Jan Seeger wrote:
Hey list,
I have just received my new notebook, a Dell Latitude E6400. Of course,
I now want to install linux on it. The problem is that the Gentoo
minimal install cd recognizes neither the ethernet nor the wireless cards.
Is the network card in this laptop (an Intel 82567LM Gigabit network
controller) supported in the newest linux kernel or will I have to wait?
If it is supported, how would I go about booting with a newer kernel?
FWIW, I use the same box on my desktop and notebook.
So I'd tweak the desktop kernel to include drivers and support
appropriate for the laptop and recompile it; I'd install the necessary
laptop stuff (e.g. special drivers, kismet, wpa_supplicant, etc.).
Once you have that done, back up your brand new notebook; load up a
live cd; use parted/gparted/qparted to resize the NTFS partition to an
appropriate size; create some partitions for linux use; use NFS to copy
your desktop OS to the LT; chroot into the notebook root partition and
re-run lilo/grub after tweaking lilo.conf, xorg.conf, fstab, net, and
perhaps syslog.conf; create a multi-boot option within the windows boot
loader to jump to your linux boot partition.
There are some real cons to this approach, but some real advantages as well:
1. you maintain only one OS, and copy it.
2. you have a second box ready to go if your primary breaks.
3. Why tear up a little laptop with the machinations necessary to
maintain a gentoo box?
HTH
