Startup sound stutter

[apocalypse2012]

I have a Sony z505hs. Been lugging this ultralight since Y2k. Most new OSs are dog slow on its 500mhz p3 (XP), so I have been trying to get a decent Linux distro on it forever. Nothing has worked at all until I tried Knoppix. With the listed laptop cheat codes, the live CD booted. I have not done the HD install yet.

The only problem I see so far is that the startup sound stutters like its got an IRQ conflict, but I did not see anything in the system settings to indicate a problem. Not that I would know, I am a complete linux noob.

Other things to note, these Viao laptops had all kinds of IRQ sharing stuff between devices, that may be part of the issue. So far I am just happy it boots. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Harry Kuhman]

... I have not done the HD install yet.

..... Does anyone have any ideas?

I wouldn't be overly concerned about this sound problem if it's only at startup. There are a lot of things fighting for cpu at that point, even faster systems can sound like that. If the sound is good after Knoppix finishes booting that should be what you concern yourself about.

I'm more distressed about your use of the word "yet". See answer #2, and consider something much more appropriate, such as a net install of Debian testing.

[apocalypse2012]

Oh... You hurt me with that. Why oh why can't I use knoppix as just a straight up distro and install it on my HD. I get it, its the 'Live distro' thing. Okay, but this is the first distro to work on my laptop. I have not tried Debian, no, but all I have been hearing is that Knoppix hardware recognition is second to none. So I tried it and it worked. Damnit.

I know this is knewbie rant number... whatever. But I don't understand. If you can't install it what good is it except to fix a broke ass XP install. What can I do with this Live (only) CD that makes it Desktop worthy... Okay that's maybe not fair, I can see using this on my XP workstation as an alternative to dual boot madness...

So, the question is, Can I install Deb and have any chance of it working on my laptop?

[Harry Kuhman]

..... If you can't install it what good is it except to fix a broke ass XP install.

It is what it is. A Live CD. A handy way to introduce people to Linux. A great tool for file recovery (I would never actually try to "fix" an XP system with it, just get the files that I need and then reinstall a fresh copy of Xp from the original discs. Writing anything to the XP NTFS partition with Knoppix may bring down the curse of Billy Gates upon you). It's a handy way to carry a copy of Linux with you and use in a rather secure way at any location. But the link that I gave you explains the problem in trying to use it as a regular hard disk install. Some people do, but if you haven't even tried Debian yet then you have absolutely no reason to suggest that Knoppix might offer you any advantage over Debian

So, the question is, Can I install Deb and have any chance of it working on my laptop?

I don't know if you are capable of doing that or not. It's a pretty simple install though, and the best way to find out is to try it. As long as you have a high-speed internet connection that you can do a net-install from, I would suggest getting the testing version of Debian (lenny) , the i386 flavor of the net-install ISO is here. Burn it to a CD-RW so that you can reuse the disc later, then do a net install. When you are asked for the type of install, select a desktop install (this will install Gnome, but you can later install KDE or any other desktop that you want, as well as any applications that you want, with apt-get). Quite frankly, you might even want to do a few installs, just to check out your options. The install will take a little while, depending on your connection speed, But will give you an up-to-date system with no need to refer to a stack of CDs when you want to install other applications (just net-install them with apt-get).

Back when Knoppix first came out, the Debian installer (and other Linux installers) were indeed technical nightmares. One had to record all sorts of hardware data, IRQ and DMA settings and lots of other stuff, run the installer, fill in all of the technical settings, and then eventually abort the install and go back and look something up that you didn't have recorded the first time. People complained about this and when Knoppix came out some were so impressed by it's hardware detection that they advocated installing Knoppix, even though it was known even then that it was a bad idea™. People complained that if Knoppix could do it then the installers should be able to do it to. Well, for once the developers listened and they greatly improved the installers. There is (IMHO) no longer any logic at all that justifies installing Knoppix, and certainly it makes no sense to do so without even trying to install Debain (I say Debian here because it is the intended for hard disk install that Knopix is based on and if you like Knoppix you should like Debain, but there are other Linux distro alternatives too.)