DELL Inspiron B130

Hi mepisman, I do not have a B130, but I have an old Inspiron. According to a few other folks, it looks like the B130 will work well. Look here:
http://www.mepis.org/node/9517
for your answers

Also, do a search to the left on "dell b130" for more hits.

Jon

B130 Inspiron (Dell) . . . I am thinking about buying one. Tell me how your linux experiences went.

I use MEPIS 3.43 and am thinking about a Dell B130. . .so I am interested in any other people's experiences.

Thanks!

You will have very little in the way of problems with the B130 ( http://www.mepis.org/node/9517 )

{Thanks, Jon!}

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OK, EnigmaOne, here I go! I just got off the 'net with Dell and ordered my new B130. I added max. RAM to 1 GB 'cause I'm gonna be using VMware a lot. I am ordering the stock 60 GB hard drive, but I will be purchasing a bigger, faster drive to replace it. My current Dell Inspiron 2600 has a 100 GB drive in it.

But it's about time for a new laptop. A few nights ago I was reloading my daughter-in-law's box (same model) with Windows Yucks-Pee 'cause it was full of sh** (stuff). I was able to "borrow" her battery and use it to confirm that my battery is, in fact, on its last legs. I have ordered a new one and it should arrive this week. Once that happens I will be able to use my current box as a backup/experimental box.

Once I get the new toy rigged, then I can work on getting my new laptop built (at the moment I feel like Tigger bouncing around the room!)

Warren's gotta get on the ball making some Mepis stickers so that I can stick them on my boxes!

Jon

Like I said...it's a decent little machine.

You did order the restore DVD, didn't you?

It's like 10 bucks, IIRC, and you will need some of the driver binaries from it.

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Yup, I ordered it. Thanks for the reminder EO. I will probably be back to get some specifics from you on this matter once it arrives.

I'm hoping that this will be the last machine I buy where I "must" include Windows. Yes, I know I could have gone to one of the Linux Only computer places. I was the one that mentioned Linux Certified and Emperor Linux on this forum. But I couldn't justify the price. I publicly apologize to the companies here

I also think it's a shame that companies like Dell are "persuaded" to recommend Windows above any other solution. I find it annoying that, in their latest catalog, ON EVERY SINGLE PAGE, "Dell recomends Windows XP...". Yeah, thank you Dell for informing me of that.

I am probably going to start a flame war here, but that is not my intention. Yes, it is a marketing decision that Dell has made, but it is a shame that they cannot "choose" to distribute Linux without threat from Mr. Bill.

Ok, I have turned off my rant-o-ray for the time being

Ah well. Thanks again for the info.

Jon

Du Quesne:

Would you mind listing your full B130 specs and tell me how your first couple of days / weeks goes with it?

The B130 is something that I am seriously looking at for my mom -- her needs are rather simple, so for the price, it seems like a potential bargin. Of course, Linux has a history of being more troublesome on laptops than desktops, so I am searching the intarwebs for as much info as possible.

Thanks!

/ I agree, I hate the "designed for Windows" logo on every PC or laptop you find today

Bear in mind that, the laptop is on the Right Coast, and I'm on the Left Coast; so, hands-on with that machine will have to wait until Darling Daughter wings her way back for Christmas Vacation. {Confidentially: I would never have let her take the thing with her, if it wasn't so fall-down easy to deal with, on her part.}

...and who thought a lump of clay could be so threatening?

OK.
Q.: What's the largest thing in the observable universe?
A.: Steve Ballmer's ego.

In the matter of Dell, Gateway, and the rest of the spineless hardware vendors, I really think that Ballmer is more of the current driving force behind the high prices and strong-arm tactics to preserve exclusive distribution channels.

Yeah, Billy invented the game, but Stevie is taking it to higher (and more egregiously illegal) levels.

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Thanks EnigmaOne for the correction. I stand corrected. I'd sit, but Stevie threw my chair away

Jon

Correction, Jon? Naw.

It's more my talking in my sleep, and mulling-over distinctions between front-men in 'Da Organization' youse nose.

We all know that, in the end analysis, Billy is holding Stevie's leash.

Going a bit further...

That kind of 'persuasion' stikes me as being akin to finding a horse head in your bed.

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I am not sure I understand. Could you (or anyone else reading this) tell me if this "restore DVD" is for Windows or Linux?

it will be for windows, but i guess that some files will be needed to run the wireless card through ndiswrapper.

The B130 comes with windoze xp home edition (IIRC?) installed, and they offer a system restore DVD for something like 10 dollars (US); and, as Liz mentioned, it is for yielding one's soul to Satan & Ballmer.

Everything came-up and running correctly with 6.0-rc1, the only driver needed was for the wireless.

The wireless drivers are on the DVD, but I don't remember which directory it was in, or if I just grabbed them from the hard drive itself. I do recall doing fw-cuts for that one (because it has SM6.0-rc1 installed), and blacklisting the native BCM4318 kernel module...took something like a couple of minutes to get the wireless going.

