thepasty

[Log in to get rid of this advertisement]

Everything seems to work great for me, except the access direct button and the microphone input. The mic started working with a bit of fiddling around, but i'm not sure exactly how i got it working.

sdelliott

I run Fedora Core 3, 4, and now 5 successfully on my Dell Inspiron 4150. Also have had various distros of Ubuntu, SUSE, and Mandriva running without any problems.

Install was uneventful -- particularly with Core 5.

The only incompatibility noted are with the MIDI chip -- I haven't got it working yet, but I don't use it enough to worry about.

One major limitation with this hardware: it runs old USB 1.x. This makes anything from an iPod to an external drive S-L-O-W. It's actually faster for me to copy large files over the LAN to an older PC that has a 2.0 USB port. This is true not only in Linux but also in other less sophisticated OS's, so it's a hardware limitation. If writing big files out the USB is your goal -- this is NOT the machine for you.

Performance in KDE is quite fast (I run 512 MB RAM, which is a definate plus). In fact, my GUI screen redraws in KDE are roughly 50% faster than well-optimized Windows XP Pro (sorry folks, I'm required to have this malware for company; and no, I don't use it.) Reading and writing the CD/RW drive is reliable -- haven't tested the DVD for playing movies yet (I'm not much of a movie guy), but I do know it reads huge data DVD's perfectly. Network intereface card (10/100 Mbit) gives me effective throughput of around 30-60 Mbit/sec on our lightly loaded network -- that's not bad for our switch.

To test how compatible the Inspiron 4150 is, I downloaded fresh 2.6.15.6 source from kernel.org, and did the usual "make" things. My kernel compiled and booted with NO customization needed. Of course, I've customized it now to no end, but it's comforting when it runs right off kernel.org's source tree.

Although Inspiron 4150 is a little bit on the old side as far as laptops, I would recommend it as well compatible with Linux. A good workhorse except for the USB port issue noted above.

jerril

This is a decent machine, if you need a basic system. It has served me well. On this machine I have used: Mandrake 8.0, Fedora Core 2, Debian "Woody" 3.0, Simply-Mepis 3.3, every incarnation of Ubuntu starting from 5.04, and Kubuntu 5.10. They all worked with varying degrees of fuss and success, however Ubuntu 7.02 was the first to get all of the media working.

I have not been able to get the S-video output working, which can be a problem if you need to do presentations. The internal speakers are not very good.

It can get very noisy and run hot when working hard (video, flash media, compiling). Running Gnome (my preferred DM) and avoiding KDE applications helps. When I don't want to bog it down, but still want a GUI, WindowMaker is quieter and faster. I'm sure any other WM would do as well. I will not choose any applications that depend on Gnome or KDE for my default usage; this makes it easy to move around.

A single USB 1.1 port is not great, but I can live with it. It forces me to rethink how much junk I'll take with me when I'm mobile.

This machine is over four years old, has been used extensively with moderate travel and a few bumps and it still works well. I hope to get at least three more years out of it.

jer