I've now installed Linux as a dual boot on my system.
I've installed two different systems this morning and both of them have been succesful the first time around! The first one I did was Mandriva Free 2007, which is a free-speech free-beer distro, and therefore doesn't supply any firmware based drivers. After installation it had detected all hardware, but had not supplied drivers for the nvidia graphics card, my modem, printer or scanner. I easily installed the modem (under 5 minutes), but when I wanted to install the graphics driver I ran into problems, as the driver officially supplied from nvidia didn't support my kernel. I could not face any grievings after my XP experience yesterday, so I decided (rather un-scientific but pragmatic) to try another distribution with firmware.
As I'd already started with Mandriva, and decided to install the Mandriva One distro, which is a live distro (A Linux that will install and run directly from a CD, installation is then done after setting up hardware.) The initial boot up took a bit of time, but when I had a running system I realised that it had detected all of my hardware and furthermore automatically installed all drivers except for the printer. Unfortunately when I startedmanual installation it told me that it didn't have a driver. Further investigation showed that the Dell 725 color printer doesn't provide a Linux nor Mac driver… D*mn you Dell!! Well it was a printer we got for free when my wife boughther laptop, and we have been disgusted with it planning to buy a new one in January.
But everything else is running smoothly out of the box, even my scanner is scanning. The 3D effects provided with the xserver (gui system) is simply wicket!!
Compared to the Windows Installation process I must say that the Mandriva One installation was MUCH smoother and except for the printer it detected and installed correct drivers for all my hardware. If I'd had my old printer (A HP printer) it probably would have detected that automatically (it was on their list), but that doesn't really count. The XP installation was easier than the Mandriva Free 2007 installation, but it installed a mis-fitting driver for my ATA harddrive controller, which I'm very unimpressed by (the old XP SP1 installation did that correctly, the only good thing to say about that installation), but with the help of driveragent.com it was still a better experience…
The Mandriva Free 2007 distro was quite annoying to install, as I had to install all the firmware from the "Terminal" which by most ordinary users would be a turn off. That my kernel wasn't supported by nvidia was just the nail in the coffin!
The XP SP1 installation was by far the worst experience, as it simply did not work! I was flooded with all kind of nasties from the second I started my modem, even with proberly installed firewall and Anti virus.
