[PLUG] Mandriva Installation Woes

John Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Fri May 20 03:57:39 UTC 2005


Dudes and dudettes, 

Installing Linux sux. 

OK, having figured out a lot of things from installing various distros 
(some several times), and having been taught how to burn a 
bootable ISO (thanks Russ), I installed Mandirva 2005 Limited 
Edition DVD.x86_64 this afternoon. 

After two and a half hours of installing, plus half an hour scrolling 
through the applications and deciding what I wanted, I got to the 
end and hit the Reboot button. 

It restarted and hung on "- No init found. Try passing init = options 
to kernel." 

I have no idea what the init options are, or whether they would be 
worth trying, let alone the syntax for how to enter them or where. 
No help menus available from this screen. I have a couple Linux 
books, but no index entries address this issue. Google also came 
up empy. Well, empty except for a thousand advertising sites. :( 


Mandriva full DVD from MandrivaClub was kind of my last hope for this 
Compaq R4000. I have tried Suse (did not recognize the video), Knoppix 
(dead keyboard and touchpad), Ubunto (ditto Knoppix), Gentoo (ditto 
Knoppix), and Mandriva. Mandriva was the free three-CD set. It found and 
configured everthing except the video and the wireless. I knew I could 
handle the wireless via Linuxant, if necessary. But the video was a sine 
qua non. 


Well, I have gone all the way through the installation and it won't even 
install. Should I call Bill Gates, offer an apology, and hope he'll let me 
install Windows XP that came with this laptop? 


After six hours trying to install, I am seriously frustrated. 



More information about the PLUG mailing list