New guy here - With all that Microsoft is doing to make a profit whilst running their products as a service I've decided that I would like to make the switch to a Linux distribution. Unfortunately upon installation of Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon 64-bit my laptop would just freeze up shortly after the OS would boot up and I'd get to see the pretty GUI. It would just freeze up - do absolutely nothing (can't move the mouse & pressing keys does nothing) - and would require a hold-the-power-button shutdown. What distribution would work best out of the box with the following laptop?
My laptop is a SAGER NP8235 (Clevo P151SM1): Mobile Intel HM87 Express Chipset Intel Core i7-4700MQ 32 GB DDR3 RAM Intel HD 4600 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 770M Samsung Evo 840 SSD (mSATA) Standard 8X DVDRW Realtek LAN & WLAN / Bluetooth Synaptics Touchpad etc. seen here http://www.gentechpc.com/showpages.asp?pid=1269
Honestly, any help is appreciated because after the install of Linux Mint (which everything seemed like it was going to work okay) and reinstall of Windows my wireless card has gone kaput (Windows can see it in device manager and knows what it is, I install drivers, troubleshoot, still doesn't want to see wireless networks). I know that it can and will work in a Linux distribution but I just don't know which one won't freeze up on me.
I'd just start at the bottom or easiest distro which to me is Ubuntu, if your daring you could try Ubuntu gnome, but if neither of these distros work out I'd be at a loss as to why.
Is it possible that the freezing has anything to do with which desktop environment is being used or is it just simply the driver support that comes with a distribution?
I'm not sure I'd guess it's a graphic driver issue but someone with more knowledge needs to advise you, if given the choice during the install I'd choose generic graphic drivers (open source) until you had a working desktop to tinker with. I've installed Ubuntu a bunch of times on old and new hardware and never had a failed install, but I do let it just do it's default settings.
Okay, thanks again. We'll see how it ends up working out. Been reading a lot of other posts and you seem to be that guy who can get things done and relay it quite well.
Is it worth mentioning that installed Linux distributions using VMWare Player while I was in Windows always worked well? That's why I'm kind of confused as to how they're freezing when installed directly on the hardware at hand.
Yea, VM's are kinda' forgiving because it's a container, and now your trying to reverse the roles of host and guest, I'd give Ubuntu a shot at least it should tell you if you have some sort of hardware incapability with Linux which I kinda' doubt but stranger things have happen.
Graphics issues could be related to switchable graphics. The linux graphics stack is horrendously complicated and one mostly has to rely on at least the latest upstream release to get reasonable stability. But the nice thing about most distros is the ability to test them out by using a live-version. Preferably on a USB-Key, but the good 'ol CD/DVD also still works. Ubuntu 15.04 should work reasonably well with the current proprietary blob from nvidia. The nouveau opensource driver also should work but will be slow due to missing power management. You could also grab a live-version of Fedora which hast a newer kernel than Ubuntu (or Mint 17.2 for that matter).
A live system also could help analyze the lockup problem by retrieving the syslogs.
Well, I don't know if my laptop is a complete basket case or if the installation media I'm using is corrupt but I can't seem to get anything to complete its install at this point.
I've tried booting/installing via USB (Kingston DTs) and via DVD for the following: Linux Mint 17.2 64-bit Fedora 22 64-bit Ubuntu 15.04 64-bit
One I did manage to install, boot, & run successfully (didn't include wireless card support) was Xubuntu 14.04 64-bit.
I'm going to try to install the ones that didn't work in virtual machines and see if the installation media works / doesn't work. Since I can't see myself wanting to ever bother with Windows again outside of obligations I'm going to keep trying even if it becomes beating a dead horse.
Thanks again for all your help, time, and consideration.
you could also try to install Ubuntu server then install the unity desktop or xubuntu desktop. I am not sure about the differences between the desktop variant and server variant of Ubuntu, however.
I had the same issue sometimes when I would download from chrome. I think the DL would glitch out when my internet would (inevitably) cut out (for a split second). The DL would say it completed, but in reality it was corrupted. I went to downloading the torrents and that worked every time(used utorrent for ubuntu, downloaded Mint from deluge in Ubuntu). I don't know if torrenting is legal where you are, so use caution (but I feel like it shouldn't be since the developers are giving it to us for free just in a different format).
I'm using Mint right now and I had the freezing issue in Ubuntu as well. I was also told that it was a graphic driver issue, but I messed something up in Ubuntu so I switched to Mint and installed the drivers (correctly) there. It's been smooth like butter ever since.
I am like you, literally just starting out (installed Mint yesterday, and Ubuntu the day before), so I look forward to hearing your developments. Good luck!
Also, here is a link to my thread about the freezing (and vairous other problems along the way).
Well I ended up trying the various installation media in VMWare Player and everything loaded and installed properly each time so that rules out the idea of corruption (for the most part). Since then, I've decided to put Windows 7 on that troublesome laptop of mine and actually got the wireless card working again as well.
To compensate for my need for Linux, I installed a 2nd SSD I had lying around into the Desktop PC I was typing on throughout all the issues with the laptop and have installed Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon 64-bit on it without a single hiccup. I can boot either Linux Mint or Windows 7 on it now - neither fighting the other for storage.
I still want to be able to put Linux on that jerk of a laptop, just don't know if it will ever accept the true greatness.
They also have Steam preconfigured with both options of running the Steam client with the Valve provided runtime or with the system runtime (which is much more recent because Manjaro is Arch based, so bleeding edge).
The amount of support for even proprietary software integration by the good folks of the Manjaro community is unequalled. They really deliver for people that just want the best for a non-FLOSS-orientated home desktop use in my opinion.
People that don't want binary blobs and proprietary licensed software snippets on their systems, might want to look elsewhere, but that's mainly a political choice in my opinion for home users. For enterprise users, I wouldn't take any chances and go for a 100% vetted full open source software arrangement, because of the added security and stability of open source and the obvious compatibility advantages of staying in the open source ecosystem.