Dell's Linux Compat

[Cyber Source]

Tons of ways around finding hardware info on a machine. I have gotten
pretty good at finding just about any driver for any hardware. One quick
trick is to boot the device with the linux cd and go to rescue mode. You
should then be able to find some info on the hardware it has detected.
Video is usually called out first thing as a system boots at the top of
the screen. Then you can go to any number of sites for drivers, i like
http://www.driverguide.com 
I realize you got it going now but just in case this may be useful for
others in the future.
On Thu, 2003-02-13 at 16:25, green_man wrote:
> Justin Bennett wrote:
> 
> >I had a PII Latitude 450mhz. I had linux on it ran great. Can you get
> >specifics on the video, sound, ect? Then you can check Hardware
> >compatability list from redhat or whatever dist you want. As long as the
> >hardware isn't too new it should be supported by the latest release of
> >whatever distribution.
> >
> >Justin
> >
> Thanks for the input, all.
> 
> The Inspiron is the top of the line - all the bells and whistles - I'd 
> love one !
> The Latitude is a lower grade - bells, but no whistles.
> A colleague at work just bought a used Latitude  with no OS for her 
> home-run business, and had me do a scratch install of windows from MS-DOS.
> The screen window was about the size of a 3x5 card. Once I got it in, I 
> couldn't change the res, or make sound work because the necessary 
> drivers were not found.
> Apparently, once you register as the owner with Dell, you can go to the 
> support site and enter the machine serial number, and it will tell you 
> the the interface cards, chipsets and necessary drivers. Once she did 
> that, she was able to run upgrades all the way up to XP Office  Pro, and 
> get the res up to 1280x  from 640x, color from 16 colors to 16 million, 
> and sound working. But, you have to register to find out what hardware 
> you have.
> 
> What passed for BIOS didn't allow much more than specifying where to 
> boot from, definitely not a BIOS as I recognize one.
> I have discovered that as regards linux, older is better, because more 
> people have the device in question, so there is more demand for some one 
> to write the code to make it work in a linux environment.
-- 
Cyber Source <peter at thecybersource.com>