[clug] Linux on new Dell laptops

[Michael Carden]

Some M70 and X1 Dell laptops arrived at work today.

First impressions: M70, very heavy. X1, very small and very light.

Mission one, boot to a DOS prompt with networking so I can get Ghost to image 
the hard drive before I mess with it. Bzzzt. Can't seem to build a boot CD 
with functional Broadcom gigabit networking.

So, never mind that and on to mission two. Install Linux alongside XP. Not too 
hard on the M70. Boot into Knoppix and run qparted to resize the win 
partition. D'oh... don't forget to unmount the drive. Oh, look. It's sda not 
hda. Okay, all good. Install FC4. Oh, the graphical installer starts an X 
server, delivers a white screen and that's all. Let's do it in text mode. 
Okay, looks good. Have to solve that X problem when the install finishes.

Over to the X1. Boot Knoppix. Oh, doesn't work on the USB drive. Let's see. 
Suse live CD? Nope. FreeBSD live CD? Nope. Rescue CD? Nope. Where's that 
Hoary live CD?

Okay. Looks like the USB drive upsets live CDs. How will I repartition the 
beastie?

To be (I hope) continued...

MC