[Coco] Fedora Core 6 on a M305CRV Gateway laptop

[Roger Taylor]

Gene,

You'll be tickled at what I'm doing now.  My Linux box (1.2ghz 
Celeron, ATI All-in-Wonder 3-D video card (AGP), 8gig, 5gig, DVD-RW, 
CD-RW, etc.) has been crapping out for some reason, locking up after 
some hours and not starting up afterwards.  I disassembled the whole 
motherboard and cleaned everything pretty good with no luck tonight 
in it starting back up.  So, instead of messing with that thing any 
longer, I decided to give life back to my half-dead Gateway laptop 
that has Windows XP on it.  Er, HAD Windows XP....  :)

The laptop is a m305crv Gateway with 60gig HD, 2 USB ports, ethernet 
port.  Here's the kicker for you... I just inserted the Fedora Core 6 
DVD into that sucker, booted up, and proceded to install Linux.  When 
it asked to do a clean install, I chose yes, so Windows XP is now 
completely formatted away and Fedora is successfully installing right 
before my eyes at this time.  I've got a 1024x768 display using an 
external LCD monitor.  Why?  Well, that's where the half-dead part 
comes in.  I aquired this laptop from a friend last year because they 
wanted to see if I could fix the shattered screen.  After I told them 
the going prices, I was told I could just keep it.  So I was using it 
with Windows XP using my external monitor with no problems.

Anyway, my USB mouse is working from Fedora as well, which was a cool 
sight to see, and hopefully a sign of good things to come with 
support.  If I can just get it to use the ethernet port or my USB 
wireless G adaptor, I will continue with my Vista<->Fedora remote 
desktop setup over my wireless router.  The laptop is a 2ghz Pentium 
II, or close.  The progress bar is 90% done at this time, but when 
it's done I'm going to update the Vino package which is what I did to 
get my tightvnc viewer updating the Linux desktop screens right under Vista.

All of this is cool to me because I've always wanted Linux running on 
a spare laptop.  So, the day (hopefully) has come.  I'll keep you informed.


-- 
Roger Taylor