Any advice regarding putting Linux on my nice Dell laptop?

Johnny Versace

Hey all,

I recently got a Dell laptop. It's an Inspiron, Centrino 1.5 ghz with DVD, CD Burner, Wide Screen, all the other usual stuff.

I want to stick Linux on it. Does anyone know a non-painful way to do this, or can they point me towards a website with reasonable step by step instructions?

Thanks

regi

Maybe Fedora? Its got arguably the easiest and friendliest installer and usually does rather well at detecting hardware. Unfortunately, you might need to download up to 3 CDs worth to install the software you'll want.

Dan

Red Alert

If you're lucky it'll have an NVIDIA graphics subsystem which has extremely good Linux support, other than that the only hassle you might have is the internal modem.

leeroybrown

Fedora and Mandrake probably have the easiest installers. (I'd go for Fedora if I were you)

I don't use Fedora myself but it seems grand. FC1 (Fedora Core 1) is the current version, although I think FC2test1 was recently released. Afaik FC2 will be finally released in early to mid April (theres no doubt an official date on the site). Tou should be able to install FC1 now and easily upgrade when FC2 is ready.

The most important piece of advice is to backup any important data on the laptop before you install. These modern installers are almost 100% foolproof but they still give you an opportunity to do something stupid (A friend once clicked "Server Install" on RedHat instead of "Desktop" and accidentally proceeded with the full reformat of his HDD and project work).

Karoma

backup.
try a "live!" version (ie: one that runs from CD, doesn't require formatting/partitioning. see SuSe, et al.)
backup.
you could google for your model+linux : there's a lot of txt's out there written by people who've installed linux on their machine... example
...and in case i forgot... backup!

Rambo

Here what I did to install fedora on my laptop

might help you a little

http://homepage.eircom.net/%7Etrevorodunne/Laptop.html

nadir

just make sure you compile your own kernel there is actually specific dell laptop support, but i doubt it would be built in by default, check it out for sure

leeroybrown

As it's a Centrino check what the best settings will be to make the most of the battery considering thats it's main bonus. Fedora is very up to date and as such should have all the things necessary to maximise your battery life.

THe wireless part of the Centrino system may be a bit of work if you want to get it to work. Afaik, it's not currently kernel supported any you will probably have to use 3rd party kernel drivers to get it working.

Rambo

forgot to say about the battery life on my laptop I got nearly an extra
40min on the battery time using ferdora then windows XP

Johnny Versace

Thank you all for the advice. I've decided to go with fedora.

I have XP on my laptop and NO partitions. Is there any free software out there which will allow me to partition my drive without having to lose XP?

Cheers.

Ryaner

The installer should allow you to do it and not effect windows. You just end up with the boot loader at the end of it.

One thing no one suggest is a program called VMware. Just tried it out lately. Run linux inside windows (or any other os) as a virtual machine in a window. Could be useful depending on what you want the machine for.

savemejebus

xfdisk is supposed to be a good partition tool

briano

You might have seen this already, I found it quite useful when I was installing RH9i on a Dell 500m

http://projects.nudieman.com/500m/

There are a couple of patches for the graphics card and what not here.

smiles

Hey,

I installed Fedora Core 1 in January on a Dell Inspiron 2600 (it currently dual boots with Win2k pro because i thought i'd only use fedora the odd time) -- I was wrong, I use fedora for practically everything. Only thing I miss is paint shop pro.... (yes I know the Gimp is great.... but it isn't intuitative to me... I guess I'll try to figure it out soon enough).

I've had essentially no problems, and I'm a complete newb. My biggest problem was to get a packaging manager to work -- working behind a proxy that timeouts & disconnects every 30 mins is _painful_ ....

Defragment your comp before you do anything, use partition magic or something similar to make a swap partition & linux partition.

I'd recommend that you dual boot to start with anyway, also chart what you're doing as you go along ... find a command that you wanted and keep it in a file somewhere (the amount of times I've open the same txt file because i keep forgetting what does what).

You'd be surprised at how easy it is to switch over and not want to go back. I can honestly say I've only booted into window a dozen times in the last 3 months. (and most of those were when i was dependent on a phone line connection at home.... ugggg winmodem)

I found the easiest way to learn things was to pick a task ... something that you want to be able to do and then go about making it happen.