It pains me to admit it...::: sniffle :::...on this one purchase I didn't raise the usual fuss to have windoze exorcised from the machine, and the appropriate discounts applied.

We got it with windoze installed. ::: sniffle-weep :::

My wife MADE me do it...

...but I'm the one who dual-booted the li'l sucker!

Geeze! Do they have a 12-step program for things like this?

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Hi. My name is Jon, and I'm a geek.
(hi Jon...)

Hi Allan. My box is on the way. I should be able to pick it up tomorrow. This is my plan. I have already purchased a larger 160 GB drive. My old Dell has a 100 GB drive that I installed (I like to keep stuff). My plan is to "image" to original drive and not use it, at least initially. I will install the bigger drive and set it up with partitions just for Mepis. I will store the original hard drive and image for safe keeping (or eventually use it for a backup drive).

Also, just for grins and giggles, I ordered the "Professional" version of XP. That way I get "half as much for twice the price" over "Home" edition

And to add info for MBA Whore on the restore CD. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away it was possible to get "real" Windows CDs from Dell. When you ordered a box with Windows 98 or ME or 2000 you were given a complete, good version of Windows. Apparently that was a little too good a deal for MS. So now you have to pay to get a restore CD that is Windows (you can never pay enough for "Genuine Windows"). But it has been customized to work only on that particular model machine. I believe it also "formats" the drive. When you do a restore from that disk, the entire hard drive is blown away and you get to start over. I've had to do that with a number of friends' and clients' machines. Good for Windows, bad for any multi-boot system.

Jon

Personally delivered by the Tooth Fairy.

{psssst! No such thing!}

Anyway, I still have my 'Fish Friend'.

Website: http://www.gabston-howell.org/
WebLog: http://www.gabston-howell.org/wl/
Must Reads for Newbies:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
http://www.tldp.org/

I am still not sure I fully understand the concept of "wireless" drivers and the previously mentioned $10.00 restore DVD.

If I get the B130 with wireless and use ONLY linux on it (MEPIS in my case), would I still need the wireless drivers on that restore DVD? I would assume not, since that restore DVD is likely designed to "restore" a Windows, not Linux, laptop.

If anyone could clarify, then I would greatly appreciate it. My mom would like wireless, but no dual boot stuff. . .ONLY linux.

So back to square one: Would she / we still need to order that $10.00 restore DVD if it will be a linux only laptop?

Thanks again to everyone for your posts! It is cool seeing other people in the same (or similar) boat as I am and seeing what they did!!!!!

Hi all. OK, I have now received my new Dell B130 laptop. I will post great (and boring) details on specs later to document for other users. However here is the good news: It works

Before I even powered it on I replaced the existing hard drive with a larger 160 GB hard drive. I will image the original drive later. I used the GParted Live CD to partition the drive. I created three 10 GB partitions (so that I could test other operating systems), a 2 GB swap space (yes, it's large), and the remaining space that will be used to mount "home" (over 100 GB!).

Once that was done, I booted the Mepis 6.0 Live CD, logged in as root and Installed everything. At that time I was not connected to the Internet in any way. It took about 17 minutes to load everything and about 10 more minutes of me playing around with things to get my main user account cleaned up (sorry, I have no more fish). Sound and video display were just fine. Set at 1280x800.

After a quick trip to the grocery store (dang chores interrupting my play!) I came home and plugged 'er in to the network. It's currently configured to use DHCP to obtain the IP address. The interesting thing is that the wired connection is identified as eth1. No problem.

Next, I put my MAC address into my router to allow wireless access, put the ESSID, password, and channel frequency into eth0. I applied the changes, and pressed the "connect" button in mutilities and... it worked!

At no time did I use the recovery disk, nor is there any bit of Windows code on this hard drive

So, in answer to MBA Whore's question: No, for this purpose I did not use the recovery CD. However, I always order any recovery CDs with a computer. Since I'm having to buy Windows anyway, I have purchased a legal "right" (ok permission) to this software, I want the ability to restore my system if it gets damaged. Over time Windows can get so trashed (defrag's no good, cleaning temp directories is no good, fixing the registry...) it is better and faster to just reload the d*mned thing!

So I am going to spend my day copying over the stuff from my old box to the new box and loading other applications. So far, I am quite thrilled with the results

Thank you oh hairy, big-toothed, big-footed one!

I shall give more details when I have the chance.

Jon

Oh my, Jon!

Sorry to hear that you had such a difficult time installing Linux to that machine.

To MBA Whore:
In theory, one would not have to order a restore CD or DVD; however, it's good idea to either get one, or image the hard drive, to preserve the availability of certain windoze drivers, for which code wrappers have been written. A good example would be ndiswrapper for wireless drivers.

Wireless and modems seem to be the only issues I've been hearing about of late; and, not too much of that.

It would be possible to simply wipe the hard drive and install a distro like SimplyMEPIS. If windoze drivers are necessary for certain hardware components, they are generally accessible through the Internet.

