Dell Inspiron 2200. I have it 'slightly' upgraded - without warranty loss, I added 512MB and 80GB HDD. Already having PentiumM@1496MHz. So it's a good, balanced choice.
What I had of non-obvious things: Synaptics touchpad, Intel 915GM built-in (I'm not so greedy not to give it 128MB out of 768), software suspend2 (first expirience), first chance to try LinuxFromScratch, Kernel compilation time about 7 minutes if it's the only task. Also I had strange lid switch - LCD tended to switch off and never switch on.

LFS. I downloaded a LiveAutomatedCD (go http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ ), and left it running after minor configuration for 2,5 hours. I suppose that creating some partitions doesn't bother anyone (I've learned to do it rather long ago, while using Windows 3.11). So I had it running. Afterwards I wanted to use ABLFS to build on top - but oh no, there is only 6.0 profile conflicting with 6.1 base. So I did everything by hand, consulting the book. So I had a system running, and even with vesa-driven X.

Compiling new (2.6.13 kernel). Nothing special, except not forgeting to switch on MAGIC_SYSRQ, /proc/config.gz access, and , surely, to add local version. You have to update udev - or rebooting will take half time compiling kernel (2,5 min:5min - I got it).

Applying Suspend2 ( http://www.suspend2.net/ ) - nothing special, but don't forget to pass resume2=swap:/dev/hda? . I forgot swap and spent some time on it. Works fine now.

Fixing LCD love to switch off forever. In section "Monitor" in xorg.conf add 'Option "DPMS" "on"' . Now try 'xset dpms force on' . I've written a small script, so from console it temporarily launches X for this, and then returns.

Synaptics ( http://w1.894.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/ ) . Did as recommended there.

Maybe, I'll try patched gpm ( http://www.geocities.com/dt_or/gpm/gpm.html ) also.

DRI. Well... I don't know exactly what is the case for the moment, so I say what worked for me.
Get latest development shot of xorg. Get agp2.bin ( http://lists.freedesktop.org/archive...669d3/agp2.bin ) . Apply it.
Rebuild. Install. Get latest DRI snapshot ( http://dri.freedesktop.org/snapshots/ ). I took common+i915. Install it. Enjoy. Frankly, BEFORE this worked I got the source from cvs for DRM,DRI and Mesa. I compiled and installed it, so I have a newer libGL, for example. I don't know if it is significant here. And note: while I get <200 FPS in glxgears, I get reasonable FPS in xscreensaver in much more complex scenes (and more FPS in its gears hack). So don't panic.

Also a hint - dd if=/dev/<smth> of=/dev/null count=10000 helps a lot when JetFlash is sda-only (to create sda1) and when you want to mount cdrom (to make it spin up - or mount will not let it do this, and as a result I first got something awful).

Power button is checked by a bash script. It's true - why run acpid while being able to emulate it?

Not checked: network, sound .


EDIT: read on! Checked sound, network - no special effort. Dell Inspiron 2200 is completely Linux capable.

EDIT: Had a problem. Keyboard sending sd instead of s, cx on c etc. Fixed by warranty. For those in Moscow: Respect-Note is good place, UniTrade is definitely not as good. I was in Respect-Note.

EDIT: As Werner Heuser asked if there is anything making this thread out-of-date, I decided to add that after getting (from http://x.org/ , surely) X11R7.1 I had no problem with saying i915 and having DRI. Surely, I run latest kernels (sometimes -mm, but it is not significant for getting correct Direct Rendering Module).

EDIT: I have just bought KVR400X64SC3A/1G (Kingston DDR1 SODIMM 1GB PC3200 value RAM memory module, 2.5V - never less). Is well recognized after updating BIOS to A07 and recompiling kernel with high-memory support. Now 'free' shows 1284000 KB total (remember once more - Video RAM is subtracted). This is limit for memory upgrade of Inspiron 2200. Will run memtest now, although memory build consumed all memory either as disk cache or for gcc, so I guess it is OK.

