dell 6400 laptop compatibility

[Davno]

Hi, I will receive a dell 6400 laptop with a Intel Core Duo processor T2300 and a 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 card and a Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 nic.
And i wonder wich distro if any, already have the graphic driver for that card, the nic does not seem a problem after reading on google. I dont mind configuring a bit but may be there is a distro more friendly for that card.

Too bad i could not find a laptop with a nvidia card that fit my need :(

[Choozo]

I would guess any recent distro would be just fine - with ATIs Linux radeon drivers (downloadable from ati.com) added post-install.

I will also most likely get the very same laptop in a couple of months, and will be following this thread :)

[Geekus Magnus]

Great timing on this thread. I'm real new to linux. So new that I've only been using KNOPPIX so as to not have to install the os yet. I've been wanting to get a laptop that I could install a couple of different distributions on. I've been looking at Dell's Precision line. Is there a laptop that is better suited for this sort of thing?

[hlrguy]

Davno,

http://jackyvuillemin.free.fr/dellinspiron6400.html
linked from
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html

Reading the first link, the 6400 there has
Intel® Media Accelerator 950 Graphics, but similar laptops under Dell with ATI should tell you what you need to know.

Geekus,
This is a greate resource to investigate how well/smoothly a laptop is configured using Linux.
http://www.linux-laptop.net/

hlrguy

[Davno]

Great timing on this thread. I'm real new to linux. So new that I've only been using KNOPPIX so as to not have to install the os yet. I've been wanting to get a laptop that I could install a couple of different distributions on. I've been looking at Dell's Precision line. Is there a laptop that is better suited for this sort of thing?

I just received an e-mail from Mandriva (France) about Dell shipping a Dell Latitude X20 with Linux already installed. Too late for me, and it may be for Europe only ???
Cant wait to receive my 6400 model and test a few distro, ill post here on the result :)

[webwolf]

Nearly any halfway recent distro should suit your needs. For the graphics acceleration you'll need ati's driver though ( on ubuntu, or debian available over apt-get ). All in all, linux has made some great advances in laptop compatability. Known to work very well are however the IBM thinkpads, as IBM is one of the largest linux supporters in the commercial sector. Gericom ( at least in europe ) had for a while, offered an overdose with Mandriva preinstalled. And I have an overdose 1530c here that works great with most distro's (at least if you don't count the low amount of RAM ). Whatever you decide there is usually info on google/linux (http://www.google.com/linux) to be found.

webwolf