Dell Inspiron 710m

how to get wireless card to work in ubuntu dell laptop inspiron 1318

I'm just getting into the more technical side of things.
As I like to say, I am not a complete idiot, some parts were surgically removed..
Anyways, I have a Dell Inspiron 15 N5050. I was increasingly unhappy with Win7, read what I found on the forum, took a crack at switching the OS to Ubuntu. Fail. Had a free offer for Win 8.1 Developer...
I'm already calling it the bad move of '15.
So. Further investigation. Turning off the RAID0 at boot is easy enough. But there is an Intel driver that I have to disable before I turn off the RAID0 in the BIOS. I'm having no luck on my own with that. Suggestions/help?
Or, advice on getting around the new Win 8.1 Sec Protocols to do a dual boot setup? I already have a partitioned drive set-up, etc. Win8 is trying to disable all new software and seems to ignore partition.

Hello All. This is my first post here. I am worse than a newbie; I'm a PC dinosaur! Not joking either.
Recently got a Dell Inspiron 3048 with Windows 8.1 pre installed. As I am a die hard XP user (my other PC is a Dell Dimension 2400), and seeing that PC's days may be numbered, I want to start using Linux, and decided Mint 17.1 would be first on the list.
Ordered a Linux Mint 17.1 boot disk and went to install it. At the option for a dual boot with Windows, I got lost, and did not understand the "other" choice versus making Linux the only OS on the PC. I wound up wiping my HDD and lost contact with Windows 8.1. Fortunately, the Dell Tech I got at Dell Support was able to walk me through getting Windows back up, but the only way I can now access Mint 17.1 is with the boot disk, but there is no set up options as it is already set up, even though incorrectly for a dual boot.
How do I wipe out Linux without losing Windows 8.1 as well so I can re install Linux and this time make the correct selection for a dual boot?
Anyone willing to respond please do so small and slow so I can follow.
TIA.
BTW, I have tried installing Zorin OS 9 Ultimate on my XP machine via DVD and USB, but I can't get past the f1/f2 loop, even though I have reconfigured my boot sequence according to the drive I'm installing from. Zorin support has been MIA on this. Anyone having a similar problem?
Cheers

I compose on a Dell laptop model #Latitude D505. I have Xubuntu 12.04 (it won't upgrade) on it. Here are the Dell's specs:

Quote:
Dell Inspiron 8600 (Pentium M 710 1.4GHz, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD)
And it has 20 GB free space. I guess on paper it should run the Xubuntu easily but it is deadly slow. Most of the things I do in the terminal don't complete (I tried to install Dropbox--no luck.). Sometimes I can't even open the Ubuntu Software Center, let alone install stuff from there.

I have LibreOffice 4.2 something on there and that is all I need. Like I was saying Dropbox would be nice though.

So I stared checking out lighter distros. (I was told Xubuntu was one of the lightest--btw I have two desktops with Xubuntu on them as well--distros out there but was shocked when I started investigating.) (see screenshot)

So as long as I can install a relatively recent version of LibreOffice (and like I said Dropbox would be nice) I will be happy.

To reiterate: I'm just using the laptop as a word processor. Yes, I would have to be online (and can be) to use Dropbox but Dropbox is not essential.

Btw. The libreoffice on there now works well (once it gets going) as a word proccesor, but with all those distros that are so much smaller I was thinking that I could even improve on the word processor's speed.

Thanks.

im using the latest version of ubuntu on a 4 year old dell 780 optiplex and I am more than impressed with the speed and agility of the machine. Im so impressed that I have asked my friend for an old dell laptop so I can go mobile with this thing.
my question is.... do i install the same distro for a laptop as i am using on this desktop or is there a widely used laptop distro that the linux experts always use or at least on avarage use more than any other.
thanks guys

I have a Dell Inspiron Mini 1012, which came with a Windows XP operating system. I would like to change to a Linux operating system. Which one would be best for such limited--small capacity--hardware?

I have a Dell Optiplex 170L I'm using now running Xubuntu. It's okay but it's getting a little sluggish. I'm attaching the RAM printout.

Somebody gave me an LG computer that's much newer. But it's been cloned from another Dell Optiplex 170L so that's what the spec says. Anyway, here's what it says:
Dell Optiplex 170L
AMD A6-3500 APU with Radeon (tm) HD Graphics
2.09 GHz, 3.25 GB RAM

Hardrive is 74GB. Which is more than double my 36GB now.

But I noticed (see 009 attachment) my old computer has a faster processor (2.80 Ghz).

This new one has XP on it. So I'd probably single boot Xubuntu to it. (Or could it handle a bigger distro?)

I have another identical computer (to my old one) that I added a half GB RAM to and it helped. I could do the same to this one.

Or use the new one.

I am a true newbie and not up for the switch, but if it would be worth it I would. Think I should?

Want to format a 1 TB Western Digital drive in an old dell 32 bit machine. Machine has Lubuntu installed and a Virtual machine on which which is loaded Windows 7 (32 bit).

Machine does not "see" the new 1 TB (SATA) drive after I physically install it in the machine.

I have other windows and Linux machines. I have some drive cradles in which I can connect to (windows) USB ports.

Is it possible to use the old Dell machine to format the new drive?

(It appears that this question has been answered before. So I will check those materials as well.)

Thanks for any assistance.

Geoffrey Wolfe

Hi,
Will samsung kies work with Linux Mint 17,Ihave linux mint 17 on my laptop and would like to connect my mobile phone Samsung galaxy4 to my laptop, but am not sure if samsung kies will work.Any advice will be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.
Tony 044
Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop
320 gb ram
Linux Mint 17

Hi,
I work with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on my laptop and desktops. I am facing two issues:
i) Even in LTS, every week there are upgrades, on one count or other. This is not a concern, but what is painful is that if the upgrade does some tweaking of the kernel, I lose the support for Gnome Desktop and Nvidia...To get the machine back to the desktop, I have to sometimes knock off Nvidia*, and then try repairing with the advanced choices...otherwise the system boots up but the X-Display is unaccessible...
2. Secondly, why does Ubuntu want me to use DHCP...? I conmfigure it always for static IP, and even write out a /etc/resolv.conf...but the NM deletes the entries... I want a solution to this issue...I am using a Vostro 3570, an Inspiron 530 and a Envy15 Laptop,,,

3. I find that the network is never a problem with the FC20, which I use with dual boot...what is wrong with Ubuntu Networking implementation please?

4. Finally, my most urgent question (to anyone who can help) is how to directly load Ubuntu or FC20 on to a desktop or laptop on a new disk...From where can I get the basic Linux drivers ...? There is no such problem with Win7!!! (IMHO which is a much poorer OS for professional computing...)
5. Dell though it supports Ubuntu 12.04, refuses to give the drivers even for their systems under warranty, ditto for HP...So Dear Sirs where does one go for a remedy...

Warm Regards