First off I think Fingers99 sums it up,

Some hardware is just flaky.... other is designed specifically for MS and needs a lot of coaxing to actually load ANYTHING else. It's never impossible, my XBOX runs linux quite happily now.

Or perhaps you keep skipping over the same bit which you don't expect to work.


"How about you make an honest genuine effort to install Linux. Stick it out and don't get angry when something doesn't work the first time. I have yet to meet a machine that I cannot install Linux on. Sometimes it is a bitch but it can be done. "

You can't skip learning a few basics like partitions. Just becuase this is hidden awayin the MS world - the reason knoppix asks where is because it doesn't wanna hose your other OS's or data, even the winblows ones.

It would be nice to see what its all about.
Presuming your Cd is good and nothing got corrupted in that 12 hour download then it should just boot. You stick it in, reboot and presuming the cabling is set right on the CD drive and its set to boot from the Cd then it should just WORK. It did for me and many others.

If it doesn't then it can be fixed (almost certainly) BUT why not try it on another machine first and see what its all about.


"Every red hat linux i buy has bad cd's in it e-mail them they dont care. suse does not install. I just got a knoppix cd it just loads a picture and does nothing else. debian locks up. "
This sounds like YOUR CD !! Perhaps even antivirus setting in the bios???



Bad CD's do exist. I got a whole MDK 9.1 with bad CD's. I didn't even bother telling MDK, what would they care.... probably tell me to return them to a store.... BUT I just picked up a magazine with the download edition and it worked fine.

NOTHING is simpler to get up and running than knoppix from CD.