CAN I GET AN LINUX OS ON A GATEWAY TL-50 LAPTOP THAT HAS WINDOWS VISTA
INSTALLED ON IT? IF SO WHAT VERSION? ONLY THING I SEE AROUND HERE IN
STORES IS XANDROS AND LINSPIRE BUT NEITHER OF THOSE LIST MY LAPTOP AS
HARDWARE COMPATIBLE????

try ubuntu. it's free, and has quite an extensive list of supported
hardware. i have it on a dell d420 and d620 laptops, and it sees all
hardware...

How can i get it?

When you install ubuntu does it wipe out your entire hard drive?

Wiping out your hard drive is OPTIONAL when you install Ubuntu, as it is
for most modern linux distributions. I highly recommend that you do not
wipe your hard drive, but simply shrink your Vista partition from within
Vista.

I don't know whether every device on this laptop has the appropriate
drivers pre-loaded with Ubuntu. One way you could find out is to run
Ubuntu as a live CD before you install it.

How do you run it as a LIVE CD?

Tidewater,

Here's the website for a LUG in your area, you might be able to take
your laptop to one of their meetings and have several experienced people
walk you through everything:

http://www.hrlug.org/installhelp.shtml


>> How can i get it?

If you go to Ubuntu.com, the first thing you'll see (these days) is a
'download' link - I would go with "7.04" under "Desktop Edition".


---------
It looks like your local LUG favors Mandrake - which is just fine, too.
So if they are all eager to hook you up with Mandrake, but aren't as
able to help you with Ubuntu, there would be nothing wrong with going
with Mandrake.

>> How do you run it as a LIVE CD?

The 7.04 Ubuntu install CD -also- works as a Live CD - on many
computers, you just put it in the CD tray and tell Vista to "restart".
When the computer restarts, it will ignore your harddrive and boot
directly off the CD.

On some systems, you may need to change the 'boot order' in the bios,
which is not hard.

Tidewater, I hope I'm not muddying the water by offering too many
options, but after re-reading your opening post, I thought you should
know that you can get live CDs for both Linspire and Xandros, and use
them to test hardware compatibility for your laptop.

http://www.linspire.com/cnr_linspirelive.php

Should be free to download, or a very small fee to order from a CD
distributer.

Thanks for all the help guys i appreciate I will let you know which one
I decide and which one works.

I am downloading the Xandros Home Edition 30 day trial then using Deep
Burnur to Install ISO Image. We will see what happens! LoL!

Cool! Is that a live cd, install cd, or both-in-one?

It says Installation Cd?

I know nothing first hand about Xandros...

The install CD -might- not double as a Live CD, in which case you would
have to install it onto your hard drive to test it out... I'm feeling
like an overprotective parent, and wondering whether you have Vista
recovery CDs, whether you've backed up your data.... Installing it
should be no problem, since Xandros (I hear) is very professionally
produced, and very friendly to people coming from a windows background,
but accidents happen.

Or, maybe the install CD -does- double as a live CD, and you can run
your test drive without it even touching your harddrive.

Yes i have a system recovery disk that will only take me 25 mins to
recover my whole hard drive if it messes up! LoL!

Sweet! Good luck to you, and please let us know how it goes.

It wouldnt let me extract the files. It started to extrat them and then
came up with an error?? I think im play it safe and use the free ubuntu
live cd

Ubuntu is good.

I and I'm sure others will gladly help you diagnose this 'extracting'
problem, if you later want to try Xandros again.

I did get Xandros to run on my laptop then couldnt get it to connect to
any of my networks so I deleted it! Luckily I didnt have to wipe out
Vista! Although I loved how Xandros looked and operated! Only if i can
find a linux os that will run smoothly Vista will no onger be a friend
of mine!