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### Help with Linux !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bill jones [userwilber2003 at yahoo.com]

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:16:50 -0700 (PDT)

[[[ Mr. Jones sent this in as html mail, and also without much spacing in his punctuation. For ease of the readership, I've done some minor editing on his content. -- Kat ]]]

Hello.

I need some help and I'm hoping you can do it. Ok,here goes. I traded a guy at work for an Apple laptop with Linux installed. He got it from a guy who didn't have the Root password. How nice! I've tried to

+ reinstall Opensuse 10.2 to gain controll of the laptop,and it won't autorun. I made sure the discs were in ISO form. When the disc is in the cdrom

+ it shows how big the disc is but it doesn't show how much space is available. The memory shows that there's' 2.34mb avaliable. I'm very new at this

+ Linux and don't really understand it yet. So, do you think you'ins' can help me?

ON Opensuse site it said if it didn't start auto to open Bios setup and go from ther. I'm not sure how to do that ,or where to type in Bios. Any help would be greatly welcomed and appreaciated!

Thank-you,

    --
    Bill Jones
    userwilber2003@yahoo.com

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Thomas Adam [thomas.adam22 at gmail.com]

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:33:29 +0000

Hello --

2008/10/27 bill jones <userwilber2003@yahoo.com>:

    > Hello.
    > I need some help and I'm hoping you can do it.Ok,here goes.
    > I traded a guy at work for an Apple laptop with Linux installed. He got it
    > from a guy who didn't have the Root password. How nice! I've tried to

And did he, in turn, get it off the back of a lorry which, when touched, made his hand retrack uncontrollably it was that hot?

    > reinstall Opensuse 10.2 to gain controll of the laptop,and it won't
    > autorun.I made sure the discs were in ISO form.When the disc is in the cdrom
    > it shows how big the disc is but it doesn't show how much space is
    > available.The memory shows that there's'2.34mb avaliable.I'm very new at
    > this Linux and don't really understand it yet. So,do you think you'ins' can
    > help me?

I have absolutely no idea what you just said there. In either case, you want to get the BIOS to load from the CDROM rather than the harddrive. How you'd do that is anyone's guess. You haven't even told us what model this laptop is.

    > ON Opensuse site it said if it didn't start auto to open Bios setup and go
    > from ther.I'm not sure how to do that ,or where to type in Bios.
    > Any help would be greatly welcomed and appreaciated!

See avove. We need more information.

-- Thomas Adam

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Faber J. Fedor [faber at linuxnj.com]

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:38:09 -0400

On 27/10/08 13:16 -0700, bill jones wrote:

    > Hello.

    > I need some help and I'm hoping you can do it.Ok,here goes.  I traded
    > a guy at work for an Apple laptop with Linux installed.

<snip>

    > ON Opensuse site it said if it didn't start auto to open Bios setup
    > and go from ther.I'm not sure how to do that ,or where to type in
    > Bios.

First off, you have an Apple laptop. The instructions you are reading (that refer to BIOS and the like) are for PCs. Apple laptops (of the recent variety, anyway) don't have a BIOS, they have a PROM which performs some of the similar functions as a BIOS on PCs but is completely different.

On a PC, you would boot the machine and watch the screen. You will see a message on it like 'F2 - Setup' and you would hit the F2 key and the would put you into the BIOS. You would then set the configuration to boot off of the CDROM. But you don't have a PC, you have an Apple and they do things differently.

On my Macbook, I boot off a CDROM by a) putting the CD into the drive, b) rebooting the machine, c) and hold down the 'c' key during the boot process.

As Thomas, said, we need more information on what kind of laptop you have, amongst other information before we can reliably help.

    --

    Regards,

    Faber Fedor
    President
    Linux New Jersey, Inc.
    908-320-0357
    800-706-0701

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Breen Mullins [breen.mullins at gmail.com]

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:32:49 -0700

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 3:38 PM, Faber J. Fedor <faber@linuxnj.com> wrote:

    >
    > On my Macbook, I boot off a CDROM by a) putting the CD into the drive,
    > b) rebooting the machine, c) and hold down the 'c' key during the
    > boot process.
    >
    > As Thomas, said, we need more information on what kind of laptop you
    > have, amongst other information before we can reliably help.

If you're not able to boot from the CD following Faber's hints, you may need to boot into Open Firmware. Googling on that phrase may also help.

    --
    Breen Mullins
    Menlo Park, Calif.

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