I built a new system on May 6th,2011. MSI 760GM-E51 mobo, 600 watt power supply, AMD 640, quad core processor, 16 gigs DDR3 ram, and 2- 500 hundred gig HD’s. I attempted to install the 64 bit version of Linux Mint 11 on it. It did not give me an option to install to sdb, only showed sda. I had a copy of Ubuntu Studio handy, so I loaded it up and tried to install it. It showed sdb, so I installed it, no problem. Not really a fan of Ubuntu, so I resized the partition and tried Linux Mint 11 again. this time it showed sdb, so I started the install. It got about halfway, on the progress bar, and everything locked up. No mouse, keyboard, nothing. Checked the md5 sum, everything checked out okay. Thought maybe I had a bad burn, so I downloaded from another mirror, burned it at 8x, slowest speed on my burner, but the same thing happened again. In total, I have tried 15 DVD’s, and 2 CD’s and Mint 11 just will not install on this system. There must be something in the setup, on this machine, that Mint 11 doesn’t like.
Yesterday I downloaded the live CD of the newly released Mageia 1, 32 bit. Installed it , but encountered a few problems afterwards. Got on their forum and one of the members suggested I try the 64 bit DVD. So, I downloaded the DVD, installed it without a hitch. Runs great. Had a problem with the sound, but it turned out to be an easy fix. So far it has run flawlessly, and is much faster, and better than the last Mandriva I tried.
My first encounter with Linux was Mandrake 7.2, back in 2001. I had ran windows since 1991, and Commodores since 1981. Just got tired of all the windows errors, viruses, adware, malware, and having to reinstall about every 6 months.. Now windows is a game only OS, I don’t trust it for online banking, e-mail, or general surfing, especially combined with IE. I use Firefox exclusively. I have 4 desktops, and 2 laptops currently in use, and use a variety of distros. My main system has Mint 10, Peppermint One, Kububtu, (seldom used), and XP for games. My Netbook runs PCLinuxOS, and my laptop runs PCLinuxOS, and Peppermint One. The new system has Xp,(older games) Win7, (newer games) PCLinuxOS, Peppermint One, and Mageia1. My 2 grandsons are the main player of games, when my wife isn’t on it.
