[plug] Dell Inspiron 8100 & linux

William Kenworthy billk at iinet.net.au
Tue Nov 27 11:59:52 WST 2001


the similar 8000 model works fine with Mandrake 8.1.  8.0 was a bit of a
problem tho.  Biggest gotcha with both is the nvidia go card - requires
manual setup, tho 8.1 did succeed under basic X.  I havent fully sorted
out the external/internal mouse/keyboard yet, but its "mostly" used as a
desktop, the switching between problem doesnt occur too often.

Also power management needs work - its a 1G machine, but when on battery
starts at 700Mhz, and requires a power off to switch back to full speed
when back under charge.  Battery life is (maybe) slightly better than
under win 2000, but I have not done any work on tuning it yet, and I
suspect win2000 changes clock speed dynamicly - performace vs battery
life.

Overall, a great unit.

BillK

On Tue, 2001-11-27 at 11:10, craig at postnewspapers.com.au wrote:
> Hi all
> Just a quick question:
> Anybody have any experience with running linux on a Dell Inspiron 8100?
> I'm looking at buying one (ARRGGH my wallet is on fire) but don't want
> to be saddled with a win2k only laptop. I need to be able to run win9x
> network admin tools like those that came with our switch - but I don't
> want to use windows for much else. 
> 
> Main concerns are power management, X reliability/support, general
> stability.
> 
> If anybody has better suggestions for a laptop with DV-out, DVD-ROM,
> built in e/net & modem, respectable CPU DISK & RAM, I'll listen to that
> too :-)
> 




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