First post on the forum and of course it contains a bit of a problem. I'm hoping that someone on this forum can help me out a bit. I have a Dell Studio 1737 Laptop. I'm guessing the specs would be of some help determining the problem, but I'm not sure what specs you (the forum audience) would be looking for. If someone could tell me what specs are needed, I'll post them as soon as I can. Now on to what the problem actually is. I'm a bit of a linux newbie... I've only dabbled in shell scripting and have only used Fedora 12 (on the schools computer) and eeeBuntu on my eeePC. Those distros ran perfectly with no problems whatsoever. But trying to install any distro on my Dell laptop I've run into quite a few problems. I've tried out Linux Mint 9, Debian 5, OpenSUSE 11.2 (I believe that is the right number), Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, & 10.04, DreamLinux 3.5 and Fedora 12 & 13. I have several problems with each distro, and all of the distros yield the same problem. OpenSUSE during the install process on the live CD, during the part where you put in your account information the only thing that I can do is 'tab' to the other fields to enter the information for the rest of the install. And once it boots the mouse (USB and touchpad) do not respond to any clicks or dragging, and the keyboard won't let me do anything but ctrl-alt-f2. And I do not know enough where ctrl-alt-f2 would be any help. With the other distros, normally either after logging in to 20 minutes later all I can do is ctrl-alt-f2, the touchpad, usb mouse, and keyboard seem to have no functionality. Either this will happen with a window open (if a window is open, I cannot drag the window, control the scrollbar, or click on anything) and if no window is open nothing will happen.

I'm not sure how to solve this problem, I've been searching on how to fix this for a while now and after about 3 months of wondering I finally decided that I need to ask, how do I fix this random "freezing" and the like? I really would like to be able to use linux primarily, I've grown tired of windows. The only thing that I want to use windows for is for playing a few PC games. And use linux for everything else. I am dual-booting, I had forgotten to mention that before hand. I have a 250gb part for windows7 and around 70gb for a linux part.

I hope that someone can help! Thanks.

As for specs, age, cpu details, ram, hd, & mebbe video card are all we would like.

It strikes me it's going slow, which would perhaps be no swap file or low ram. Especially if you load kde or aome other bloatware and the box is old. Try and distinguish between things not happening, and happening slowly. I've never installed half the distros you mention, but installs are slow.

Age -- Brand new May 21, 2009...so it's a little bit more than a year old now.
CPU -- Intel Core 2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz, 2401 Mhz, 2 Cores
Ram -- 4GB DDR2(Not sure if more information is needed)
HD -- 320GB (Not sure if more information is needed)
Video Card -- Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family (I looked in the linux distro and I believe there is a Mesa GM45 or something or rather driver for video installed)

How would I see if there is a swap file on the install? And I'm sure I would have to re-install to put a swap to use. Which is fine, I've only done the system update so I have no real data to save. I just want this random "freezing" and such to go away, and maybe if there is a Linux distro that I haven't tried that would work better I would give that a go as well.

Thanks.

run fdisk -l as root. It will show your drives. Swap drives should be type 82. It should be listed in /etc/fstab as swap

My HP with crappy SIS graphics has a "freezing" problem with 99% of distros
mine is related to the graphics I believe
I must use a special vesa xorg.conf with almost all distros

If you wish; try running fathom's Slax Remix
http://www.slax.org/forum.php?action...parentID=62815
off usb/cd and
choose graphical boot
when the desktop loads open a terminal and do

and copy/paste that into your next post
I only say SlaxRemix as it's small, up-to-date, and can be manually installed if you wish

Does the screen ever "crack", like it looks like broken glass?

To set up your touchpad you may find this useful.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...90#post7474290
As there is an interaction between the various input devices (touchpad, USB mouse, keyboard), you may find that getting the touchpad to work correctly will also help with the USB mouse and keyboard.

For what its worth, I have the same machine Dell Studio 1737
I downloaded the UBU 10.4 Desktop AMD64 ISO because the studeio 1737 is a 64 bit machine. and it runs great as the Demo. Will try the install later.

@business_kid I installed 10.04 Ubuntu and made sure the swap was set at 4GB, no more worries with the swap.
@linus I tried out Slax, but I could not connect it to my WiFi. Slax said it was connected, but internet, updates, etc. didn't work. I'll do the command in ubuntu and post the results afterwards. And no, the screen never "cracks" it's just keyboard, usb mouse, and touchpad functionality that is the main problem/only problem.
@allend haven't had time yet with work to test out the link that you posted, I'll let you know how it goes once that is complete.
@john I installed Ubuntu 10.04 (even after trying it in the past to see if it would work) the no functionality of the mouse and keyboard still happens.