Resurrection, part 2

I'm now part of a team that's deploying Ubuntu in an educational environment. It's pretty exciting, especially since we know that we're making a difference in spreading Linux.

The units came two weeks ago, and our Ubuntu 6.10 disks wouldn't boot up. Nor would the 6.02. Not even the 5.10 or 5.04. Wha?!

And, like the very curious experience with my laptop (see previous post), Windows98 and WindowsXP both installed on the units.

So we tried Fedora. Same problem.

Then SLAX. It worked! (Why?!)

UbuntuForums had the answer.

Apparently, the onboard video controller was a UniChrome Pro P4M800, which had poor drivers for GNU/Linux. All we had to do was edit the xorg.conf file to lessen the refresh settings available. It's magic.

Now we've fully deployed Edgy Eft on all units, save for three which had hardware problems.

Lesson learned: check for compatibility with hardware.