Red Hat

I have an older laptop the "management" wants me to use instead of buying something that works. Not an antique but a couple years old. An HP with Turion AMD CPU, ATI video. When I try to install in graphical mode, it hangs after package selection. Doesn't matter whether I select server or workstation or customize. Just always hangs with the mouse frozen. If I try in text mode it hangs very early in the process with "panic occurred, switching back to text console." It was already in text mode. Windows installs just fine.

Before I toss it, any ideas? Thanks.

What version are you installing? And 32-bit, or 64-bit? Try the 64-bit if you haven't.

Trying to install RHEL 6.3. 64 bit. Never had problems with Intel but never tried it on an AMD. I ultimately need it set up for software development but can't get anything to install.

I maybe have a hint now. The disk was new and unformatted. The Linux install had no complaints when it was formatting. But, I just tried to install Windows on top and it kept insisting that there were two partitions totaling 250G. It's only a 160G drive. Something odd there.

This post is just too vague.
Please mention the exact make and model of the laptop and the exact version of RHEL.
Please mention the exact version (to the decimal place) of Microsoft Windows and establish some context for installing Microsoft Windows and mention the commands you typed to produce the adverse numbers.

the AMD issue is a red herring. Both AMD and Intel are x86 compatible. In fact, AMD had 64bit support for x86 well before intel decided to adopt AMD's standard.

I think you may have an issue with the laptop.

The laptop will load and run Win XP, Win7 32-bit and Fedora 17 (either 32 or 64-bit). It just won't load RedHat. Have not tried a full manual install but the most current RHEL 6.3 distribution DVD just hangs halfway through- either 32 or 64-bit. Text or graphical install. So much for the theory of buying a supported version because it's more reliable/stable than open-source. Not. HP Pavillion DV-5000, 2G RAM, 160G IDE HD, ATI video, AMD Turion. A fairly run-of-the-mill laptop. Not new but not yet scrap. No memory or disk errors.

Have you tried to install CentOS?

If you want the support specifically, you could look at Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with support from Canonical.