Linux: Fedora Core 4 on Dell Inspiron B130
Rant warning:
If you're thinking about buying a Dell Inspiron B130 for use with Fedora Core 4, my initial assessment is don't:
By the way, remember how I said Dell agreed to pay me back a small amount of money to offset the Microsoft tax? The money never showed up in my account. If I am stuck running Windows on this thing, I may just set fire to it and let it burn--not that I'm bitter or anything ;)
If you're thinking about buying a Dell Inspiron B130 for use with Fedora Core 4, my initial assessment is don't:
- If you use the automatic partitioning, you'll get an exception during install. This may be Fedora's fault, though, because I've seen this problem before.
- After the installation actually started installing RPMSs, it just froze and died. It may have been display related, but I'm not sure.
- I installed in text mode (HTTP install) with the bare minimal number of packages. But then, when it tried to boot, it froze on the line, "Initializing hardware... storage network".
- I know that the display is hard to get working, but I've heard it just comes down to getting the right mode line, "Modeline "1280x800" 80.58 1280 1344 1480 1680 800 801 804 827".
By the way, remember how I said Dell agreed to pay me back a small amount of money to offset the Microsoft tax? The money never showed up in my account. If I am stuck running Windows on this thing, I may just set fire to it and let it burn--not that I'm bitter or anything ;)
Comments
Go with Gentoo. I just installed it on my new thinkpad r52. Excellent documentation and easy to install new versions of software.... Though the install process takes a little more than a half hour....
At home, I've been very pleased with Falcon Northwest, but I definitely pay a premium for the high level of service. One example: my chipset fan started to get noisy. I emailed them for advice, and the FedEx'd me a new one for no charge. This was long after the 1 year warranty had expired.
Oops, looks they *did* pay me back, but on a different credit card (actually, my Dad's). Sorry for the confusion!