Gentoo Linux on the Dell Latitude C400

This guide started off some time after I upgraded the 10Gb drive on the C400 to an 80Gb Hitachi and replaced the Debian installation. Gentoo has a wealth of documentation so this is intended as an installation specific supplement.

Disclaimer: This document comes with no guarantees. The steps I followed worked for me but may not necessarily work for you or your hardware.

Configuration

Gentoo
linux-2.6.18-suspend2-r1 kernel
no Windows installation
PIII-M 866MHz CPU
768 Mb RAM (256Mb + 512Mb)
A12 BIOS
Crystal 4205 audio
3c905C-TX FastEthernet adapter (built-in)
80Gb 5400rpm Hitachi 5K80
TrueMobile 1150 wireless (disabled)
Netgear MA401 PCMCIA adapter
Netgear WAG511 PCMCIA adapter

Post-install

genkernel

Thinking the genkernel built kernels to be a little bloated I resorted to using the more traditional make menuconfig and make bzlilo. After much fiddling, recompiling & rebooting every time I needed another driver it was time to give genkernel another shot. I was pleasantly surprised - it actually built most of what I needed! I'm now a genkernel convert.

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posted by James Gemmell on Wed, 24 May 2006 at 17:09 | permalink | tags: gentoo, laptop, linux

Debian GNU/Linux on the Dell Latitude C400

This document started off early in 2002 when I installed Redhat 7.2 on the C400. I've been through several Redhat versions since 3.0.3 but, after enduring a hard disk crash, I decided for a number of reasons that Debian was the way to go.

Disclaimer: This document comes with no guarantees. The steps I followed worked for me but may not necessarily work for you or your hardware.

Configuration

Debian 3.0r1 Woody
recompiled 2.4.18 kernel
no Windows installation (see later)
PIII-M 866MHz CPU
1x 256Mb RAM
A09 BIOS
Crystal 4205 audio
3c905C-TX FastEthernet adapter (built-in)
10Gb Toshiba MK1517GAP
TrueMobile 1150 wireless (optional)

Installation

Partitioning the disk

The replacement drive was empty. The first step was to create a 768Mb save-to-disk (s2d) partition using mks2d.exe on the disk from Dell. The reason for choosing this size is that I intend adding another 512Mb RAM at some point in the future. Dell recommends that you set it up as 768Mb * 1.01 + 4Mb on the first partition so it's at a little over 800Mb now.

/dev/hda2 is set up as 50Mb boot partition (probably overkill here) and the remainder the root partition. No swap partition required at this stage as I've found swapfiles to be quite adequate in the past.

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posted by James Gemmell on Wed, 30 Apr 2003 at 17:26 | permalink | tags: laptop, linux