Hello great citizens of linuxquestions.org!

I happened to recieve a dell inspiron 1100, with a celly 2.0ghz, 256mb ram, 20gb hd, integrated Intel graphics and broadcom ethernet....

I would love to get some modern linux going on this, but before I dive in, I wanted to know what people thought would be the best distro for my needs. I've read about some of the hangups and pitfalls:
www.geocities.com/randomnumbergenerator2001/
(has a ton of info.)

So: has anyone tried to make this work, any great successes or advice about potential problems... Maybe this could be a little posting area for this laptop...


Thanks!

I've read some good things about modern Dell laptops and many Linux distro's. I don't personally have any experience with them, but was considering an 1100 myself for the road. I'm interested to hear how it turns out for you

I've run RH8 and RH9 both on a Dell Latitude C400 and a Dell Inspiron 8100, and there have been minimal problems, just some stuff with 3D graphics. I definately recomend RH9 because you have the Intel Graphics as does my C400. Imagine, 3D right out of the box!

i have slack 8.1 and 9.1 on dell inspiron 8200 and 8500

I have installed RH9 on an I5100 (it's the same machine), the installation went smooth.
I haven't had the time to test completly, but the integrated wireless (TM1180) worked with out a glich.

Ginux

Great responses so far!

I generally use knoppix as a good starting point to test. Knoppix 3.3 just came out recently, and has a tremendous amount of stuff pre-loaded with it. If you don't know about it, check it out!
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-old-en.html

Anyway, booting to that CD, it seems to automatically handle the majority of things... Sound is a breeze, X-Windows pops up to a beautiful 1280x1024 into KDE's super-slick interface. The mouse works smoothly as well. Seems like the broadcom chipset was slickly found, 100bas-t and all. I haven't tried the modem, but lspci shows an intel corp 82801db ac'97 modem (rev 02) which looks healthy to me.

Perhaps those who wish to poke and prod their inspiron 1100 with a linux distro ought to try out knoppix 3.3 as a great and safe starting point..

Just my 2c, please add your comments and ideas as you find them.

Thats a good idea. I am just about to try my Slackware Live cd. It's supposed to be somewhat similar and would enable me to use Slack when I visit people rather than Windows I haven't yet purchased a notebook. The funds just aren't there at the moment unfortuantely. But, since I use linux excusively I will be looking real hard at different models to be sure whatever I buy will all work The Dell lineup seems like some of the most linux friendly laptops out there at the moment, and you can't hardly beat the price. They are having an xmas special on the 1100's right now for $799 after rebates.

82801db ac'97 modem (rev 02) is a cursed winmodem and will not work. Just because it showed up when you did 'cat /proc/pci' means nothing, without the software support it is crippled, and about as usefull as trying to connect to the net though an old sock.

I have the same modem. Going to spend tomorrow trying to download the correct linmodem stuff. If that fails its a USB external modem I think.

This link may help: http://seehuhn.de/comp/toshiba.html

(I blame Microsoft for this!)

Yea, the winmodem thing will forever be a pisser for linux users. I went through it with Mandrake 8.2 and a Lucent modem like a year ago in my stock HP. I did get it to work though, and many winmodems do have drivers written for them out of need by the linux community.

I won't even live anywhere that doesn't have broadband availiable anymore Dial-up wastes far to much of our time.

mandrake 9.1 - ftp://raven.cslab.vt.edu

you won't be dissappointed

mandrake 9.1 or 9.2 will do just fine on a laptop. thats what i have on mine...
if u dont want hardware hassles and want something that works out of the box, get a mandrake ;-)

I put Mandrake 10.1 on a dell i5100 and the wlan doesn't work. Broadcom tm1180.

Jim