I would follow the tech's advice and set up Windows first. When you install Windows, it will ask if you want to use all the available space on the hard drive, and you can tell it to only use 14 GB (as NTFS) at that point. After you have Windows all up an running, you can right click on a My Computer icon, select "Manage", and then there will be a module you can select for "Storage - Disk Management" that I think will let you create the 16 GB FAT32 partition. If not, you need to somehow get to fdisk off a boot CD or floppy, or get a copy of Partition Magic.
When you start the install of Linux, at least in the case of Fedora, there will be a choice to have it take over just the unpartitioned space it finds on the drive and set it up for you. It will also offer to install a boot loader that will come up with a screen each time you boot the laptop letting you chose between Windows and Linux.
The Dell may or may not come with their little partition on your drive, because it sounds like you are trying to get it without Windows installed, so I don't know what they do in that case. But if it is there, it is only 30 or 32 MB, and it is diagnostics that you can access at the POST part of booting up the machine. If it is there I would leave it just so if you ever need phone support form Dell, it is there for you to run when they ask. I got rid of mine. Never had much luck with phone support.
I'm running a Fedora Core 3 test version right now, and it runs very nicely on my 5150. The released Fedora Core 2 was the same. It takes some work to get everything up and running, but I can read off my NTFS partitions, my 1300 wireless card works fine along with the wired Ethernet, video is at my native 1400 x 1050 using an enhanced 3D GLX driver from NVIDIA, I can read and write to a shared FAT32 partition, the CD burner works, I can access my external firewire drive, my USB printer is ok, USB Logitech Quickcam was fine but is cut from the kernel right now but it will be back soon, there is a nice feature-full driver for the Synaptics touchpad available, etc, etc. The only things I don't have running are the modem, because I never have need to use it, and "suspend" does not work at all, but I never use that either.
If you presently run a good bit of Windows software, particularly games, where Linux support is weak, you might consider making your NTFS partition larger and the Linux area smaller. Linux is much more compact than Windows. I think a full install of everything from the 4 Fedora CDs (and that includes browsers, email, Open Office suite, compilers, Gimp, games, and on and on) takes something like 6 GB.
The BIOS thing is about LBA and partition tables. I'm 99% sure that if you follow the sequence above, you will not have any problems. I think the issue comes up when you have some versions of Linux needing to completely rewrite the partition table and they use a slightly different type of addressing from what Windows expects. I had no problems, and there is nothing related in the Dell BIOS to tinker with, anyway. In the unlikely event that your Windows install gets fried, it is new, so no big loss. You'll just do fixmbr, reinstall Windows, and then reinstall the Linux boot loader. With that in mind, play it safe and get Linux installed right after you install WIndows, before you load up any Windows apps so you don't have to load them a second time if there are problems.
That was a very informative reply. I may not have been clear about my experience with Linux though, I am using Debian (have used FC2), infact I have a triple boot system (with WinXP) on PIV desktop.
I am just new to this laptop world and installation of Linux on it. The situation becomes confusing when I hear all these quirks that one experiences if Windows and Linux have to coexist on a state of the art equipment. In this case, your reply was reassuring. I am looking forward to experimenting with all this stuff. The one thing I am expecting to be a problem, and the one that you have confirmed, it the suspend mode (or ACPI?). Then there are some who have made it to work in a 5150. Well, keeping my fingers crossed.
And thanks for clearning up the diagnostic partition doubt. It makes me feel more comfortable to have all this knowledge.
There seem to be some ACPI features that need to be enabled in the kernel, in order to work. There is a whole APM and ACPI section in the kernel config stuff, so when you get there, that is the place to look if things you need are not working for you. I have not fooled with those settings, but as they came defaulted I have CPU throttling and different behaviors on AC vs. battery and all the rest of the ACPI stuff. And I control them by an applet that is part of the KDE desktop, so there may be other and better ways at it all. There are 2 kernel config items specifically for suspend and I know I have them both off, so maybe it was a bit pushy of me to say that "it doesn't work at all" when I know I'm not helping it to work with my settings. Lets say instead that getting suspend up and running, and working off the lid switch for instance, is a bit of a holy grail right now, from reading about peoples' experiences.
