[LUAU] Good distros for Dell laptop?

Clifton Royston cliftonr at iandicomputing.com
Fri Feb 3 12:57:29 PST 2006


On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 10:34:31AM -1000, Julian Yap wrote:
> I bought a Dell Inspiron 6000 around the same time.  Right now, I have a
> 60 GB drive, DVD burner (dual-layer), 512Mb RAM, default Wifi b/g,
> slightly faster than standard CPU.  I have it set to dual-boot Windows
> and Linux.
...
> ... Then I tried Ubuntu having used it before.  Wifi worked on install,
> little things like the from multimedia buttons all work.  Might I add,
> these don't even work on Windows install.  I was uninstalling lots of
> pre-installed Windows Dell crap and then the buttons stopped working.
> They're controlled by some Dell program.
> 
> Function key combinations all work (volume, brightness, etc...).  Would
> these have worked with Fedora?  Don't care.
> 
> Laptop hibernation, suspend, stand by _all_ work.  I know with Fedora
> this requires fiddling.  I usually hibernate my machine at the end of
> the day.  Maybe once or twice the Wifi hasn't resumed the next day but
> then a reboot fixed that.  No real dramas.

*SOLD*!

> Before settling with Ubuntu and the gnome desktop, I also tried out
> Kubuntu (KDE desktop).  Multimedia keys didn't work.  But mostly I
> prefer gnome.  Mostly the feel of KDE with Konquerer I don't really
> like.  Personal preference.  I'm looking to re-evaluate when 6.04 comes
> out.  I'll add that you can run all your favorite KDE apps like K3b
> (DVD/CD burner) perfectly fine on Ubuntu.
> 
> About the only thing that _doesn't work with Ubuntu is SD card slot.
> I've read this is because it's supplied by Ricoh who isn't giving any
> help to the Open Source community. 

  Yes, there has been some recent discussion about this on the FreeBSD
list.  Even seeing specs for how the hardware is supposed to work
requires signing NDAs which would bar you releasing any open source
code.


> If you try out any other distro or *nix let me/us know how you go.  I'd
> be interested in knowing.

  Well, I'll share if I do, but based on your report I'm probably going
to go to Ubuntu or Kubuntu.  Honestly, I never really liked either
Gnome or KDE that well when I've tried them, but it's been a while
since I was using either on a daily basis, so I'm going to give it
another shot.

  -- Clifton

-- 
    Clifton Royston  --  cliftonr at iandicomputing.com / cliftonr at lava.net
       President  - I and I Computing * http://www.iandicomputing.com/
 Custom programming, network design, systems and network consulting services



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