dell will not support linux. If you ever need to contact them, the support staff will expect you to go through the troubleshooting using the OS the system came with - probably window XP. But installing linux should not void your warranty. This doesn't sound legal - it's your computer after all, and linux is just another type of software.

IANAL though...

cheers

Thanks for the help... I've been using linux for a couple of years now and I would really like to be able to install Gentoo on it.

Thanks again for the quick response.

Agent Orange is right. While Dell will not support Linux, they will still support the hardware for as long as your warantee lasts. It's a bummer to wipe out your Linux distro just to do trouble shooting, though.

Instead, you might want to consider picking up an inexpensive 10 Gbyte laptop drive to hold WinXP, then put your favorite flavor of Linux on your nice, fast Dell hard disk. If you ever need tech support, swap the drive before you call Dell.

ummm. or just use partition magic or similar to shrink the windows partition, then install linux on the second chunk. that way there's no HD swapping required. if dell wants you to run winblows, just reboot to it. simple.

cheers

I have a copy of partition magic 7 laying around here somewhere.  I think I'll make the windows 20gig and Gentoo Linux 40gig.

 

Thanks for all of your help guys,
-Nick

It's true, of course - you can shrink your Windows partition and put both Linux and Windows on the same drive. You are right to suggest the obvious solution and I should have mentioned it myself. In fact, if you use Mandrake it can shrink an NTFS partition itself so you would need no other product to do the install.

My objective was to mention a less obvious solution in case folks hadn't considered it. I have a number of applications on my laptop that work with large data files and wanted the whole disk for Linux. Since laptop drives are relatively cheap these days, I bought a 10 GByte drive and used it as I suggested. Dual boot doesn't matter to me because I never use Windows on my laptop anyway. This approach works for me, and is an insurance policy should I ever need HW tech support. It also provides another data point if I'm trying to decide whether a problem I'm having with a device stems from HW problems or defective drivers.

Regards,

DaCAP

The last time I used Mandrake Linux was back at version 6.  Is it worth using? I have been running Gentoo for about the past two years and before that I had used Debian.  A long time ago I used Red Hat.

Which distro is the best to go on the 9100 to dual boot it with Windows? 

ScriptKiddie, would you mind telling me why you switched from Debian to Gentoo? I am a newbie myself to Linux. Last few weeks, I've been sampling the live CDs. I decided to install Debian after a short stint with Xandros. Ive heard the user community with Debian is rather large, as is the software repository. In fact, they just came up with an installer I've already downloaded. Basically I'm just waiting for teh time to partition and reinstall XP, and then I'm going for it. But again, just out of curiosity, why did you switch to Gentoo? I've heard that Debian is rather easy to maintain , once you get it going.

Debian is a breeze to maintain - once you get it installed. Installing can be a pain, especially for a newbie to linux. I haven't tried the fancy new debian installer though. I use debian and apt-get is the most amazing and simple thing I've ever seen. But if you're not a computer enthusiast, you might have troubles. you might want also to look at mandrake, which is debian-based.

If you have install dramas, post questions...

Thanks agent. Ya know, I've heard a lot about installing this or that distro, based on Debian--Knoppix and Xandros both are, plus many others (Mepis as well). Its just that these same distros (not Knoppix but the others) then say that they are branching away from Debian, and that I need to be careful when using apt-get install, b/c some of the debian-only software can crash the system. I'd like to avoid that type of stuff. This tells me that I'm going to have to tweak, so I might as well learn a system that I can grow with and learn from over the years.

Thanks for the offer. If I do have any dramas (I say if not when :) ), I'll be sure to let ya know!

Paul