Redheaded Stepchild Laptop

I have a HP ZE1250 that use to be a great Linux laptop. It replaced a Z505 that had an external CDROM that made it hard to install Linux. The HP has been wonderful up until recently. There are some issues with booting from the CDROM, but Smart Boot Manager fixes those issues. I had problems with Linspire 5-0 and Suse 9.2, I could install them but they would lock up constantly. It appeared to be an issue with the kernel (?). Newer distros are out since this hiccup and they are working on the laptop.

I have loaded:

Linspire Beta- New kernel, and it works, but this is beta software so there are a few problems, I am getting a DCOP server error from time to time, but other than that it is working well. CNR is kind of glitchy, but I have been able to install several programs.

Mepis 3.3- Works flawlessly, I should be using it but I like Linspire better so I will limp along on Linspire rather than use a fully functional Mepis. I like Mepis, it's just that it is my second favorite distro.

Ubuntu- A very cool distro, but it is Gnome and I am a KDE guy.

Kubuntu- Another very cool distro, but a lot of things do not work. I did not configure the network when I installed it, and the distro does not let you login as root so I could not configure network. I installed Ubuntu, then figured out that I could install KDE via apt-get. For some reason not all of the repositories were functioning so not all of the packages installed and the distro did not work well. Samba worked great, but you have edit the etc/fstab in Ubuntu and Kubuntu to access your Windows partition.

The good news is that D-link DWL-G650 wireless card works with all distros- plug and play! It is nice to have a G card that just works.

So for now I have Linspire 5.1.25, and Mepis loaded on my laptop. I will probably keep this version of Linspire until the stable release is out, unless I more problems pop up.