Linux on Dell C610 Latitude

[bluestrobe]

I want to try Linux again and this time on my laptop. At this point I have XP SP2 installed and use the laptop mainly for surfing the web and working on my web site (dreamweaver) when I'm away from home. However I need it to work with ALL of the hardware, if it doesnt, I'm staying with XP SP2 since it works fine for me.

Dell C610 Latitude 1ghz CPU and 384MB of ram
Logitech V450 wireless mouse
Cisco Aironet AIR-CB21AG-A-K9 Wireless network card

All I need is a basic HTML editor with preview/code planes like dreamweaver is giving me. Browser will be FF of course. I'll probably use a jump drive to transfer my web updates from the laptop to the web server.

I don't use the wireless card that much but prefer to keep it in case I am in a wireless café or such. I mostly use Ethernet at home since I am selling my AP because I never used it.

I've used Linux awhile back and know the very basics but thats about it. How plausible is this or am I asking too much?

 

[drag]

It looks like that wifi card is Atheros model. It will work if you install the 'madwifi' driver. Although it looks to be troublesome for some reason. I saw a page were one guy was able to get another cicso card to work flawlessly with the same chipset, but this one caused problems. But it caused problems for him in XP also.

Look for madwifi-ng (for next generation) if you can't get that cisco stuff to work with the plain madwifi

It doesn't have a internal wifi? It should have a slot for it I think. If you open up the mini-pci panel is there a antenna there? Maybe then look at intel mini-pci. They are cheap and get good support in Linux. That way you don't have to have stuff hanging off your laptop.


As for your laptop you can find quite a few Linux experiances for that model at http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html

 

[bluestrobe]

I'll hit ebay up for a mini pci wireless card. Didn't know they cost that cheap.

 

[bluestrobe]

what about the mouse?

 

[Nothinman]

I haven't used that mouse personally but it uses a USB reciever so as long as it appears as a normal HID it should work fine. But why not just burn and boot the Ubuntu LiveCD, that should tell you lmost everything you need to know.

 

[bluestrobe]

The mouse shows up as an HID and a "usb receiver" in XP. Also downloading ubuntu 7.04 as we speak.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: bluestrobe
I'll hit ebay up for a mini pci wireless card. Didn't know they cost that cheap.

Yep. The only difficult part is weither or not your laptop would have a antenna for it. It'll be a little wire sticking into the mini-pci area.. if you look very close at the end it will be a little brass-looking square do-dad with a cylinder sticking out with a tiny wire on the inside.

It's effectively a miniture coax cable, like in cable tv.

To retrofit a antenna can be a PITA since it would involve removing the back panel to your LCD display and taping the antenna cable to it and snaking the end down to the mini-pci slot.

 

[bluestrobe]

Originally posted by: drag

Originally posted by: bluestrobe
I'll hit ebay up for a mini pci wireless card. Didn't know they cost that cheap.

Yep. The only difficult part is weither or not your laptop would have a antenna for it. It'll be a little wire sticking into the mini-pci area.. if you look very close at the end it will be a little brass-looking square do-dad with a cylinder sticking out with a tiny wire on the inside.

It's effectively a miniture coax cable, like in cable tv.

To retrofit a antenna can be a PITA since it would involve removing the back panel to your LCD display and taping the antenna cable to it and snaking the end down to the mini-pci slot.

yea, has two of those. They taped them off so they wouldnt bounce around in there.

edit: also is there anyone on Linux using a V450 mouse like I have? That's the only thing holding me back at the moment.

 

[drag]

I have a MX Laser mouse.
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/produ...features/opticaltopics/CL/EN,CRID=2090

Works fine. Works out of the box, but requires extra configuration for extra buttons and such. This is normal for 'fancy' mice in Linux.

Yours should work just fine. It appears to be a run of the mill USB device with all the smarts in the little usb receiver. Should be no sweat.

 

[bluestrobe]

Good, I'll probably be installng Linux on the laptop on Thursday (next day off). I need to find a nice free way to image my current XP configuration for when I get a spare HD to stick it on. That's for another thread though.

 

[gus6464]

Also for HTML editor i recommend Kompozer.

 

[bluestrobe]

Thanks all. I got it on my laptop this morning. It'll be staying on there for awhile. Picked up my wireless mouse, wireless card, and everything else without any help from me. Was on the internet after about 20 minutes from the first reboot with the cd. From when I left SuSe 2 years ago, this is a lot better experience. I'll probably start installing the programs I want here in a bit like Kompozer and such.

