Laptops, Corel and Linux, Oh my...

Background:
Have Toshiba Satellite Pro 430 CDT on which I had successfully installed
Caldera OL 2.3 w/PCMCIA support and had successfully connected to our home
network. Graphic sucked a little (400x640 or something like that). So, it
worked.

A friend bought the Corel Linux w/WP8. I tried to install it and it took a
dump at 98% of the installation. Tried fdisking the MBR and disk and
reinstalling several times, using several different installation
configurations but it hung at 98% each time (I even left it for 1/2 hour to
make sure I wasn't rushing it...). I tried using the original CD-Rom's (I'd
been using copies) with the same result.

We tried installing on my friend's Toshiba Tecra 4070 with the same
result...nada.

I don't have a regular machine upon which to install this version of Linux
at this time.

I had read somewhere that the Corel version of Linux was good on laptops. I
know that the graphics during installation were much better than the
Caldera version (the Corel auto configured my graphics card/chipset,
something I had to do manually in Caldera).

Any ideas on what's causing the hang up and, if I can't get the Corel
version up and running, is there any reason you can think of that would
prevent me from installing WordPerfect 8 onto a machine with Caldera or RH
Linux on it?

Thanks in advance,
Tim