I've just bought a dell inspiron 500m and plan to set it up to dualboot WinXP and Linux. I've seen a couple of how-tos on the net, but none suggest which distribution of linux would be best for this endeavour.

Which should i go for - debian or redhat 9?

my experience has mostly been with unix, so any additional info on how i should go about the installation as well as drivers etc would be appreciated.

thanks
prema

you could try to check out http://linux-laptop.net

HELLO

this is very good that you want to use linux , welcom in linux world, i normaly use madrake and mostly Rehat , both are very goo distro, i have no idia about debian.
keep in your mind (if u are new user of linux)linux is not userfriendly and easy like windows xp , may u will have to face many problem from installation to configuring hardware and installing software etc.
but you can solve all problems with help of howtos, faq and others specialy with this forum , the members of this forum are very help full, every one who know about your topic will try to solve problem or guied for next step.
just keep try again and again like me i was laos new user of linux few months ago but now i am very comfirtable , you will enjoy linux thses are very good and steble operating systems then microsoft.

regarding your topic
i will try to help you first selets distro i will suggest u chose redhat .
and you also have to decied that which bootloader you want to use any of linux bootloader or want to add linux in microsoft bootloader.

Welcome again in linux world

I have a dell craptop and I duel boot with XP and redhat9. I use the default grub loader that comes with rh9, and I've never had any problems (except that my laptop is better suited to be a doorstop).

Hey paperdiesel what don't you like about your dell? I'm going to be in the market for a laptop soon, and I'm trying to get some ideas.

I suggest you use mandrake. Its like windows, but a thousand times better. I just recently switched over from Xp and 2000. I got so tired of virus' attacking my system every day. Service pack 4 for win2k? Wtf is that? Oh i get Microsoft, there is over 400 updates to fix all the holes in your OS. Now really, Mr Gates, how can you charge me $500 for a piece of software that to this day still isn't even complete or secure? Sorry about the rant. lol. Anyways, Mandrake linux, amazing OS! I'd pay twice as much for this OS as I did for Windows 2000 except I ended up paying nothing cause linux and opensource is frikin amazing, so I plan on donating money. So yes.

My advice.

Download ISO CD Images from mandrakes website.
Burn the Images onto CD's using your fav burning software.
Back up any data you currently want to save on the xp machine.
Zero your hard drive (optional really, just a good idea me thinks in order to make your system run a bit smoother)

Install Xp and during the Xp install partition your harddrive into drives giving 50/50 space, assuming that 50/50 will give 10Gb+ to each drive.

Finish the Xp install and update it right away to avoid having MS Blaster and like 2 billion other virus' from destroying your machine.

Then reboot with Mandrake Install CD in drive, run through the install, let it autodetect that you have windows and a bunch of free hard drive space on the other drive, and it will automatically set up the boot loader for you. When you turn on your laptop a boot menu will appear and ask you which os you want to use. after about a week of asking questions in here to understand and learn how to use linux, you will never go back to xp and you can remove it off your computer and be Ms free.



Let me know what you think.

mysterio: I dislike my dell craptop basically because it is garbage. The components that are used (hdd, cdrom) are very poor quality. My laptop is about a year old (1 gig proc, 1 gig ram), and the harddrive completely failed about a week ago. Then the guy who works next to me had his dell laptop's hdd completely fail two days ago.

Dell said "We've had great luck with those IBM hard drives. Your company must have gotten a bad batch." riiiiight.

Basically anyone I know with a laptop wishes that they (or their company) had forked over the extra couple hundred for a sony. Of course, nothing beats the toshibas of old. They were rock solid.

It's worth noting, however, that dell's support is pretty slick. We both had new hard drives within 2 days of reporting it. Now we're in re-install heaven. weeee.

paperdeisel: Hey thanks alot for the reply.
"re-install heaven.weeee." hehehee..