[ale] Linux on Laptops

[Charles Shapiro]

Yeh, I bought a used Dell Inspiron 3800 from work last summer and put
Debian Slink on it. It took me a couple of tries to get the partitioning
right, but after that wrangle it runs like a top, and I even got the
suspend-to-disk feature to work.Sound, eth0 and the modem off the
supplied Xircom RBEM56-G PCMCIA card, and even the IR port all function,
but I had to do some module and PCMCIA magic for that. Documentation on
these machines is plentiful on the web at sites like
http://www.linux-laptop.net/.  The machine comes with 2
battery/accessory ports and a wire connection for its CDROM and floppy
drive, so it's theoretically possible to install from CDROM/floppy
although I didn't go that route.

The down side is that batteries are fabulously expensive (on the order
of $100), and the single battery that came with the machine will keep it
going for about 30 minutes tops. I store the machine unplugged, and over
time the battery's charge tends to die away, leaving the system clock up
to several days slow.

On balance though, I've been real happy with it.

-- CHS


On Sun, 2002-06-30 at 08:50, Geoffrey wrote:
> John LaPierre wrote:
> 
> > I will be giving this laptop to my daughter when she leaves for college this 
> > August, so if anyone can recommend of a Linux friendly laptop that I can 
> > replace it with, I'd be grateful. Thanks...
> 
> Although I've bitched about Dell lately, I will say that I have a Dell 
> Latitude (work provided) that runs Linux very well.  I've not really 
<<snip>>

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