Linux in a DELL 8300

[napster0317]

I am just trying to see if this is possable to put linux on a DELL 8300... Red Hat, Mandrake, any really..???

[CleanSlate]

why not? unless there are custom parts only from dell and then you'd need to ask dell if they have linux drivers.. go ahead and install it. 99% sure it'd be fine.

~Adam

[cloaked]

it will be fine. almost all dells parts are just regular things from other manufacturers, and the mobos are pretty much the same from a software perspective.

[BillLeeLee]

I don't see any problems; I've installed Gentoo on my Dimension 8100 without much of a hitch, and Mandrake before that (a move I regret ever making).

Gentoo!

[Zlash]

You sure can, got 4 8300s sitting at work.

've installed Gentoo on my Dimension 8100 without much of a hitch

An 8100 is about 2 years older, maybe more than a 8300 so I wouldn't use that as a basis for judgement. ;)

[BillLeeLee]

Well, I'm just saying. I've gotten a few *nixes to work on a 3 year old Dell, and given that the only truly proprietary thing I've seen in Dells is the power supply, I was venturing to say that a modern system wouldn't have problems installing a version of Linux.

Oh yeah, the if you have a winmodem that could be a problem, but there are hacked drivers out there for that too.

[napster0317]

I am a newbie to the Linux scene, I have had it a few times but that was for about a couple days at a time. what distro should i get???

[CleanSlate]

The only way to get a winmodem to work in linux is to recomplie the kernal.. so.. yea not a good idea unless you're a linux freak (not in a negative way) :D.

~Adam

[Josh_B]

Originally posted by CleanSlate
The only way to get a winmodem to work in linux is to recomplie the kernal.. so.. yea not a good idea unless you're a linux freak (not in a negative way) :D.

~Adam

Well... I wouldn't say you have to be a freak to recompile the kernel... :D

[napster0317]

I had the Dell Rep that i ordered the pc from drop the modem, I am on a college campus and at home we have road runner, as well as I hate any modem unless it is a 3Com Gaming Modem.

[HHunt]

Hell, I got freeBSD up on a 1-year old dell optiplex gx260 (had to ssh in to check that :D ) with everything working, right down to the sound. (School computer. Not something I'd buy myself, even if it is not bad for its niche.)

The only thing you might run into is that if it uses the intel i830M graphics controller, or, I suspect, some relatives, you have to change a setting in the bios to give it 8 instead of 1 mb ram.

Give me a second, I'll check what it uses.

edit: geForce fx5200, actually. You should be fine. Might have to mess around very slightly to add the nvidia drivers, but it should be well documented, and not really hard. Some distros will do it for you, anyone who knows what ones?
(I generally like ati, but I'll give it to nvidia: Their non-windows drivers are much better. Like, you know, actually existing at all for freeBSD.)