I just got my new Inspiron yesterday.

It's got I think the T6400 Core 2 Duo (2MB cache, 2.00Ghz), 4GB ram and the 5400 RPM Sata 500GB hard drive.

I had to change the boot sequence to get it to boot from dvd before loading vista.

Once that was done I used the normal kernel (just pressed enter at boot prompt) and logged in as root.

When I tried cfdisk, it gave me a "fatal error... could not read disk" (I can't remember precise wording).

I have installed slackware on a desktop using this very disk, so that can't be the problem.

I looked around a bit at some forums and tried the huge26.s kernel, but that still gave same error. I thought I would see if anyone knows what I'm missing.

So my problem is I can't set up a partition to install linux on.

Thanks

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

I would get a current copy of Slackware. You can get Slackware 12.2 from Get Slack.

This link and others are available from 'Slackware-Links' . More than just Slackware® links!

Thanks for the advice. I downloaded Slackware 12.2 using BitTorrent, burned it to dvd and it worked first time.

The only problem was that after I installed Slackware, I couldn't get into windows.

It told me "BOOTMGR is missing"

I tried a whole host of things, but the only thing that worked (and I think it worked independently of the other things I tried) was to do liloconfig in expert mode. I rebooted thereafter and was able to get back into windows.

Thanks again.

So does this laptop work perfectly with linux? All the wireless and stuff working fine? I'm considering getting one myself.

Hey,

I love the laptop. Slackware 12.2 works beautifully, but I still haven't figured out the wireless. I think it is that my router uses WPA2 Personal with AES encryption. I haven't got a solution to that, but I think the wireless card does work properly because I can pick up the router when it scans in KWifimanager, it just won't connect properly. I haven't tried it with any other routers, so I can't really say for sure.

Apart from the wireless in linux, I love it. I have used the ethernet to connect to the internet without much complication (just run inetconfig I think (or ifconfig)). When I first installed slackware, though, I found that you have to configure lilo in expert mode to get it to pick up windows properly (if you are dualbooting) and you will have to do xorgsetup to get the resolution correct.

So to answer your question, yes it does work fine, except for the wireless. But I don't know enough to get that worked out. If you know enough I'm sure it's actually quite simple.

Hope that helps.

You should try wicd in the /extra directory of the DVD, it should make wireless setup much easier.

Hi,

To setup your wireless look at 'Configuring your network in Slackware'.

This link and others are available from 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

Well, I finally got the wireless working. I was very discouraged because after I had got wicd installed it would not connect. Well, the problem was that when I tried to enter the passkey for the network I chose WPA1/2 (Passphrase) instead of WPA1/2 (Pre-shared key), which seems odd to me since I was entering an ASCII key. But it worked, so I am not complaining. And I am very pleased to say this is my first post on LQ from slackware instead of vi$ta. Finally. :-) Thank you very much guys, and to give a final answer to alecjw... Love the laptop, and in linux, the wireless works fine, just get wicd.

It might be that WPA2-PSK is rather difficult to setup, more so than other methods. It may also be a driver issue.