Please help me develop my Laptop into something better.
 

I have a Dell Latitude E5440. It currently is Running Windows 7 pro. I want to change this machine into a customized Linux Workstation. In order to that right I need to get all my device drivers copied from Dells Website I want to then figure out if these drivers would work for linux.
I then want to create a virtual windows desktop to run all and not limited to:

Microsoft visual Studio
Ableton live (DAW)
Auto Desk Inventor
Mentor Graphics PAD
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Premier
Red Giant Special Effects suites (various)
Quark Express
ICOM Radio Programming software
Microsoft Office
Just to name a few programs I want to run on my windows virtual desktop.
I wont ever take the virtual desktop online. I also want to have a highly secured system where permissions have to be signed for anything. Meaning that my windows desktop is virtually helpless in screwing with the rest of my system.

SO I will need a good open source O.S. and many links for the device drivers I need and how to change them to work.

Please explain things clearly with precise directions and links. I haven't flashed my bios yet and installed DBAN. I will when I feel I have all my ducks in a Row and I am ready to create a monster laptop. please email me directly
evander.callie at gmail dot com

1) For BIOS update of laptops you should check Dell Website Support/Drivers page. Some brands support BIOS Flashing only from Windows.

2) Best Open Source OS would be:

http://www.debian.org or
CentOS or
Ubuntu or
Fedora

3) For Video there is good support for Intel and ATI/AMD ones by open source driver. And good support for AMD/ATI and Nvidia by closed source proprietary binary drivers.

You have to give details of hardware present in laptop before anything can be said of other driver support in Linux.

No, they won't. Windows drivers are for Windows. There is probably no need at all to to copy any 'drivers' from anywhere for your laptop. Pick any current version/distro of Linux and load it. Mint, openSUSE, Debian, or Fedora are all good choices.
There is very little point to running some of those programs, when there are native Linux programs that replace the Windows programs. Gimp is nearly a Photoshop clone. Libreoffice replaces Microsoft Office. FreeCAD can replace Autodesk Inventor, just to name a few. Take a look around and look for native alternatives, rather than using Windows.
Linux already has built-in privilege separation. If you want your 'regular' user to have escalated privileges, that's what sudo is for. If you want your Windows system to be secure, then just don't enable the network bridge when you build your virtual machine. It will be TOTALLY isolated from everything...can't get more secure than that.
Pick any version/distro of Linux...I mentioned some above. Load it, and chances are VERY high your devices will 'just work'. If you need special links for your drivers, then you can look them up. Please don't ask people to look things up for you, and send you links...that's fairly rude.
No, we're not going to email you directly...if you want answers, you need to participate in the community forum. This isn't the place to come for free, personalized, one-on-one email tech support.

There is no need to flash your bios, run dban, or do anything else like that. Download a Linux ISO image, burn the CD/DVD, and boot from it. Follow the instructions on the installer screen...if you can load Windows, you can load Linux. If you need step-by-step guides, there are MANY you can find by looking, just like you found THIS site.

Asking people to look up how-to guides, email you links, etc., is fairly rude. Ask a specific question if you're having a problem, but don't ask us to do this.

If you are going to use all those MS programs, why bother to switch to Linux? For Linux alternatives, see
http://linuxappfinder.com/alternatives

Device drivers written for Windows will not work in Linux, but then they don't need to. The Windows pattern is that the manufacturers supply the drivers, while with Linux they come with the OS. Often you need to get a printer driver and sometimes you need to get a video-card driver that's better than the one you were given, but they are Linux drivers. Very occasionally a brand new computer will have a wifi card that's not yet supported — then you get the Windows driver and use a program called ndiswrapper to fool it into thinking it's on Windows.

Most distributions are available as a live disk, so you can run them from a DVD or a USB stick to see if you like them and if they like your hardware. I suggest you look at
Linux Mint
PCLinuxOS
Salix
They all look quite different, all have slightly different approaches, and all are well documented to help a beginner install them. I'm afraid that you are not going to get blow-by-blow instructions here: we are, after all, unpaid volunteers!

Update Well you wait 17 hours for an answer, and three turn up simultaneously! I would say that Fedora and CentOS, which I know well, are not good choices for a beginner. If I may boast, I have tried 114 distros over the years, so that I can answer the eternal question of "what should I use?"