EDIT: MB problems.. On boot Caps Lock flashes 10 times before anything happens, and power goes down. Reseating processor does not help. If service center will be able to fix this without replacing motherboard, it will cost around 1/4 of Inspiron's cost when new (but I am not sure). I must admit I carried the notebook not exactly very accurately, but still a disappointment.

Excellent. I have heard that Dell's are a pain to set up, but to do it in LFS....genius. Could I ask that you submit a tutorial to our (you guessed it) Tutorial section.

I suggest everyone who installs LFS as a main system is capable just to use ALFS+BLFS for basic software. I've mentioned everything I spent an effort for. I didn't log anything - I did the most natural thing every moment. Except for listed... And LFS is not the system for strict tutorials, I guess. Oh, does the head rule-post in tutorials recommend searching success stories also?

I've got listed at tuxmobil with the report.
http://tuxmobil.org/ - Linux on mobile devices
I was asked to mention this here during submission.

EDIT: category is http://tuxmobil.org/dell.html

Also got listed there...
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/

By the way, I tried loading sound module into kernel - works all right.

Connecting with new PDA (unfortunately, haven't converted it to linux yet) using SynCE - trivially works just by SynCE recommendations, but only if follow them accurately. You should do everything from the first try - or reboot...

But I've heard that Dells make it hard to install Linux. They are Pro-Microsoft. Good on you to get Linux working on a Dell.

Nowadays notebooks have passed the point where it was dangerous. If you install synaptics touchpad, you'll have a lot of trouble to make it work with Linux worse than with Windows, and it'll be posted on every forum. Dell's position (as I understand it) is just doing nearly nothing to make it easier to install Linux-based or BSD-based OSes on laptops thay manufacture - except creating "Linux on Dell" forum in their community forum; but definitely nothing deliberate to make it harder. And while they honour common standarts, Dell can be a good choice. For example, because of harddrive and memory replacement without voiding LCD and motherboard warranty. Anyway, support in making intel 915gm work properly can be got here.

Instead of LFS what do you think about fox desktop linux, do you think it would be successful for the inspiron 2200?

Enabled e100 (Intel PRO/100 driver) and network is up.
Discovered ifconfig (for example, hw ether) and route (ecpecially add default gw).

So - Dell Inspiron 2200 is marked fully Linux capable after 4 months of testing!

Yes, and I guess Fox will work, probably with network and sound, surely X will work in vesa mode.
Not sure about how many effort it will take to get DRI up&running.

Also, ndiswrapper + wireless_tools (iwconfig) allowed me to setup Ad-Hoc with PDA.. Nothing special, except 255.255.0.0 netmask. Dell Wireless Card on Broadcom chipset doesn't have native drivers, so didn't find out how to access public AP yet, although I hope that setting up personal AP should be feasible.

hey all, i'm so glad all of you guys found it so easy to hoot up a dell inspiron 2200 with linux because.... i'm not so fortunate. now it might be because i'm a newb at linux, but i'm having serious trouble with my network card, it's the standard network card for the inspiron 2200 and i don't know what application to use (ndiswrapper prism2 et cetra) but can anyone help me out as far as which app to use, what and how to find my "sid" and how to find my "wep" and all that good stuff. one last piece of information, i'm running damn small linux, and i hope that doesn't really matter to much because i know that's where a lot of people get thrown when i ask for help

Theoretically, there are two possible WiFi cards. lspci will tell you which one you have. Intel is somewhat easier to configure (well, because Intel publishes some open-source drivers and matching binary-only firmware). Broadcom seems more likely. You can use open-source bcm43xx driver (it is included in modern 2.6.xx kernels; note that it started to work with bcm4318 later than it was included!), you'll need firmware from Windows driver for that (Bcm43xx Wiki will name what are the best modern drivers to extract firmware). You can also use Ndiswrapper to load windows binary driver for your architecture and use it as it is. Dell driver seems to work (as far as I remember).
Anyway, you do need to install wpa_supplicant (I do not know what GUI wrapper there is) for encrypted connections.
"iwlist scan" will list you ESSIDs of available networks and will tell what protection level (WEP, WPA, WPA2) they use. The network key should be got from the one who set up the network..