Linux on Dell L400

I didn’t think I would run into much of any problems installing a few different Linux varietes, but installation was actually more problematic than not. Maybe some of the problems are due to a bad cd burn, the not very trustable Dell cd reader or… well certainly it couldn’t be my fault! Anyway, see the results below. Perhaps it should be said I am an absolute beginner at Linux and need it to just work. I don’t want to sit around and fiddle with command lines and rewrite the kernel every night. I just want to write som docs, listen to music and watch a video or two.

Considering how much noise the Dell cd makes and portability issues you’re not going to want to use a LiveCD as a permanent scenario, these tests are meant as test whether a certain Linux distribution indeed works and is suited for a permanent installation on hdd/cf/etc.

Knoppix 5.01 LiveCD
Confirmed basic functionality, once the desktop environment is started it feels quite snappy. No trouble installing, just pop in the cd, boot from it and wait. You can get a permanent environment by saving it to usb, to retrieve it you boot from the cd as usual and then specify you want your saved environment by entering ( xxx ) just before the loading starts. Easy enough. It is possible to make a hdd installation but not recommended as Knoppix is apparently only intended for live CD use.

Puppy Linux 2.15 LiveCD
Confirmed basic functionality. Longer boot than Knoppix, but desktop environment feels good. Quite memory hungry for what is supposed to be a distro for old, slow computers. The L400 being maxed out at 256mb leaves you with very little space to move around in the Puppy desktop (ca 10mb free). LiveCD therefore not recommended, if you want to run puppy, make it a permanent install. Could not install a .deb package, pupzip suggested to install “undeb” but I could not find any such file with the application installer.

Puppy Linux 4 LiveCD
I’m trying the new version aswell, I like Puppy for some reason. No luck here though, just after starting to boot it says “pup_400.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisk console…”. FAIL. SOLVED! Thanks to this thread, just entering “puppy ide=nodma” when asked to wait for normal boot or specify boot options makes puppy very happy. This is apparently something that can happen with certain cd readers, in this case the one that accompanies the L400. Version 4 feels fast and fresh, now leaving ca. 110mb for operations (of 256). Confirmed basic functionality.

Ubuntu 8.04.1 Desktop LiveCD
First burned cd would not complete install or cd test, just “Error reading boot cd”. Only option is to reboot. Helpful not so much. A third burn got it working but sloooooowwwwly loading. Seriously slow, let it work for 10mins and then shut it off, any potential result would have been excrutiatingly slow or non-responsive. Silent loading (just a bar going back and forth) looks good but the user has no idea what’s happening, or in this case what’s not happening.

Xubuntu 8.04.1 LiveCD
A slimmer Ubuntu should work I thought and popped this one in, first loading went much quicker than the regular Ubuntu. Then comes the silent loading part, a little bar going back and forth while it sometimes acesses the cd and other times just sits there. After ca. 4 minutes the bar turned in to a progress bar and got to 100%, yay I thought, here we go! But then the computer just shut down instead (not overheated). FAIL.

Fedora 9 Live KDE LiveCD
First burned cd will not complete install, outputs “over current change” and a bunch of buffer errors on device sr0? Not very helpful. Just tell the user what the problem is in english? Documentation seems outdated, see this . None of these files exists on the server and you have to browse the ftp server manually to find out. Main page confusing with all the different versions and no intuitive explanation of what’s what. Calls all relevant files i686 while documentation says to get the i386 files. i386 files exist on the server but holds no iso files? FAIL.

Damn small linux 4.4.5 LiveCD
Some usb erros at boot. Not a problem it seems since it started just fine anyway. Feels basic but nice, got the media player to work almost right away (had to save the .pls and open it to get a stream working). Cannot install FirstClass (the .deb package I’ve talked about) even after I managed to follow instructions to “Upgrade to GNU utils” and “Enable Apt” which seemed necessary. When running the dpkg (depackage?) command specified at firstclass’s website it just says that the .deb is not a debian format archive. Some quick googling yields no solution. OS feels nice and fast though, if I could install what I needed this would probably be the Linux variety I’d use, after sprucing it up a little.

Debian Live Lenny KDE Desktop LiveCD
Disk error. Boot failed. Nuff said.

Winner: Damn Small Linux! Small, fast and best of all: actually works.
Second place: Puppy Linux. Has a nice feeling about it, pretty fast and works.
Last place: Fedora 9. Confusing website, non-functioning installation. Way to not go.

I have to say that -in my view- using Linux on the L400 is going to have to take some work and is sadly not something I can just install and live happily with ever after. For my part it means I’ll return to my original plan, to use XP (or an nLited version of it) or perhaps nLited Win2K on this machine.

Edit: As you can see in the comments below, one peson reports success in installing Debian and Ubuntu. The post reflects my personal, linux-noob thoughts and are not to be read as final verdicts on a whole OS. Some of them I couldn’t get to work but there are obviously people out there that do. Good luck