake and Red Hat to be the best at autodetecting hardware. With this in mind I pulled down Mandrake 7.2 and installed it(crashed 3-4 times until I used the PCMCIA boot disk despite installing from IDE CD-ROM and even when successful did not autodetect networking). It also incorrectly detected my s3 ViRGE/MX as a Trident card, but such mere trifles no longer hindered me. And suddenly, something unexpected happened.
Revelation
From a wholly unexpected direction I received a brand new 6,5 GB disk, which I threw into the laptop, reinstalled Mandrake on, and lo and behold, the networking worked! Well, of course it didn't work after reboots unless I pulled the card and pushed it in again, but at least it almost worked. Now the only thing left to conquer(except for the obligatory act of telling X that I most certainly didn't have a Trident card) was to get sound working. It was supposedly a breeze... but I made the mistake of reading the Linux sound howto(wholly irrelevant, sndconfig seems to have been around forever and Mandrake supports every sound card in existence as modules) and it was not until asking on IRC that I realized that the much needed sndconfig and awesfx were to be found on Mandrake cd 2 which I had saved considerable amounts of time by not
downloading. Luckily they were available online.
Aftermath
After this epic struggle(actually it only took a day and a half or so), did I get anything out of it? Well... everything works now, theoretically, but VCD
plays at ~10 fps, not exactly what I had hoped. A friend at school adamantly claims that the fact that Windows does better is due in no small part to DirectX, but I think it's got something to do with the fact that the people writing graphic card drivers for Windows are the same people who built them.
If you should feel brave/stupid/foolhardy enough to give Linux a try on your laptop, then go right ahead. Installation is pretty much the worst part,
actually using Linux is straightforward in comparison. But remember, kids, don't try this at home. Unless you really want to. No, I mean really. Go ahead
then, if you must. It pays off.