Linux Distro Distress

I've been trying for the last couple of days to install a linux distro on Parallels 1970 on my new MBP2.33 (Core 2 Duo), 10.4.8. So far, I've tried:

Ubuntu (6.06 & 6.10)
Debian
Gentoo

And I can't get a single one of them to do the whole installation. Basically the same problem on each, I can get the machine booted for the install CD image, but then at some point in the installation before it's completed the install will hang. I also get problems with even booting on some memory settings for the virtual machine, e.g. 512Mb will boot, 668Mb won't.

Anyone running the same hardware / software stetup that can recommend a distro that will work?

Thanks,
Ian

 

I installed a couple of distros early on - Fedora Core 3 and 5, and an Ubuntu - but I haven't installed one since I upped to build 1970. I had been meaning to try out CentOS anyway, so your post prompted me to see if it would install OK. I downloaded the single DVD torrent and fired up a new VM with 512MBytes RAM and the defautt 8GBytes disk, I attached the downloaded DVD iso (the i386 build), and started the installation. I configured a server, and added a few graphical extras, let it run, and went off to do other things, When I came back to that window it was finished.

So absolutely no problems here, and it seems to be running fine. My setup isn't the same as yours, but I doubt if the differences are enough to matter.

[PS] I should add that my existing Fedora and Ubuntu installations are still operational, the above was simply a dual-purpose exercise to check out CentOS and to verify that I can still install a distro in build 1970. Note that all my installs have used downloaded single-DVD images, I think. I certainly haven't burnt any onto physical CDs or DVDs, but may have used a magazine-attached Ubuntu single-disk installer at one point.