On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 23:31:24 -0600, Richard <ratcheson@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Sunday 13 March 2005 09:52 pm, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
I've just ordered a Dell notebook computer, an Inspiron 1000 (looks like a bargain at $579 after all the rebates, with free shipping). Of course it comes with WinXP, and of course I want to set it up for dual boot with Linux (SuSE 9.1 for now, probably).
I have several dual-boot machines, but none of them started out with a standalone Win system on them. I remember that the installation DVD has a procedure for this particular case, though. My question is: are there any gotchas I need to know about? I don't want to find out that I've hosed Win in the process of setting up Linux, and then be unable to do anything about it. As an example: is YaST able to cope with the filesystem that typically comes with a new Win system and shorten the partition without corrupting it?
Paul
I put it on a dell 1150. I defragged the xp partition several times before shrinking and installing 9.1. My only real problem was with the video sharing memory. The bios had not been updated and until it was, I had some real nasty looking video.
Recently I added 512 mb of ram and a fast harddrive. Made a new machine for me. Snappy as can be now.
The installation of 9.1 was pretty easy, after updateing the bios. It is now running 9.2 and still quick.Follow the other's advice about partitioning and you should have no problem. One little hitch was the touchpad. I lost the tap to click until I installed the synaptics driver.
One other suggestion. I have been having problems on this and other machines with reiserfs getting corrupted, especially with improper shutdowns. I have switched to using jfs and so far no problems. Others on this list have reported similar problems.
Good luck, Richard -- Old age ain't for Sissies!
I too recently installed SuSE 9.2 on an 1150. Defragged the windows install and used knoppix to shrink the partition down. It went on flawlessly, didn't even have much hassle setting up the internal wifi card. I've also not had any problems with the default reiser fs, though occassionally when I go to suspend-to-disk it hangs at one of the processes... I can't get suspend to memory to work, and closing the lid does nothing, but otherwise it's a nice setup. Mike