Dell GX270 Tower Drivers
 

Hi there,

I am new to Linux,I have upgraded my system to Dell GX270 Tower. I have Slackware 13.0 installed as Virtual machine, It works fine,but I want to install Slackware as Host System at my pc.

Can anyone has links for drivers.or have experience using Slackware?

Major Issue is Device Drivers. I am talking about Standard Drivers comes with Dell PC

what drivers do you need? The GX270 is an impressively average and uninteresting machine. What doesn't work on it?

Slackware comes with drivers for most hardware. For the most part it will detect and install the correct kernel modules ( drivers ).

You need to learn a few commands to display what hardware you have. Open a command prompt, called a konsole in KDE. Run the command '/sbin/lspci' ( without the quotes ). This will print a list of the major hardware installed on the system board.

If a particular device is not working, look through the list for the item. Cut and paste the line(s) into the thread you post looking for help. This info is how we find the kernel module ( driver ) you will need.

Things that cause the most problems for noobs are the graphics modules for Nvidia and ATI chip sets, some audio cards, and wireless.

Almost anything else will work out of the box. Nvidia and ATI modules are available from the manufacturers. If you look in the Slackware forum on this board, you will find a sticky thread at the top of the page telling you how to install proprietary drivers.

Audio cards, I go to this link -->http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page for audio driver information.

External devices ( printers scanners usb devices ) are a little different. For any usb device, start with a 'lsusb' command. That will list the connected devices on your USB bus. I usually Google for the driver. For printers go to linuxprinting.org, and scanners http://www.sane-project.org/ is the link.

Linuxprinting also lists drivers for multifunction devices; if they are available. Of course it is best to research your hardware before you install.

You should be able to find out what hardware you have by either looking in the device manager in windows, or using the above commands in your virtual machine.

Hope this helps.

I'm actually replying from a Dell Optiplex GX270. Running Slackware 13.37 I had no need for any but the stock linux drivers.

Do note that if you want to play games then you might have to install the proprietary drivers for your video card, but that is true for any Linux distribution and not peculiar to the GX270.

The worst thing to worry about with the GX270 is the 'leaking capacitor' problem that hit at about the time these were produced. Googling showed that some models were manufactured late? enough that it wasn't a problem. Mine was, but I remember no other details.

Server based distro's tend to have better support for servers. Dell offered red hat so consider centos/scientific or opensuse or suse.