Sorry for comming a bit late here, but I have a Dell Inspiron 7500 dual-booting Win & Mandrake 7.something. I purchased the thing with Windows pre-installed from Dell. It wasn't very difficult getting Linux up and running on it. The biggest problem, like usual, was getting X setup and working. It was definately worth the trouble though. X is beautiful running at 1400x1048!! There's a good site packed with a bunch of pointers at: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~steveh/inspiron/ It doesn't seem to be responding at the minute, but hopefully it's just temporary. (That or bounce over to google and search for "Dell inspiron Linux" and take a look at some of the results. On to your specific questions... > 1. If I got a Dell Inspiron 7500 preloaded with Windows (and with, > say, a 20GB hard drive), and then tried to install Linux on it > myself, can anyone tell me what kind of experience I'd be in > for? I've installed Linux on a lot of desktops and servers but > never any laptops, so I'm OK with putzing with it a bit, but if > it'll take me a week to get X up and running, for example, then > I'd rather pay someone else to do it. Also, I don't want to > have to spend a lot of time in advance checking and > double-checking the specs to make sure that all the hardware > will work with Linux. > I just ran the default Mandrake 7.1 install, then grabbed the XF86Config file from the site above, tweaked it a bit, and was off and running. There were no problems at all. If you want my config file, or need some pointers or help, let me know. Dave Royer --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: tclug-list-unsubscribe at mn-linux.org For additional commands, e-mail: tclug-list-help at mn-linux.org