So far it's not going too well. I've tried a couple of distros and variants. Here is what I've been doing so far...
Fedora 8 installed but froze severely on the post boot load (I saw grub).
CentOS installed didn't like my existing user drive.
Then I tried four types of Ubuntu (the current Gutsy). The regular Ubuntu and Kubuntu froze while trying to run /etc/rc.local. I spent the entire afternoon and evening trying the Ubuntu alternate. It installed but when it was time for the reboot (default option) it froze at the same location as the live CDs. I was able to get into recovery mode without any problems. After disabling a whole bunch of power management, bluetooth, and laptop stuff (even so it was still convinced my mini-tower is drawing power from a battery) I was able to get to a user account text prompt. Now I'll admit I prefer text mode but some of the things I do require a GUI.
Since I have a working Mac I was not in much of a panic. From Google I found there may be a little trouble with the Radeon 7000 video card (go figure...). I saved the old xorg.conf and replaced it with one which was working with the Gutsy Beta. It then complained about no device. I fiddled around with it a little more and got to the point where it complained about no screens. After merging the two files it ended up at the point where it said it found screens but none were usable.
By this time the Kubuntu alternate was down and burned. I installed it and it looks like it's going to be more of the same.
I figure I have a reasonable number of options at this point. - Ask the group here for advice (I may ask again on Tuesday). - Go back to the Gutsy Beta. Possibly update from there. - Go back to Feisty. - Go back to FC 2 (I dislike anything newer in this distro). - Install Free BSD.
Has anybody had this problem and fixed it? Is there anything I have missed? I gather there are problems with the update from previous installs as well.
Here is some info on the setup. Plenty of hard drive and RAM. An Athlon 1800XP+ processor. An OEM ATI Radeon 7000 video card. All this stuff was working with older installs. This is mostly a workstation dual booting into Windows ME on the same drive (only for games). The sole user account is on a separate (larger) hard drive so I'm not really worried about things messing up too badly. Obviously I wouldn't want a solution which would take over the entire system.
I'd better stop now otherwise I'd end up writing a whole lot more. ;-)
Later Mike