[NTLUG:Discuss] Does Windows from a partitioning focus control Linux compatibility issues

[Ralph Green]

Allen,
  The wireless problem might require you to connect briefly with a wired
connection in order to get the wireless setup.  Linux can't ship some of
the wireless drivers because the wireless driver licenses do not allow
it.  In other cases, the wireless drivers are not shipped because they
are really wrapped Windows drivers.  Picky people like me don't want
those drivers.  You did not say what kind of wireless nic your Toshiba
has.  You can run the lspci command to find out.  If it is a wireless
nic that is poorly supported in Linux, it is fairly cheap to get a
better one.  Used wireless nic on eBay are often under $20 shipped.  You
do need to get one with the same bus as provided by your Laptop.  It
would probably be Mini-PCI or mini-PCIe.

 I think deleting that hidden partition causes Windows to not work
right, but that is 2nd hand information, and maybe somebody else will
comment.  You may not have even asked this, but I was not sure.

 If you remove Windows and start from scratch, you should be able to
easily double or triple boot.  Linux distros tend to cooperate fairly
well.  Remember that you can share the swap partition among them, since
only one at a time will access it.  There can be up to 7 partitions in
the classic partition setup, so you could have up to 6 Linux systems to
boot from.  And, if you want to experiment with the GPT, there is a much
larger limit.
Good luck,
Ralph

On Fri, 2011-07-29 at 14:34 -0400, Allen wrote:
>  f experiencing the pleasure of many distributions.
> With the Toshiba so far I have only been able to install 10.04 in a dual boot process wirelessly.
> My question is would this incompatibility change if I removed Win 7 as an OS along with removing the hidden partition identified as recovery
> and then proceeded to re-partition extended and attempt to load Suse and any other distros I choose