Hello,

I have a Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook E8020 series and I have trouble
installing Linux on it. I've tried Mandrake 10.1, but it complains
about the SATA MHT 2080BH driver, and does not install.

Can you please point me to a Linux distribution compatible with this laptop?


Thanks!

Try FreeBSD (freebsd.org).  You will be much more happier with it then
Linux.  Believe me.

However, here are some other flavors of Linux where you can look up to
see what hardware they support, etc.

Centos
Fedora
Debian (The only one I would ever use if I had to use Linux)
SuSE
Slackware
Gentoo

But please, try FreeBSD.  It even has a Linux binary compatibility option.

I just installed Novell Linux Desktop 9 (SuSE 9) on a Fujitsu Lifebook
B Series last week.

Since the PCMCIA device is not working I had to create 6 floppy disks
and boot from floppy and then do a network install to get it working. 
The Lifebook B series cannot boot from a USB CDROM drive -- only a
PCMCIA CDROM or USB floppy drive.

I am having a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo laptop that I purchased two months
ago. I partitioned the hard drive and installed Fedora Core 4 to dual
boot with Windows XP SP2. It works like a charm. But for the fact that
it does not recognise my DVD and thinks its a CD read-write, I havent
had any issues with Fedora Core 4. My Fedora Core 4 also talks to my
desktop computer running Windows XP SP2 and uses that machine to
connect to the Internet.

I am quite happy with it. 

If you want to make sure that your laptop is compatible with Linux at
all, Novell's Suse professional comes with a DVD boot version freely
available for download and testing compatibility. It runs directly
from the DVD without installing on your hard drive. You can also
purchase that version for a couple of dollars/sterling on Ebay, which
is what I did before I downloaded Fedora from the Red Hat site.

Hope this helps.

Sesh

Hey Bud,

I've the same laptop and I got linux running on it like a charm. :)

Anyway, I encountered the same problem with the SATA, and I had to
switch off the Advanced controller option in the BIOS. Have a look,
one of those options that relate to the SATA subsystem allows you to
put it into a condition that allows you to install and boot (I imagine
any linux would be fine at that point)

One caveat though, have a copy of the WinXP cd around when you do
this, as I had to reinstall it after the BIOS change. My data and
applications were fine, I guess it just didn't auto-configure to the
new mode of SATA operation (PATA compatibility mode?) that I set in
the BIOS...

Hope this helps E8020 owners... :)

Sem