I have installed Fedora Core 1 on a 5160 (with XP dual boot)
Areas of problem
1.. Ethernet card -- working -- after compiling and installing broadcom drivers
2. ACPI -- working partially -- I get CPU temperature, fan control etc. but pressing the power button will not shutdown the laptop nor does it suspend.
3. Modem -- not working -- apparently I need the non-free drivers from linuxant
4. X-windows -- working -- after compiling and installing Volari driver. I get the 1400x1050 resolution I should with the SXGA+. In XF86Config I cannot load the xgi driver. It fails to detect devices. The xgi drivers are loaded into the kernel. So I load the vesa drivers and start X. When X comes up I have a horrible screen with 4 colors. Then I hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to the console and then switch back to X using Ctr-Alt-F7. Then everything is fine.
5. Hyperthreading -- working with SMP kernel -- but my keyboard behaves erratically in X. Hence I'm using the non-SMP kernel.
If you need specific information let me know. Fedora 1 is a 2.4 kernel. Hopefully you should have better luck with the 2.6 kernel.
Well, I know I haven't looked at this thread for long, but anyhooo, here is what I have to say:
----4. X-windows -- working -- after compiling and installing Volari driver. I get the 1400x1050 resolution I should with the SXGA+. In XF86Config I cannot load the xgi driver. It fails to detect devices. The xgi drivers are loaded into the kernel. So I load the vesa drivers and start X. When X comes up I have a horrible screen with 4 colors. Then I hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to the console and then switch back to X using Ctr-Alt-F7. Then everything is fine.
X Windows is working for me too. I am running Debian and first installed 2.6.7 and then 2.6.9. Both work great and I get the 1400x1050 resolution with the default driver "nv" driver that comes with Linux kernels. By installing nvidia driver I was able to get really nice screen and fast graphics.
----If you need specific information let me know. Fedora 1 is a 2.4 kernel. Hopefully you should have better luck with the 2.6 kernel.
I used 2.6.x kernel from the beginning. The NIC was not recognized but the kernel comes with the required module (b44) and I just had to select which NIC I have during the installation process. For the touch pad I had to install synaptics driver (Debian has a package for that) and with some tinkering in XF86config-4 file it worked too. Let me know if you need to see this file of mine.
The only thing that is not working right now is suspend modes (also the modem which I haven't tried yet).
jrittvo
16 Posts
0
September 29th, 2004 17:00
When you start the install of Linux, at least in the case of Fedora, there will be a choice to have it take over just the unpartitioned space it finds on the drive and set it up for you. It will also offer to install a boot loader that will come up with a screen each time you boot the laptop letting you chose between Windows and Linux.
The Dell may or may not come with their little partition on your drive, because it sounds like you are trying to get it without Windows installed, so I don't know what they do in that case. But if it is there, it is only 30 or 32 MB, and it is diagnostics that you can access at the POST part of booting up the machine. If it is there I would leave it just so if you ever need phone support form Dell, it is there for you to run when they ask. I got rid of mine. Never had much luck with phone support.
I'm running a Fedora Core 3 test version right now, and it runs very nicely on my 5150. The released Fedora Core 2 was the same. It takes some work to get everything up and running, but I can read off my NTFS partitions, my 1300 wireless card works fine along with the wired Ethernet, video is at my native 1400 x 1050 using an enhanced 3D GLX driver from NVIDIA, I can read and write to a shared FAT32 partition, the CD burner works, I can access my external firewire drive, my USB printer is ok, USB Logitech Quickcam was fine but is cut from the kernel right now but it will be back soon, there is a nice feature-full driver for the Synaptics touchpad available, etc, etc. The only things I don't have running are the modem, because I never have need to use it, and "suspend" does not work at all, but I never use that either.
