10/09/03 This one is dedicated to installing Gentoo GNU/Linux on the laptop
I began using linux on my desktop a little over a year ago, and once I figured out how to get sound i never looked back. I got the dell inspiron 5100, and i knew I would install linux along with windows xp, mainly because I need some proprietary software for school, and I don't have windows on my desktop.
The Hardware:
Intel P4 2.4 GHz
512 Meg DDR RAM
40GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive
24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive
Mobility Radeon 7500 Video card
15 inch SXGA+ display
Internal Conexant D480 56K Modem
Integrated Broadcom 440x 10/100 Network Card
2 USB ports
1 Firewire port
1 Svideo output
1 SVGA output
Belkin USB optical mouse
The Software:
Windows XP Home Edition (pre installed)
Gentoo 1.4
Preparation
The only preparation I went through was backing up data on the windows partition, other than that I followed the installation docs from gentoo.org pretty much word for word.
Other Hardware
Sound, Video, and Mouse all work fine. As does the NIC. I have not tried the modem, firewire, or s-video output.
Conclusion
The install went well, Gentoo will take a long time to install everything up to and including X (about 2 days). PCMCIA worked, once I had downgraded the firmware of the Cisco Aironet 350 series wireless pcmcia card to the 4.x series which is supported. USB works, sound, video, etc all work.
Issues
1. No APM/acpi (power management) after normal install of gentoo, so far at least I haven't really bothered with this yet, because it isn't all that important to me at this point.