Recommend distro: Dell D600 Laptop
 

Hi everyone.

I'm a Linux newbie who came over from the Windows side in late September.

I run Red Hat 9.0 on a Dell Latitude D600. However, given that I get a zillion security updates per month from Red Hat, I feel the need to change distros after April, when Red Hat unilaterally drops support for 9.0.

I've tested two replacements for Red Hat on the Dell: Fedora and Mandrake 9.2. I've had some really big display problems with both. Can anyone recommend a good distro for this make of notebook? I'm in B school and my time is limited so I need the smoothest install I can get. I had very much been hoping my RH 9.0 learning would translate to the next distro but I've been very disapointed to learn that is not really the case (at least in these early tests.)

see if you laptop is in here. should give you an idea of what distros have been proven to work with that model of computer.

http://www.linux-laptop.net/

lol. nevermind. the only listing in there for your model laptop is rh 9.0.

u could check out this site it contains alot of info for many distros for ur Dell Latitude D600 :

http://tuxmobil.org/dell.html

I have a Dell Latitude D600. Pentium M 1.3GHz, 1GB RAM, 40GB HD, CDRW....and more.

I run Slackware Linux 9.1 on it. I have run it via VMware 4.0, and I have also run it perfectly fine natively. Here is a little something that you will for sure have to do if you load Slackware on your laptop.

When you first boot Slackware 9.1 the system will hang when PCMCIA cardmgr trys to start.

This was nicely documented though somewhere on the web as I have seen someone else have this problem. Oh yeah, some dude named Owen Cliffe listed some modifications to the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file somewhere on the web. I booted the laptop off of a KNOPPIX 3.3 CD so I could modify the file. You could also use the Slackware boot CD and go in to modify this file too.

Here is what you need to change once you get to the /etc/pcmcia/ folder.

I like to use pico to edit this file so I do a:
....then change the following....

After this the laptop booted fine :)

Let me know if you have any huge issues (if you try Slack) because mine works flawlessly :)

Peace,
Whitehat