Good luck
<< Fio >>

Paulw

My advice - call Dell. They used to support/supply Redhat for machines, so they're bound to have some knowledge.

Their tech guys can be very good.

maxheadroom

Originally posted by Paulw
My advice - call Dell. They used to support/supply Redhat for machines, so they're bound to have some knowledge.

Their tech guys can be very good.

AFAIK - support for consumer machines is handled from India, so once you mention "linux" they'll give you the 2we don't support that" line and hang up.

leeroybrown

TuxMobil is a site specifically about installing Linux on laptops. It should have lots of information about any issues you might encounter with yours.

Paulw

Originally posted by maxheadroom
AFAIK - support for consumer machines is handled from India, so once you mention "linux" they'll give you the 2we don't support that" line and hang up.

And there was I thinking that I once worked for Dell in Bray on their tech support desk. I guess I must have been in India instead.

Actually, their tech support desk goes with the clock, so there's 24hr support. Depending on the time you call determines which helpdesk center you get.

Never hurts calling and asking for their advice.

maxheadroom

Originally posted by Paulw
And there was I thinking that I once worked for Dell in Bray on their tech support desk. I guess I must have been in India instead.

Actually, their tech support desk goes with the clock, so there's 24hr support. Depending on the time you call determines which helpdesk center you get

How long ago? I worked there in sales 2 years ago, and they had definitely moved tech support by then - my customers kept ringing me and complaining about it. Business (all that client gold stuff etc - I never had to deal with it) and I think public sector were in cherrywood.

Captain Trips

Read up fully on the filesystems before installing. Laptop HDs can be problematic with the newer Ext3/ReiserFS/XFS systems.

Ext3 will access the HD quite regularly, due to nature of jfs and will fux0r battery life. Basically, a journaling filesystem which will be the default (probably - I haven't used the latest Mandrake or other "user-friendly" distros lately) on several distros needs to access the HD constantly. Some laptop HDs fiddle with standard ATA protocols, etc., and might not perform a write directly.

Basically, use ext2 unless you absolutely need a journalling system. It will be hell getting your suspend features and to be sure of the laptop HD not dumping the HD cache before power off.

Yadda yadda it's complicated and I don't understand all the details myself, but go with ext2 as it's a better bet on a laptop where you need portability and battery life.

JustHalf

NTFS is also a journalled file-system. Does this exhibit the same problems?

I have a horrible feeling that XP laptops are coming formatted with FAT32 partitions, with a "convert to NTFS" button on the desktop.

I'm just hoping you're exageratting the problem, because journalled file-systems are far more reliable than their predecessors. I'm going to be getting a laptop quite soon, and I'd prefer to use a journalled FS in XP and Linux / BSD.

harney

Mandrake is pretty easy to install and it comes as the cover DVD on Linux Format this month (€11) - Mandrake 10 with the 2.6 Kernel, steep but easier then downloading if you dont have broadband.

I had ver 9 installed on an advant laptop without too many issues, so the latest versions should be even easier.

Mandrake comes with a feature that will resize your existing windows partition "without" :ninja: the loss of data (inserting disclaimer now).

fenris

Try loading up the Knoppix live cd first, then you will know if everything works okay for you under Linux, if everything is okay (sound can be a bitch on laptops) then either do a HD install or take note of the hardware as identified by knoppix and use that info to resolve any issues with other distributions HW identification.

Knoppix seems to be exceptionally good at identifying laptop hardware.

Dell laptops tend to be very good for linux installation, I have installed SuSE (best for networking), Redhat (most troublesome on both network and sound), Slackware and mandrake on my CPx 500GT at various times over the last few years, currently I have the Knoppix HD install, with win2k on my work partition.

raphaelS

Originally posted by fenris

Knoppix seems to be exceptionally good at identifying laptop hardware.

I confirm that, Knoppix is the only live CD that works straight out of the "CD" on my I8000, even my Wifi D-link card was ok!
Mandrake Live was stuck with the graphic card...

Raphael

IronMan

Again I also recommend Knoppix, everything worked right away on my laptop except the winmodem. All the extra buttons for launching mail-apps and so forth worked fine. I eventually did a full install, again no problems, but it doesn't come with a partition manager so you'd have to sort that out first.

savemejebus

any problems with passwords on that install?