If you presently run a good bit of Windows software, particularly games, where Linux support is weak, you might consider making your NTFS partition larger and the Linux area smaller. Linux is much more compact than Windows. I think a full install of everything from the 4 Fedora CDs (and that includes browsers, email, Open Office suite, compilers, Gimp, games, and on and on) takes something like 6 GB.
The BIOS thing is about LBA and partition tables. I'm 99% sure that if you follow the sequence above, you will not have any problems. I think the issue comes up when you have some versions of Linux needing to completely rewrite the partition table and they use a slightly different type of addressing from what Windows expects. I had no problems, and there is nothing related in the Dell BIOS to tinker with, anyway. In the unlikely event that your Windows install gets fried, it is new, so no big loss. You'll just do fixmbr, reinstall Windows, and then reinstall the Linux boot loader. With that in mind, play it safe and get Linux installed right after you install WIndows, before you load up any Windows apps so you don't have to load them a second time if there are problems.
delguy
28 Posts
0
September 30th, 2004 12:00
That was a very informative reply. I may not have been clear about my experience with Linux though, I am using Debian (have used FC2), infact I have a triple boot system (with WinXP) on PIV desktop.
I am just new to this laptop world and installation of Linux on it. The situation becomes confusing when I hear all these quirks that one experiences if Windows and Linux have to coexist on a state of the art equipment. In this case, your reply was reassuring. I am looking forward to experimenting with all this stuff. The one thing I am expecting to be a problem, and the one that you have confirmed, it the suspend mode (or ACPI?). Then there are some who have made it to work in a 5150. Well, keeping my fingers crossed.
And thanks for clearning up the diagnostic partition doubt. It makes me feel more comfortable to have all this knowledge.
Again, thanks a ton.
jrittvo
16 Posts
0
September 30th, 2004 21:00
rwankar
2 Posts
0
October 5th, 2004 06:00
Areas of problem
1.. Ethernet card -- working -- after compiling and installing broadcom drivers
2. ACPI -- working partially -- I get CPU temperature, fan control etc. but pressing the power button will not shutdown the laptop nor does it suspend.
3. Modem -- not working -- apparently I need the non-free drivers from linuxant
4. X-windows -- working -- after compiling and installing Volari driver. I get the 1400x1050 resolution I should with the SXGA+. In XF86Config I cannot load the xgi driver. It fails to detect devices. The xgi drivers are loaded into the kernel. So I load the vesa drivers and start X. When X comes up I have a horrible screen with 4 colors. Then I hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to the console and then switch back to X using Ctr-Alt-F7. Then everything is fine.
5. Hyperthreading -- working with SMP kernel -- but my keyboard behaves erratically in X. Hence I'm using the non-SMP kernel.
If you need specific information let me know. Fedora 1 is a 2.4 kernel. Hopefully you should have better luck with the 2.6 kernel.
delguy
28 Posts
0
November 15th, 2004 18:00
----4. X-windows -- working -- after compiling and installing Volari driver. I get the 1400x1050 resolution I should with the SXGA+. In XF86Config I cannot load the xgi driver. It fails to detect devices. The xgi drivers are loaded into the kernel. So I load the vesa drivers and start X. When X comes up I have a horrible screen with 4 colors. Then I hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to the console and then switch back to X using Ctr-Alt-F7. Then everything is fine.
X Windows is working for me too. I am running Debian and first installed 2.6.7 and then 2.6.9. Both work great and I get the 1400x1050 resolution with the default driver "nv" driver that comes with Linux kernels. By installing nvidia driver I was able to get really nice screen and fast graphics.
----If you need specific information let me know. Fedora 1 is a 2.4 kernel. Hopefully you should have better luck with the 2.6 kernel.
I used 2.6.x kernel from the beginning. The NIC was not recognized but the kernel comes with the required module (b44) and I just had to select which NIC I have during the installation process. For the touch pad I had to install synaptics driver (Debian has a package for that) and with some tinkering in XF86config-4 file it worked too. Let me know if you need to see this file of mine.
The only thing that is not working right now is suspend modes (also the modem which I haven't tried yet).
->HS