linux and Presario 700

[43810059]

Hi,
I am in Thailand. I have Pressario 700 and have to use Linux (Mandrake 8.1) but many people told me it's impossible because there are not any drivers for Linux. Anyone can help me, please? I was wondering if you please explane me about installing step by step (i am not expertize in computer). and what's about the drivers? or it' not necessary? PLEASE.
seksan55@yahoo.com
sincerely,
Sek

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

There are a lot of people running linux on a lot of laptops. A good site to look at is -->

http://www.linux-laptop.net/

. There is no specific mention of the presario 700 as that seems fairly new, however.

The only specific peculiarity of compaqs that I know of is that they have (or used to have ?) a small extra disk partition that contained the bios setup utilities and diagnostics. This could be confusing to partioning tools, etc.

As to drivers - in Linux, as for any operating system, if you use hardware with in some way a unique way of communicating through its ports, you need a 'driver' between the operating system and the hardware. Lots of stuff like disk drives, keyboards, etc., is generic enough that you don't need a special add-on driver. But you would need specific drivers /modules to get the best out of video cards, sound cards, modems and suchlike.

Looking at

http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/hardware/notebooks/0,39001745,39000520p,00.htm?

I would guess that you should be able to get most things working - not sure on the audio though. You might have to choose a generic svga X server if theres nothing specific for that graphics chipset.

Hope this helps