A restore CD/DVD or hard drive image simply puts that driver code at your fingertips, instead at the end of a Google search.

Website: http://www.gabston-howell.org/
WebLog: http://www.gabston-howell.org/wl/
Must Reads for Newbies:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
http://www.tldp.org/

All, I have added a link to one little fix I found. I hope it helps

Setting 1280x800 Resolution on Dell B130 [SOLVED]
http://www.mepis.org/node/11276

Jon

Mepisman. . .did you ever get the B130 and. . .if so, how has your Mepis experience been on it?

Jon. . .ty for your updates on your experiences! This forum has proven to be very helpful as I collect information before making the final recommendation to my mom on what Linux Mepis compatible laptop to select.

I do have another question for you (and anyone else reading):

1) Have you had any trouble setting up / using printing on your B130 while using Mepis? Do you print while wireless or wired?

Thanks and keep us posted on how well (or not well) things go!

Actually MBA Whore, I haven't yet tested printing. I have a new HP All-In-One thingy (don't recall the model, 'cause it's at home; I think I posted that elsewhere on this forum). I initially set the printer up while using Mepis 3.3.1 and had no problem. With the initial setup I could print directly as well as wirelessly

However, that printer has the capability of being connected directly to the network (it has a lan port) and I thought that would be a good idea. It was initially, but when I went to print something after a few days, one of my important applications could not see the printer. OpenOffice did, Kwrite, and various other apps would, but not my financial tool

I do not yet know why. So I need to spend some time and probably re-plug the printer into one of my other boxes via the USB port and reconfigure. Then I will test printing again. I'll let ya know what I find out.

Oh, as another aside of some of my experiments on the B130. I tried loading Ubuntu 6.06 (that I obtained from the September 2006 issue of "Linux Format" magazine (excellent mag.)) onto my laptop on one of the other open partitions. it loaded ok and seemed decent, but I was unable to get wireless to work. I got it to "see" and configure my wireless card, but connection was refused by the router. I'm not that concerned because Mepis works just fine

Jon

Hi again,

I recently had a thought. The Linux B130 would be for my mom and it would be really great if I could hook up the B130 to a large screen LCD TV so she could more easily read small text, etc. Of course, when she is done using the laptop and wants to watch TV, all she would need to do is turn off the laptop.

My questions:

1) Does anyone know if the B130 has any type of "output" port, cord, etc to plug into an LCD TV?

2) Would a large screen LCD TV have a good enough resolution to make this worthwhile (I heard that TVs have lower resolutions compared to computer monitors)?

Thanks!

Simply dealing with with the display hardware...

If the LCD TV is HiDef, you're probably ok.

If it's NTSC, you're dealing a specification of a vertical dimension of 525 horizontal scan lines, 480 to 483 of which actually contain interleaved analog picture data. The balance contain sync & encoded closed caption data, and occupy the vertical retrace interval.

PAL is specified at a vertical dimension of 625 horizontal scan lines--the rest of the PAL spec escapes my poor brain at the moment.

This puts you in the situation of dealing with poorer resolution than the native (800 px, IIRC) LCD vertical resolution on the B130.

As to the presence of an analog output connector on the B130, I can't answer that question since the one we bought is with our daughter, at college, on the other side of the country.

I'll pass that particular over to Jon to answer.

I do believe, however, that it did have an HD-15 connector for implementing an external monitor or LCD projector.

Website: http://www.gabston-howell.org/
WebLog: http://www.gabston-howell.org/wl/
Must Reads for Newbies:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
http://www.tldp.org/

Good Evening All.

Yes, the B130 does have a video output. It appears to be a standard 15-pin video-out connector. I don't know if it's HD or not.

Good question as to its resolution. I have a newer flat-panel TV upstairs that can supposedly be connected to a computer. I bought the silly thing, not to watch tv, but to connect one of our video game players to, so the grand kids could play stuff. So I haven't hooked my computer(s) up to it. I'll see if I can find a cable (and see what type is necessary) and give it a try.

Jon

OK.
The recollection of the B130 having an HD-15 connector (standard, 15 pin, High Density, VGA D-shell connector) escaped me. I do know that it doesn't have a parallel connector, so I was uncertain.

If the LCD TV has a VGA input, and the B130 has a VGA output, then the resolution situation should be ok, depending on the resolution capabilities of the LCD TV involved.

Time to hit the manual for that particular display?

Website: http://www.gabston-howell.org/
WebLog: http://www.gabston-howell.org/wl/
Must Reads for Newbies:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
http://www.tldp.org/

I just posted a separate thread with my success in fixing the wireless access on my box. Read all about it here:
http://www.mepis.org/node/11915

Jon

now, jon, you're reactivating old threads, so i'm gonna call out the mepis posse

Sorry Liz, I was just wanting to "finish the story" from way back when.

"Ahem" (clearing throat): "... and they lived happily ever after! The end."

Jon

I'm your worst nightmare: A Geek with an Attitude!

Proud Charter Member of
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