I tried installed Ubuntu 5.04 and Slamd 64 on this laptop, but while it was booting, it hang after I press enter at the boot option, leaving the screen blank and empty. Do you guys has any idea, or have any of you had any experience with this kind of laptop?

Thanks.

You might try to burn a copy of Knoppix and print the cheat codes. Cheat codes are boot commands that affect the boot process. They are in a txt file in the same dir as the iso. You can eliminate one by one what ever hardware or features like ACPI that might hang the boot. Then apply this fix to Ubuntu.

Two choices:

1) You need to run the installer "nofb" (no frame buffer). With Fedora, you get a boot prompt from the installer and you can enter boot options like this. Not sure with the distros you mentioned. Check the distro installation docs.

2) Use an external monitor and use the change display buttons to point the video out to the external monitor.

I'm currently running FC4 x86_64 on a zv6015. Once you get past the installation, most everything works fine. You'll need to use ndiswrapper if you want to get the wireless LAN working. Also, on my system, the "lid close" button has been known to stick in the down position causing the system to think the lid is closed and the display gets blanked. Took a while to notice (I assumed it was something complictaed) but at least its easy to check for. Also, the PCMCIA slot doesn't work under Linux but this appears to be a known issue with the 2.6 kernel.

I own the HP zv6000 laptop. So for the most part am I stuck having to use Fedora? I've read other threads about this model and it soulds like Fedora is having the lease issues when it comes to installing and usablity.

Oh and the fact the graphics card is ATI, will that completely screw me over? I'd like to have a few hassels as possible, that and I'm still learning Linux and I couldnt get a nVidia option on this to begin with.

I was able to get gentoo to install but I couldn't get my Xorg.conf file sorted out since I couldn't find any specs for things like refresh rates for the built-in flat screen. I'm guessing that other distros will work but, as per my previous post, you need to dig up how to do the equivalent of passing in nofb or find a distro that does a strictly text installation (a bunch of them actually shift to a graphics mode so they can show a logo during the install even though the output is otherwise all text).

If you go the Fedora route, be sure to check out the livna repository. You'll find some pre-built RPMs for getting the ATI video working that are a lot easier than messing around with trying to install the original ATI packages. They also have RPMs for ndiswrapper and some other stuff that makes life a lot easier.

There is a guide on installing Fedora Core 4 in a zv6015us at ensode.net.

For the past week I was beginning to think that I would have to install FC or Gentoo on this thing... low and behold, I figured out how to get the AMD64 flavor of Debian GNU/Linux to install - everytime I went through the installation phase it would hang at some random package, stating that it could not install it off of the cdrom (and this was just the base installation!) and the kernel would complain about lost interrupts on the cdrom drive. So after getting the latest ISO and booting that, I decided to recheck the md5sums on the ISO and on the CDrom. I hit alt-f2 and cd /cdrom where I checked files in ./pool against md5sum.txt and, low and behold, they were checking out alright. I went back to alt-f1 and tried to verify the CD again - this time it made it all the way through, I tried the base install again and it WORKED! The problem is at the kernel-level, but I am not sure what exactly is wrong, but here's a basic rundown: the 64bit module ide-cd has issues contending with the IDE controller module keeping an IRQ - it loses it sometimes on a single thread. By logging in on the second terminal and putting a second thread process (ie. BASH) accessing the cdrom device, the other thread could continue on unabated. If I knew more about writing kernel code I would submit a patch. Alas, that is not the case. But that is how I got Debian AMD64 to install on an HP Pavilion zv6000.

got a HP zv6000 100 GIG hd that I partioned to run linux and Xp Pro that it came with for now, may try the 64 bit version later hope to know what Im doing in Linux so I dont "HAVE"to :P.
Any way I burned the 4 ISOs of slamd64 and had issues with disc 3&4 trying to do full install so I did a base install. startx worked right off the bat ATI 200M but no 3d I am sure (havent even tried yet) the wifi took a lil bit of time but even that was fairly easy. I would defently recomend trying it again. If you allready havent. Let me know if you hit any snags Im n00b but would love to try and help.

-free

Thanks.
This is really great news. I will give Slamd64 a try, since I am really fond of Slackware. Currently, mine is running by the Fedora Core 4, and so far it work pretty good.

One problem so far: after I install Mathematica on it, Mathematica could not work. I don't know why. Other than that, no complaint.

I am using thte Compaq R4000 (same laptop as the HP) with Debian amd64. The only problems I am having is with the video.

Also, check out the ZV6000 forums there is some good distribution info there.

moosedaddy nice link for the zv6000 love it! Still reading through all the info. Hope I can get the ATI stuff to work.



-free

After trying all other, I was able to load SuSe10.1 x86_64 on my machine. All seems to be working fine except for the WLAN. I have not tried ndiswrapper yet. But all seems to be working with LAN fine.

Vector Linux OK for HP pavilion zv5000

@ subaroka, This thread was last posted in about 11 years ago. It's not good to post in old threads.