Yes I did mean install and not reinstall. I find it peculiar that you have had this problem with multiple Linux distros. I was unaware of the errata that you mentioned, but as you noted, this was only in a small albeit growing minority.
I confess I'm mystified too. I've sat down with Linux geeks though, and spent a lot of time on forums, and noone's ever figured out a fundamental problem with the machine (other than being a laptop, and laptops being much more problematic than desktops). Anything specific we've actually figured out has turned out to be a known bug in the distro. (One of the good things about Mandriva is the errata page on the wiki, so finding out about known bugs was much less of an ordeal than with other distros.) This is annoying tho, considering one of the main reasons I bought a ThinkPad is that it was supposed to be more compatible with Linux than other laptops.
E.g. I spent a couple of weeks hanging around at the OLPC office in Boston last year, and a guy who contributes to the Linux kernel explained to me that thanks to a buggy Intel wireless driver, the only way to get my wifi connection to work reliably was to use a distro with an older kernel. (Thankfully that's been fixed as of late 2008.)
Unfortunately I'm now in a remote location with no geeks to consult in person.
I figured that if you were able to install and run gnome as well as gdm, that there shouldnt be a reason why you wouldn't be able to reinstall openbox.
This thread suggests that you have a Gnome error and suggests a Gnome install.
I've never installed anything from command line, but for want of other options, I'll give it a try. Not today - I'm staying with the Crunchbang LiveCD as I need to work.
This thread indicates that the problem may be with PCmanFM.
PCmanFM works fine when running on LiveCD.
This may be unrelated, but what speed are you burning the ISO? Perhaps you could try to burn the #! iso @ the lowest speed and then do a Guided Install. If that works, then the problem is your burner and the Live CD's.
I already ran the check CD option on loading the LiveCD, and there were no errors reported - so, is there still a doubt about it? (I burned the CD on a Windows machine where I was staying last week, so a problem there wouldn't explain the pattern of problems).
You can check your hard drive for errors via a tool from the manufacture website, although you would have to be using Windows. I don't know how to check the Linux hard drive for errors offhand, but I'm sure that you can Google that and find a suitable solution.
A Linux admin guy I met in Dec 2008, when I was still in the middle of my Ubuntu hassles, burned some kind of utility to LiveCD, to check something on my machine... can't remember if it was the hard disk though. He was, as with others, mystified, as Ubuntu was working well for him.
What happens when you get to xterm and you type sudo gdm? Or are you unable to do that?
I tried, and got:
gdm[6018]: WARNING: GDM already running. Aborting!
GDM already running. Aborting!
Also, when you boot up #!, if you hit esc I believe you can go into the recovery mode. Have you tried that?
I tried it, on your suggestion. I tried a few options, including some checking (no errors reported), and something about fixing the x window manager (it was yesterday - can't remember exactly). When I rebooted I got the same error.
Thanks
Learning Linux slowly because I'm busy with
Appropedia
