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Translated KDE/Linux Usability Report Available
WHudson writes "Relevantive AG, a German consulting firm who recently completed a study on Linux usability, posted their results in English translation today. Bottom line: Linux nearly as easy to use as Windows XP, but the wording of system and program messages could use some more clarity."
Laptops are famous for being a pig to install Linux onto. Proprietory hardware and unhelpful manufacturers make driver support very difficult.
That laptop has ATI graphics and LCD, which can be a pain to setup manually (don't use modelines with 4.x X!). I'd start with 16 bit VESA at 1024x768 14" (or 1400 x 1050 15"?) native resolution. If possibly, use 4.3 XFree86 as well. If VESA works, then try looking at different ATI drivers, probably "radeon" or "ati", and 24 bit colour.
As others have suggested, maybe it's worth trying a different distro (Mandrake and SuSE are worth a crack) because they have slightly different kernels and different setup/config tools. They have setup options for LCD screens, so just choose a generic 1024x768 LCD, and VESA/radeon chipset.Problems with X are unlikely to be kernel related, but the DVD might be. Maybe you need to use the ide-scsi cd driver, done with a kernel append line at boot time. I'll hazard a guess and say the ethernet is one either tulip or 8139too. I may be wrong, but try modprobe tulip and/or modprobe 8139too then ifconfig -a and see if eth0 is there. It might be something else, but it's worth trying.
Hope some of that helps.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Well, first off, the link is generally called "Nero Burning ROM", which gives a good impression that it's what you'd want to "burn" a CD-"ROM".
In some languages, ROM is the name of the Italian city you probably know as Rome, which Nero did actually burn down. It's a nice play on words, but there are plenty of people who won't make the link between that and writing data onto an optical disk.
-- Steve