Linux on a Gateway Solo 450

Last updated 20 September 2004.

I'm running Fedora Core 2, dual-booted with Windows XP (Professional). I've given Windows 15 GB and Linux gets the rest of a 60 GB drive.

Important Note: I do not have the "Centrino" version of the 450. In particular, the miniPCI wireless card on my machine advertises itself as a "Lucent Technologies WaveLAN/IEEE" and is handled by the orinoco and orinoco_cs drivers.

I originally installed RedHat 7.3, upgraded to Fedora Core 1 (mostly because RedHat dropped support for RH 7.3), then did a clean install of FC1 (because my hard drive died), and recently did a clean install of Fedora Core 2. See the original installation notes if you're interested.

[In the process of all these installations and reinstallations and disk crashes I discovered that it is possible to store a moribund Windows installation on another machine, reformat the disk (or install a new one), restore the Windows data back to the original machine, and it just works. I'm sure lots of people knew you could do this, but it was (welcome) news to me. Rsync does the trick both when saving and restoring the Windows files.]

The installation went fairly smoothly, but be careful if you want a dual-boot machine like I do, because there's this slight incompatibility with the way Windows sets up the partition table and the way the FC2 install does it. From what I understand, Windows does it wrong and FC2 tries to correct it, which gets Windows all confused so it won't boot any more. The trick is to convince FC2 not to touch the partition table during the installation process; to do this, you need to do some homework before you start the FC2 installation, and then invoke the boot-process Linux in a special way. This page explains the details. In my case, since my hard drive has 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, and 7296 cylinders (as reported by fdisk), I needed to start linux by typing "linux hda=7296,255,63" during the installation. Do not just hit return.

Oh, and if you're doing a totally clean install, remember to install Windows first, then Linux. If Windows is already on your machine and taking up the entire disk, you need to repartition to give Linux some room; you can do this (or so I understand) by using a tool such as Partition Magic or fips, or you can rsync your Windows files to another machine, repartition, then put everything back again (which is essentially what I did when I put in my new hard drive).

As usual with any major upgrade there are lots of little things that either need to be worked out or are just annoying. Fedora Core 2 is a lot slicker than 7.3 was, especially with respect to GUI-operated configuration tools, but it is a work in progress.

Various screenshots of my X-windows environment setup can be found here. I include them mostly to help me document what I've done, but you may find them useful. Also, you can find my xorg.conf here; note that this includes the changes required for the Synaptics Touchpad driver (see below).

Things that work:

Things I haven't checked yet:

Glitches:

Tips and Tricks

Basic Hardware Specs (see also the Gateway 450 specs page)

Processor: 1.4 GHz Mobile Pentium 4
Memory: 256MB DDR SDRAM
Hard Drive: 60GB
Video: ATI Radeon Mobility M6 w/ 32MB DDRAM
Display: 15 inch XGA (1024x768) TFT 32-bit
CD-ROM: modular 8x/8x/24x CDRW / 8x DVD Combo

If you think you'll need a floppy drive don't forget that you have to order it separately; it's modular so it takes the place of the CD-ROM. For an extra 20 bucks it seemed like a no-brainer to get one, but I haven't even taken it out of the wrapping yet.


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Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004 David W. Strauss