Opensuse/Ubuntu Advice (Dell XPS M1530)

Hey guys,

I was interested in perhaps dual-booting my machine with Vista/Opensuse or Ubuntu, and I was hoping to get some information from anyone who has done the same!

I am using the Dell XPS M1530 in particularly. The main things I am wondering are:

1. Which version do you think I should go with??
2. How does the battery life compare to when using vista? Is it considerably more/less?
3. Will there be any issues with any of my hardware? I appreciate that not everyone has the same computer as me, but I will post my spec at the end of this post.

Here are my system specs:

T7250 @2Ghz
4GB RAM
250GB 5400rpm hard drive
Intel 4965 AGN wireless card
Dell truemobile 355 Bluetooth
Nvidia 8600M GT
1440x900 res. Screen

Think that should cover it. Thanks in advance for your input!

 

A quick search here shows up tons of threads. This one in particular:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=336201&highlight=m1530#6

Good luck!

 

I can recommend you openSUSE 11.1 x64 edition. All your hardware is supported out of box, though the drivers for your nvidia graphic card needs to be installed after the OS, due to the proprietary nature of the drivers. This is easy though... KDE 4.1 looks pretty good and I like it more than Gnome. Batterylife shouldn't be considerably less than in Windows Vista, though it will probably be slightly reduced. Also, install Linux after Windows if you are going to run a dualboot configuration.

People say that Ubuntu is the easiest Linux distro for 'newbies', though I find openSUSE to be equally easy in-use, and openSUSE has a more polished look than Ubuntu, IMHO.

Good luck.

Me, I'm running Windows Vista Ult. x64 and openSUSE 11.1 x64 in a dualboot config on my M1330 computer. Recommended!


PS. If you've installed openSUSE, start iup your firefox browser, there the startpage is set to opensuse homepage, there there's a search field, type in nvidia in the search field and you'll find the instructions for installing graphic card drivers. for multimedia support on openSUSE 11.1, see the following page:
http://opensuse-community.org/Multimedia

 

I think your machine should work well with the new versions of Linux in general. I recommend Ubuntu 8.10 x64 version. I personally like Ubuntu more than Opensuse. I know your CPU, Wifi card, RAM, harddrive, Graphics card and screen res should be fine in Ubuntu 8.10. It is a really great release and has saved me a ton of time in configuring my system. It works very well and is very stable. I don't know about the Bluetooth module that Dell uses, not sure if that would work or not. I have internal bluetooth in my machine and it works perfectly with Ubuntu 8.10 x64. I have a Broadcom chipset in my machine as far as the bluetooth. Having my bluetooth work perfectly was a requirement of mine in choosing between different versions of distros. I have a Bluetooth mouse and I needed that to work perfectly, and it does .

 

+1 for Ubuntu 64, I feel its cleaned up a lot from 8.04. Unfortunately playing around with the OS (its really addicting to customize it!) has detracted from my research .

Good luck!

 

just installed ubuntu 8.10 x64. no problems so far have not tried opensuse though so my opinion may be biased.

 

I like Ubuntu more. Opensuse takes too long to boot and it's heavily bloated.

 

I like openSUSE.

Starting with openSUSE-11.0 significant improvements were made in openSUSE boot time, and I now find openSUSE-11.1 boots quite fast. I disagree with the views of a user who stated that it is slow to boot (the user is likely referring to an older openSUSE version). I have found Red Hat / Fedora slower to boot, and the last Ubuntu version I tried was slower.

openSUSE-11.1 has the best version of KDE around, which is KDE-3.5.10. Most other Linux distributions have dropped KDE3 in favour of KDE4, but KDE4 is still immature. Now on openSUSE one can also go for the more cutting edge "KDE-4.1.3" which is probably one of the best KDE4 implementations, although KDE4 still needs work according to many. Alternatively, if one wishes to try the Gnome desktop (instead of KDE desktop) then one can try Red Hat/Fedora or Ubuntu, or openSUSE. All 3 have good gnome implementations.

openSUSE has an adminstrative tool called YaST, which users either love or hate. It is the most comprehensive adminstrative tool around (no other Linux tool comes close) and for me that is a point about openSUSE that I sorely miss when ever I try out another distribution (as no other distribution has a tool that comes anywhere close as being as comprehensive).

Ubuntu has the largest support forum, but IMHO that does not mean better support. But it is nice to have a large support forum. Both Red Hat / Fedora and openSUSE also have large support forums.

I personally avoid Ubuntu because of a controversal Ubuntu approach where they do not pass a lot of their bug fixes upstream (which means other Linux distributions do not benefit as much from Ubuntu bug fixes). Neither Red Hat nor openSUSE adopt that approach (as both Red Hat / Fedora and openSUSE DO pass all their fixes upstream). That Ubuntu approach is not consistent with the open source philosophy I follow and hence I no longer even consider using a Ubuntu derivative ... at the most I now only play with Ubuntu live CDs (contrary to some time back, when I would try an Ubuntu install now and then). I also have the latest Fedora installed.

But having typed that, I do not think you can go wrong with either Ubuntu nor openSUSE. If you like Gnome, try Ubuntu. If you like KDE3, go for openSUSE. If you like KDE4, go for openSUSE. Either will work more or less out of the box, and both will need some tuning to get most devices working on your XPS M1530.

Dell XPS 1530 from openSUSE Hardware Compatibility List (HCL):
http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Laptops/Dell#XPS

 

No, I'm not. I'm referring to opensuse 11.1 which I gave a shot about weeks ago.

 

well, I'm running openSUSE 11.1 on my M1330, using GNOME. I now have the system up and running, almost perfectly. I have an issue with Compiz not performing well on my nvidia 8400m gs graphic card, due to downclocking with the powermizer function. Apart from that there's no issues.

I did have to add a config file to fix an issue with resuming from RAM, which I believe is nvidia-related also, as the issue appeared with the 180.XX drivers, but that problem is solved now.

In general I find openSUSE to be a more look-consistent distribution and a more appealing to the eyes distribution than Ubuntu, though Ubuntu probably is a little easier to use than openSUSE for newbies, but not by much. As said earlier in this thread, I cannot live without Yast. It makes configuration of the system sooooo easy.

General performance is very, very good and boot times are not bad. (Though I either sleep the computer or hibernate it, so I do not perform many cold boots. But I've found boot times to be much improved from the earlier versions of openSUSE. ... Though it can be said that this might come from the fact that I've upgraded the hardware to 4GB RAM and a 7200rpm harddrive)

Either way, I like Ubuntu too, it's just that I find the looks of the OS too dull. openSUSE looks more professional, which I prefer. But, thei're both good distributions and you can't go wrong with either.

PS. KDE4 I find too unstable and too many bugs still present, so I cannot recommend that. KDE 3.5 on openSUSE is fully stable and mature, though I prefer GNOME over KDE 3.5. -Looking forward to a stable KDE 4.X though...