Evidently, the issue with something on the hardware of that HP 

consumer laptop preventing the SL7.2 live KDE  boot DVD from running may 

be correct.  The live DVD iso

worked on a Dell Latitude E5550, followed by a full install from the 7.2 

4 Gbyte install DVD iso.  As a consumer laptop, Dell did not put a DVD 

reader/burner on this

model and one is not available.  Using dd, I put each of the above 

mentioned 7.2 iso images on USB stick flash drives, and did the 

testing/install from there.  No issues,

everything works.  In the future, for problem cases, I will use Ubuntu 

LTS -- but as I have all of the applications, etc., already configured 

for SL 7, it was easier for me not

to have to "support" fundamentally different distros (e.g., yum for one, 

apt-get for the other).  I do want to thank all who assisted with this 

issue, including a detailed discussion

(off list) about Ubuntu LTS.  In that regard, having checked other 

comments on the web, it does appear that Ubuntu LTS is as "production" 

"hardened" as the EL family, and in

some ways is easier to maintain, there being no need to find multiple 

repositories to get the various development tools and applications as 

does EL (e.g. EPEL, ElRepo. etc.).



Yasha Karant