The Register: Forcing Linux on a Presario Laptop

Jan 07, 2002, 15:01 (21 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Thomas C Greene)

[ Thanks to Jason Greenwood for this link. ]

"It's got a 'system restore' CD which Compaq is too cheap to put Windows on. This is perhaps the single most unforgivable item in a vast catalog of offenses. No, the Windows cabs are all taking up much-needed space on the thing's puny 5GB hard disk. So nuts to you if you fdisk the sucker and then fail to get Linux working decently and have no choice but load Windows again. Compaq will sell you the CD you'll need for that, the damnable cheap bastards.

Of course it's got a Winmodem in place of a real modem, and we all know it's just about impossible to make one of those toys work with Linux, thanks to the trade-secret paranoia of their manufacturers. And we all know how badly broken the 2.4.x kernel is for PCMCIA, which I insist on having.

But I did fdisk the little junker, and it did feel awfully good. And then I set about forcing Linux down its ungrateful Windows-compatible little throat."

Complete Story

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