Linux and Dell Inspiron

DC5_ITR

hey all

i have an dell inspiron 2500. it's about 2 years old with a 1GHz pentium 3 chip, a gig of RAM and XP Professional.

i had it dual booting XP Pro with Red Hat 8. however, in my quest to try and learn anything about linux, i installed "Fedora Core 3", replacing my RH8.

the problem is that, the display crashes religiously. i cannot see a thing. i nuked that partition thinking i'd put RH8 back on, but guess what - the display is still toast in RH8!!! bizarre. anyway, i searched the web and apparantly this is something to do with a BIOS update for that model dell laptop but nobody can find a solution to it.

just wondering if any of u peeps know how to fix this problem?

cheers
linux nub.

zoro

Hmmm - have you tried using the alternate video out port? Slap a VGA monitor onto it and see if it makes any difference?

It's likely that it wont, but it's best to just rule it out first

garthv

Did you try the Dell website for a BIOS update?

DC5_ITR

i already tried plugging it into an external CRT - to no avail - same problem as on the laptop display.

i have installed the latest BIOS update from the dell site for that model laptop also.

there was a page somewhere on red hat's support forum that had an updated graphics driver for this problem. but for some bizarre unknown reason, they took it down later. i was kinda hoping maybe someone might have had this problem and managed to grab the updated driver?

however, if anyone knows a solution - be appreciated.

actually - should i try a completely different install like SuSe or something???

zoro

Yeah the next step I'd recommend (as it's a new install anyway) is to try out another Distro to see if it's ok on that.

Give Ubuntu, SuSu, or any other one a go really.

tomk

Try a Live CD first - Knoppix or whatever.

DC5_ITR

i'm a linux nub so excuse this question, but what is a "Live CD"? is this a linux operating system that is bootable from a CD and requires no installation?

thanks for all the help peeps.

zoro

That's it exactly

If a generic distro on a live cd can't make your screen all pretty, then I'd suggest getting a service

DC5_ITR

Ok - I just ordered the Knoppix Live DVD 4.0.2 so hopefully it will work!

I came across this site that might be useful to some peeps in my travels:

http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/



Cheers

garthv

If you like Red Hat then I would go for Ubuntu if I was you

Kali

What graphics card is in the laptop?

I've CentOS 4 running perfectly here on a 2003 Pentium 4 Latitude (w/ ATI Radeon 7200)... couldn't get the display functioning in Debian at all... perhaps just try a new 2.6 kernel distro.

DC5_ITR

Kali

It's some crappy Intel on-board jobbie - w/e the stardard one was for that model. I don't have the laptop here so I can't check - it was something like Intel 815 or something.

I bought it for work back then and gaming was of no concern so I stuck with on-board graphics and sound.