The distro
I chose Debian Linux because I use it at home too and I'm very happy with it. I believe the whole thing would have been easier to set up with a current SuSE or a RedHat. But where's the fun and learning experience if everything is done for you?
My hardware
I bought a Dell CPTS600 without any extras. No modem, network card, etc. This was because I didn't really need that when purchasing the laptop and because I did not know if they would have worked under Linux. They probably wouldn't have. So I have a 14.1 Inches monitor, 128 megs of RAM, 6 gigabyte of harddisk space, a floppy and a 24x CD drive.
Installation
The basic installation worked fine just as on any other machine. The laptop booted from the CD drive and I followed the usual Debian installation steps.
Kernel
I now use the default Debian kernel (version 2.4.20 at the time of this writing) with some custom tweaks to include some additional experimental PCMCIA modules.
Video
My laptop shipped with a ATI Rage Mobility M1. This gave me some headaches, until I figured out the correct configuration. I now use the xserver-xfree86 server with the ati driver. The extract from XF86Config-4:
Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI M1"
Driver "ati"
EndSection
Audio
By now the ESS Maestro sound card works very well. Linux now includes working drivers for this card. About a year ago (September 2001) this drivers were still experimental, so I had to trick.
Network
I later bought a Xircom RealPort CardBus Ethernet 10/100+ Modem 56 PCMCIA card. Network works very well, though I have not yet tested the modem part.
Contact
I hope this works for you. If you want to contact me, please write me at <webmaster@patrice.ch>.
Revision history
Dec 29, 2002 - Changed the section "Kernel". Previously I provided a custom kernel configuration. Added some subsections for the different hardware components.