...and this isn't needed to run Linux, so it's not really needed.
No, that's what YOU think is best. And why on earth would you suggest CentOS (an OS designed for SERVERS), to a newbie who is loading it on a laptop??? CentOS doesn't even have a GUI by default, and support for wifi, bluetooth, and other consumer devices is poor, since those devices aren't typically ON a server.
You fail to mention that there are also OPEN SOURCE drivers for both ATI and nVidia cards.
Which is pointless, since:

• Dell supports Linux, and has drivers for many of their devices already
• Most distros of Linux will 'just work' with this laptop
• The technical specs are easily found if you looked, which support point 2.

There are tons of distros that you can install. Take a look at distrowatch.com, they list almost every distro out there. I suggest starting with a "newbie-friendly" distro like Ubuntu.

That's not how it works. The drivers that you get from the Dell website are for Windows. They will not work with Linux. However, most of the time everything will work just fine. There are sometimes issues with things like wireless chips, but usually there's a way to get it to work.

Then get a virtual machine (like VirtualBox) and go with it. Installing the VM should go just fine, assuming that you have enough RAM and a powerful enough CPU. However, I would encourage you to try Linux alternatives to those programs, if there are any. For example, LibreOffice or OpenOffice could replace MS Office, and there are Linux compilers for most (if not all) programming languages (to replace Visual Studio).

Keeping the VM offline would be fairly easy. In VirtualBox, just go to the network adapters section and disable all of them.

As mentioned above, Windows drivers will not work with Linux. As far as I know, most of the drivers are installed by default on most distros.

Just go to YouTube and search "how to install Ubuntu" (or whatever distro you decide to use) and you'll have step-by-step instructions.

You shouldn't need to flash your BIOS. And DBAN (Darik's Boot And Nuke) doesn't get installed. You just stick the CD in, boot it, and it wipes ALL OF YOUR HARD DRIVES. But you don't even need to do that, unless you have confidential data that needs to be securely erased. When you install Linux, there should be an option to erase everything and install Linux. It will take care of deleting the Windows partitions, and will be a LOT faster.

From the LQ Rules (https://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/rules.html):


Hope this helps!


EDIT: Wow, I'm a slow typist. When I started, this was a zero-reply thread!

But it doesn't support high bit depths plus many others. Perhaps the OP wants a secure system with which to isolate the more vulnerable Microsoft Windows.

And I did say about opensource ATI cards driver. And nouveau is not that good(features) compared to ati/amd drivers.

Wrong...it most certainly does.
...which is not what the OP said. Re-read the original post. And, as the OP was told, running Windows in a VM guest with no net access does that.
...and confused things by also saying closed-source afterwards.
There are opensoure ATI and nVidia drivers...nouveau isn't one of them, and feature wise it is VERY close. Please don't mislead or misinform people.

Good Luck.

Lots of misconceptions. Probably from a life time of using Windows.
Good advice by all. My Dells are a E5500 and XT2.

Instead of advice. I am going to mark helpful posts.

TBone can you give reference (webpage) where it says GIMP supports more than 8bit depths like 16 or 32bit per channel.

GIMP is getting ported to using GEGL with which upcoming GIMP 2.10 is going to support high bit depths.

Considering my sister uses it on an almost DAILY BASIS with color depths of 32 bits, I'm fairly certain it does.

If you want the current specs, go look them up yourself, and please try to do this and know what you're talking about before posting. Considering the version from THREE YEARS AGO already did 32 bit:
http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/e...epth-precision

I doubt the current one doesn't.

I think TBone should read about pening issues with GIMP and GEGL. For color support a image software has to support 8/8/8/8 bit each for red, green, blue and alpha. Together they add up as 32bit. But the issue is about 16/32bit per color channel as written in the link he gave. Please TBone don't post without knowing/understanding the issue correctly. And may you please ask your sister about it.

Don't need to...it supports 32 bit now, and has for quite some time.

And the link I gave you was OLD...if you want the current specs, I told you to GO LOOK THEM UP YOURSELF.

Well TBone, you perhaps didn't understood what I posted. For photo editing it's definetly needed.

No, YOU didn't (and DON'T) understand what you're getting told. It's present, and has BEEN present for some time now. Either you don't understand their documentation, or didn't bother to try to look it up.

Either way, you're wrong.