Hi - I'm very new to Linux. I'm planning on trying to dual boot windows and linux on my dell inspiron 600m. specs:

p4M 1.6ghz
1024 MB ram (2x512)
40gb 5400 rpm hd
64mb ati video card - I forget exact model
cd-rw/dvd
Dell Truemobile 1400 minipci wifi card

I understand that the truemobile 1400 is not supported (or so I've heard) but I've heard the same about the 1300 - and I also have heard of people successfully getting the 1300 to work - so can anyone clarify that for me? Should I expect any problems? Also - right now I only have 256mb ram (2x128) with two sticks of 512mb on the way - does that change anything in how I should install Linux? I was planning on putting 10GB of free space at the beginning of my drive - does that sound like a decent plan? Oh and then i was going to use mandrake to auto allocated however much space it feels like for each partition - will it still allocate the right amounts when I don't have the right amount of ram installed? Thanks!

Don't sweat the RAM, the old 2:1 or 1.5:1 rule for swap to ram should have been scrubbed back when RAM got to the neighborhood of a 1/2 gig as standard. These days just as long as there is some swap space, that's fine. Also, don't worry about the RAM switch, Linux won't care, although you are going to be going into BIGMEM land, so the kernel is only going to use the first 960Mb of RAM there, you can upgrade kernels later if you want.

Then there's the wireless card. I think it takes a special arcane map, an odd compass you can only get with 3 proofs of purchase from wheeties and a hound specially bred in the Lousiana back country in order to figure out what TrueMobile # = what actual chipset. Since its best to deal with this later, just post back with the output of:

/sbin/lspci

After the install.

Good luck

Finegan

well - I'm posting this from Konqueror within Mandrake 9.1 - so it's going pretty well so far! There doesn't appear to be a file called lspci in /sbin. Could it be hidden or something? I did a search for "pci" in file:/ and it found three things: "etc/hotplug/pci", "proc/bus/pci", and "proc/pci"

Understand that this is my first experience with Linux - so I really am lost here...

Also - during setup I told Mandrake that I had a "standard ps/2 mouse" I'm using a ps/2 touchpad - and it is working out decently. But is there any touchpad software out there that works with linux? Specifically - I like how in Windows I can use the right and bottom parts of the pad to scroll. Anyways, thanks!

I'm a bit lost as to where Mandrake hid lspci... is it even there. Indulge me as this might help other posters:

su - (the - is important, it'll re-login you in with root's path)
which lspci

That'll show you where lspci went. Its just a simple program that takes the goop in /proc/pci and formats it better. Just post the dump of:

cat /proc/pci

and we can get started on figuring out what this card is.

Cheers,

Finegan