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December 6th, 2003 01:00
suse linux professional 9.0 and inspiron 8100
hello. i was wondering if some members could give me their opinions/experiences?
i want to install linux on my laptop and have narrowed the distribution down to suse 9.0 (also considered latest mandrake and redhat distributions). my worry is whether the installation will go smoothly or not? i was hoping that maybe someone more experienced and braver than myself has already given it a try and would care to share his/her thoughts. in particular, i am interested in what hardware installed smoothly and which had the most problems (and hence required special downloads and commands to install properly). my hardware is listed in my sig. hypothetical (if i had "hardware x" then "what" would happen) comments are also welcome.
also, if i am just totally off my rocker for choosing suse professional 9.0, then please let me know which might be better (and why)- i am eager to learn!
thanks, edward
Message Edited by esl537 on 12-05-2003 09:27 PM
GreyMack
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December 14th, 2003 06:00
I was leaning toward Mandrake 9.2 (easiest install?) myself, but I haven't yet made the jump. I thought I'd do some more research as an excuse to postpone performing another back-up of all my data. It looks like there will be a lot of development in the near future, so maybe now would be a great time to get familiar with some Unix command lines, the folder system and the two main GUI's. I'm just now looking at Mozilla, though I'm afraid I don't really understand how to easily and effectively assure my privacy and security on the net. I've got my IE locked down pretty tight, and I run a lot of protection. I'm just wondering if Mozilla is as succeptable to browser hijackers and such, and if I'll need to learn the equivalent of "editing the registry".
I understand there were some problems with the nVida's that might still reqiure a visit to their web site to download the driver, and the wireless set-up is still beyond my comprehension, so maybe the only help I can offer is to say I hope all goes well. Keep us posted.
GM
Inspiron 8100 / 866MHz PIII M / 815 Chipset
30GB Travelstar HD / 8x4x24 CD-RW
15" UXGA / nVida Gforce 2Go
ORiNOCO Wireless RG-1000 / PCMCIA Card
Windows ME / Intermittent Explorer 6.0
Norton SystemWorks / ZoneAlarm / AdAware / SpyBot S&D
MusicMatch JukeBox / KaZaA Lite(++) / JustCAD / 'n Stuff
Agent Orange
203 Posts
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December 14th, 2003 13:00
there are some links listed for the 8100, and by looking at your hardware, you should be able to pick up other bits and pieces from other links...
cheers
thux
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December 14th, 2003 13:00
The install resized my XP NTFS partition (you can select the preferred size of course) detected all the essential hardware, installed GRUB as the boot loader with Linux and Windows as options and pulled all the packages off the double-sided DVD (no need to change disks!)
After the basic install it goes out to the net to check for updates (didn't need any network config as I have a DHCP server) and at this point presented me with a list a couple of pages long of updates it was going to download. At the bottom of the list were optional entries for the NVidia driver (I have a 5200) and the MS fonts download, so I selected those two and it went off and got the list, rebooted via GRUB and up came X Windows with the system login.
The only catch is that my screen size (1680x1050) isn't in the list of available XF86Config files when you go into the YAST setup tool. Fortunately someone did one already (http://www.musall.de/techdocs/linux/dell/XF86Config) so I copied this directly into /etc (YAST doesn't seem to have an option to pull in an external config).
End result looks very good - fonts all correctly sized and desktop theme ideal for the laptop. I noticed that dragging windows around worked more smoothly with the Linux NVidia driver than with the Windows one!
Most items of optional hardware can be made to work (for 8600 I started here: http://www.musall.de/techdocs/linux/dell/i8600linux.html, hopefully there are similar pages for your model if the entries aren't applicable) but the vexed issue of ACPI support is going to be with us for a little while yet though I see some changes went into kernel 2.4.23. This means that there is no easy route to automatic power control, suspend and hibernate. The kernel insists that Dell's BIOS is broken and won't enable its APIC support, I think this may be historical baggage.
Only other problem so far is that keyboard repeat speed was slow - I eventually found the repeat rate setting in YAST / Keyboard Layout / Expert Settings.
Hope that gives some encouragement!
Tom