I am a newbie using a University provided Dell laptop. I need someone to suggest a distro compatible with the following:


· Pentium® M Processor 1.40GHz with 14.1in XGA Display

· No Floppy Drive

· 512MB,1 DIMM,DDR SDRAM

· 40GB,HD,9.5MM,5400RPM

· Dell TrueMobile™ 1400 WLAN (802.11a/b/g, 54Mbps) miniPCI Card

· Micro$oft® Window$® XP Profe$$ional $ervice Pack 1

· Internal 56K Modem

· 8-24-10-24X SWDVD/CDRW Combo Drive

· 6 CELL PRIMARY BATTERY


IMPORTANT:

After hardware compatibility, it's also essential that it should have a FAT32 file system to enable inter-OS file transfers.

Also, I require a reliable win-emunator for the package.


Please reply asap

First up, Welcome to LQ

Second, please please please, don't ask members to reply "asap" as this really turns a lot of people off to replying. It's all about donating your time here, no one is paid to do this, and no one wants to feel 'rushed' doing their hobby ya know

OOkey, now that's outta the way, let's see what we can find ya:
Linux distros that are designed to run on windoze filesystems (mostly just fat32):
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=links#win

However, I wouldn't feel the necessity to install into a fat32 partition, it's completely possible for linux to read and write to fat32 partitions while still maintaining an native to linux filesystem (such as ext3). You will see much better performance by installing a distro into a native linux partition and sharing a fat32 partition with windoze.

Next up, a windoze emulator. Well all linux distros are capable of handling a linux emulator (all of the latest ones anyway) however some come with one pre-installed, but at a cost:
SuSE Linux (8.0 or better boxed set)
RedHat (boxed set)
Mandrake PowerPack (boxed set)
All of these might contain Wine WineX win4lin or even a copy of vmware (unlikeliest). However you should do some research first to find out who carries what, and more importantly, what's a full version and what is trial versions.
You can also look at buying a subscription to WineX and running whatever distro you want, this way you could still use the download iso's until you figure out what distro you want to support, and at the same time only pay for what you are using (wineX). I believe subscriptions are currently at 15 US dollars for 3 months (check out www.transgaming.com for more info on that).

Oh, and the battery, that'll be hard to match up **just kidding, just thought it was kind of funny you threw that in with the stats **

Honestly though, my personal opinion would be RedHat or Mandrake, they both have great support, however Mandrake seems to do a slightly better job on automatic hardware recognition.

And as this is a distro related question, I am moving it to the distribution section of LQ

Cool

I would also like to point out that if this is one of the dells with the integrated graphics chip that shares system memory, you may be screwed untill the bios upgrade is available.

Do a search on this forum under "Inspiron 500m". You will find at least 2 threads regarding this issue. (and others) Even if you have a differing model of laptop, you may still have the integrated graphics chip.

HTH

Ok, ok, no asap.

The only issue in my mind now is network compatibility. The university uses PPPoE networking and only provides them for Window$.

I've been looking at Lycoris, which with a little tweaking does have support for the network, but it's relatively new and I'd prefer a more mature version.

Could you suggest any alternative distros with FAT32 file sharing capability?
(RedHat 9.0 doesn't detect the Modem)

What abt Debian/SuSE?

Fat32 file sharing is in the kernel. Nearly all distros will have this ability at this point in the game.

As for detecting hardware, I've found that Mandrake does the absolute best job at it.

What type of modem is it? And have you looked at:
http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products.php3

Cool

I have a similar laptop, and the biggest problem I have run into when it comes to running linux is support for the Truemobile 1400. There just don't appear to be any drivers out there for linux yet :/

It sucks too - this means the only time I can run linux is when I'm sitting down at my desk with an ethernet cable plugged in, which is extremely rare - I end up running XP pro almost exclusively.