 

[Nothinman]

From when I left SuSe 2 years ago, this is a lot better experience.

It had better be, 2 years is a pretty long time in the Linux world. Hell that's 4 Ubuntu releases worth of time. =)

 

[drag]

Web development IDEs are pretty plentifull for Linux nowadays also.

There are basic ones.. like html export for Org (which actually produces good code, unlike it's MS counterpart). But there are lots of advanced ones.

One interesting place to check out is Freshmeat.net They have lots of stuff listed.
http://freshmeat.net/

Just make sure whatever you pick is still in relatively active development.
Stuff like
http://freshmeat.net/projects/bluefish/

Or maybe http://www.getfirebug.com/ ?
http://www.nvu.com/index.php ?
http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/index.php ?

I am not good at web development, so I realy don't know what sort of thing you'll be looking for.


edit:
comments at http://alternativenayk.wordpress.com/20...nvu-dreamweaver-web-publishing-review/ seem to indicate that Quanta plus is most dreamweaver-like.

Looks like NVU was morphed into Kompozer.

 

[bluestrobe]

I'll probably look at quanta when I get home. I like the dreamweaver look with the coder/desginer split screen so you can see the results of what you're doing. I only do html/css and very little php so an advanced package isn't needed like dreamweaver. I am still amozed it picked up my mouse like a legacy one. It took longer to install drivers for the mouse and wireless card in windows than installing ubuntu.

 

[drag]

I like the dreamweaver look with the coder/desginer split screen so you can see the results of what you're doing.

Funny. I always just ran the website on my desktop or in a VM as a mirror. That way I could test things out on my browser in real-time.

But then again I only did small stuff and only did it with vim.

 

[bluestrobe]

I downloaded quanta but it looks like you have to compile the code yourself and I prefer something of the easier sort. I've never complied anything and prefer to avoid it if possible.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: bluestrobe
I downloaded quanta but it looks like you have to compile the code yourself and I prefer something of the easier sort. I've never complied anything and prefer to avoid it if possible.

welcome to linux, you don't download apps from the web like Windows....enable universe and multiverse in the synaptic application, an find quanta in there....then it's like 2 clicks, and it's installed, along with any required libraries.

 

[bluestrobe]

I know some Linux concepts but never compiled a program before. I got it through the synaptic application manager. We'll go from there.

 

[drag]

compiling software can be intimidating, but it's usually not realy that big of a deal.

The most troublesome thing is figuring out the dependancies for a package. Some software has a _lot_ of dependancies, which makes things a PITA. Well designed software usually doesn't have more then it needs so it's usually easier to deal with.

Most of the time people are using GNU make and autoconfig stuff so the basic steps, after untaring the source code, is:

# this is were it checks for system configs and dependancies
./configure
# this actually compiles it
make
# this installs it
sudo make install

Otherwise read the README or INSTALL files in the source code tarball. If configure fails with a missing dependancy, something like:
"missing ode"
or whatever

you can go:
apt-cache search ode|grep dev

Then you can find the *-dev package, which contains the headers nessicary to compile software against already-existing binaries on your system.


Of course compiling software when your using Ubuntu or whatever should be avoided if you already have a existing package, but occasionally you'll want software with no native package. The default place to install software is in /usr/local/ so if you want to 'uninstall' it you just delete it from there. In Debian-land /usr/local is not touched by package-installed software so it can get messy without affecting any your 'normal' software, usually.

There is a program called 'checkinstall' that will run the 'make install' step on your software for you. This program generates a quick-n-dirty deb package for you so you can install and uninstall custom compiled software without having it hurt your system. It's a very dirty thing and does not produce any deb package that you want to redistribute, but for personal use it works out very well usually.

 

[TonyRic]

universe and multiverse are automatically enabled on 7.04, so no need to enable them.

Just open synaptic and search for quanta and you will see that it is already available to install. no need to compile. Most applications that you want/need can be installed this way.

EDIT: You might also want to go to http://www,getautomatix.com this little program will aid you with installing some basic apps that you may want that are not in the repository like the code to watch DVD's on your laptop if you care about that.

Tony

 

[turk101]

Using pclinux 2007....picked up all my stuff on my dell m1210 laptop....fast and sweet distro...worth trying out....