I have tried some distros of linux but only a few ever work (ubuntu and zenwalk are the only ones). All other distros I have tested (debian, my own rbuilder distro, and foresight) do not work. They never can detect my hardrive. I have a hp dv6000t laptop. I do not know exactly what kind of hardrive is but when I installed ubuntu it said my hardrive was "SCSI1 100 GB ATA ST9100824A5".
Sturm 270 Veteran Poster
Sturm 270 Veteran Poster
I checked the hp website supposdly I have a SATA hardrive not an ATA one. But whatever...
John A 1,896 Vampirical Lurker Team Colleague
I checked the hp website supposdly I have a SATA hardrive not an ATA one. But whatever...
That's your problem. Many older Linux distributions (i.e. v2.4 kernels) still don't have kernel support for the newer SATA hard drives, and thus cannot recognize it. I had similar problems trying to run Linux on my MacBook, which also uses a SATA hard drive.
For Debian, usually the easiest thing to do is to download the Testing version, which although is not totally safe, it's not as unreliable as you might think.
Other distros often have SATA-enabled kernels, so read the documentation to find out!
Sturm 270 Veteran Poster
Ok thanks ill look into that!
Sturm 270 Veteran Poster
Umm...I have been looking around and supposdly a new debian version is coming this feb or mar. Will this new version have the new kernel? And whats with these old kernels? I looked at slackware it seems to have a 2.4 kernel too. They said that the 2.6 kernel is under expiremental? Isn't the 2.6 kernel a official release (i.e. not developmental)?
John A 1,896 Vampirical Lurker Team Colleague
Umm...I have been looking around and supposdly a new debian version is coming this feb or mar. Will this new version have the new kernel?
Don't know; I don't really keep track of those sorts of things. ;)
And whats with these old kernels? I looked at slackware it seems to have a 2.4 kernel too. They said that the 2.6 kernel is under expiremental? Isn't the 2.6 kernel a official release (i.e. not developmental)?
It's not that the 2.6 kernel is unstable, but a lot of distros choose the older 2.4 kernel because it's more stabe, and sometimes faster. You can always install your own kernels later, so in the bigger scheme of things it doesn't make that much of a difference.
Sturm 270 Veteran Poster
It does when you cannot install the distro because of the old kernel!
John A 1,896 Vampirical Lurker Team Colleague
It does when you cannot install the distro because of the old kernel!
Well, yes I neglected to mention that. :) However, any "modern" distro will almost always have an alternative kernel for SATA computers. They don't want to lose their users simply because of a silly hard drive issue.
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