Fedora-Live-Workstation-x86_64-21-5 on Alienware laptop

[Kenneth Marcy]

On 1/25/2015 5:46 PM, don fisher wrote:
> I have an Alienware 17-1 laptop that I would like to run Fedora linux 
> on. The laptop has 2TB of disk, 32GB  of ram and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 
> 880M graphics, so I thought it would make a great development 
> platform. I inserted the Fedora live DVD and booted. It asked If I 
> wanted to check the disk, which I did. Next I started Fedora. It got 
> to the point where the fedora logo is on the screen, and then 
> disappeared. The fans came on, so I assumed it was doing something, 
> but after about 5 minutes the system appeared to be still in the same 
> state.

I don't have an Alienware machine to replicate your experience, but if 
your machine's BIOS has UEFI components, that might be a clue. Turn them 
off, and try again.  Or not, as you prefer.

> In the past there has been an install image that is about 4.3GB large 
> that guides the installation. I cannot find an similar image for F21. 
> I have been away for awhile, so if this is well known please forgive 
> me. I looked at the documentation and did not see any mention.

Another distribution, Mageia, has a recent set of beta 2 disks (one for 
KDE4, one for GNOME, and one for x86_64) for its fifth major release.  
The KDE4 and GNOME disks are Live-DVDs, and the x86_64 is a Core Release 
disk (3,776 MB).  If you have a DSL or better connection, you can have a 
fully-updated beta 2 installation of the next full release (Mageia 5) 
after a modest number of download hours for the Core Release and the 
development updates in the last couple of weeks.

Fair-warning: the Mageia developers are testing their extensions of the 
EFI booting process with this development release, so installation with 
your machine's default BIOS may go smoothly, or it may have to be 
returned to a legacy state for the installation.  I don't have an 
Alienware machine, so I can't tell you for certain. You can find more 
distribution information from

the DistroWatch.com page, http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08770

or from the beta 2 page of the Mageia.org website: 
https://www.mageia.org/en/5/


Ken