[EN] can't boot laptop

[tuxracer]

It's pretty pathetic that one can't boot up an old laptop.

A Thinkpad T500 w/ ATI Radeon 3670 card so this is the old one that is only supported by the OPEN SOURCE driver.  Should be inluded.

I tried other distros and although the screen flashed a mish-mash of colors, it at least kept booting.

The Siduction live media just kept flashing the messed up screen repeatedly.  

It's not the first time the 'sid' family had major problems with graphics.  :-/

Not impressed.  I was asked to check out some distros for someone and it's the only one that wouldn't boot.

[convbsd]

Hello

As you described the problem it seems that you have booted with default options.
You should add radeon.modeset=0 cheatcode when booting or to use boot with safe mode gfx option.
After that you should install firmware-linux-nonfree even in live mode before install siduction.

Greetings
convbsd

[cryptosteve]

If there is no real need to use your ATI card you should switch to the builtin intel card. That one works fine for me with my T500.

Btw, ATI card with cheatcodes also works well

[tuxracer]

radeon.modeset=0?

How come this is the only distro I have to do this?  Is it because the kernel/Xorg ver. is too recent or what?

I can log the same laptop into Debian Wheezy and Mepis, no problem.  Plus, Mint KDE.

I still get the 'screen haywire flicker' but at least, it moves on in the boot up.

I just thought there's still a ton of laptops with this hardware and the Radeon card only allows open drivers so I'm not sure why the 'code' is not included already?

Thanks for the info, though.

As for booting up in 'safe graphics mode', I find that rarely helps and that is my experience for several years regardless of the graphics hardware or distro.

[agaida]

and don't forget to activate non-free and apt-get install linux-firmware-nonfree. This could help with radeon.

[devil]

You do not need to mess with modeset, just choose the 2nd boot option and install what agaida said.

greetz
devil