Umm. SuSE was actually what I used. I have SuSE on all my home machines,
and Red Hat at work. I want to give them both a fair test. I'd try out the
other distributions too, but I'm just too lazy.
> On SuSE you just activate the "hardware drivers -> pcmcia" menuitem
> and it beeps "CDROM found" at you.
Except when it doesn't.
Basically PCMCIA install on SuSE only works if you use the floppy install.
And both SuSE and Red Hat do the same thing. The PCMCIA tools are big
enough that they don't reasonably make it into a normal ramdisk.
Which is fine if the floppy is a fixed floppy. Rather than a USB or a
PCMCIA floppy.
> SuSE 6.1 runs on 2.2 kernels (install too!), which seems to be
> incompatible with pcmcia some way, so your "testing is not as
> thorough" argument is valid..... 6.0 works just fine!
I actually have done both 6.1 and 6.0. My first install was 6.0, and
you're right, under 6.0 I didn't get the "machine hangs completely when
PCMCIA is enabled while the CD-ROM is in use" problem.
But both 6.0 and 6.1 _worked_. But the only way to get them to work on a
machine that has a USB or a PCMCIA floppy is to hardcode the CD-ROM
information, so that you see the CD even without PCMCIA support. See the
original email on details.
Once that is done, the result works fine. But trust me, getting it
installed is not for a first-time user. _I_ had to hunt a lot for
documentation. And I'm supposed to know my way around the system.
Another knowledgeable Linux user who wasn't quite as knowledgeable as I am
fixed it another way: he disassembled the machine, removed the harddisk,
did the install on another machine, and re-assembled the portable. Exactly
because neither SuSE nor Red Hat will install on a machine with PCMCIA but
no available floppy by default.
But have you ever tried to disassemble and re-assemble a modern laptop? It
easily takes _hours_, and you run a noticeable risk of the keyboard not
working when you get it re-assembled. Not for the faint of heart, in
short.
And NOT exactly something that would endear Linux to even competent users.
In fact, it's completely unacceptable behaviour.
And no, a network install doesn't work either. The network card is
(surprise surprise) behind the cardbus bridge. MAYBE I could have set up a
ppp install over the serial line (the machine I did this on is not one of
the winmodem ones), although I have no clue whether anybody supports that,
and quite frankly I don't ever want to find out.
Sure, maybe there's a third and even better way of installing Linux on one
of these things. I couldn't come up with one. I'd love to hear how you'd
do it - any tricks are acceptable, even recompiling a special kernel on
another machine and booting from a BIOS-only floppy. Burning your own
custom installation CD-ROM with a custom initrd etc is _not_ an acceptable
solution, I'm afraid.
Oh. I guess I could have re-formatted the harddrive, re-partitioned,
re-installed Windows on the machine, copied over the CD under Windows onto
the DOS partition, booted linux, and installed Linux from a local
harddisk. Convenient? Not exactly. I wouldn't even have known how to
re-install Windows on it, but I guess I could have found somebody with
that kind of expertise.
And the thing is, that every new laptop I see I can also see having the
exact same problem. And I do NOT want to go through that the next time I
install. I doubt anybody else wants to, either.
Linus
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