[TriLUG] Debian on Dell

[crimsun at fungus.sh.nu]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 11:44:27PM -0500, Faheem Mitha wrote:
> I've taken a look at Dell's Precision line of workstations, but it looks
> less than ideal. For one things the descriptions are less than specific
> about what hardware is included. I was hoping to somehow actually be able
> to do a significant amount of customization without breaking the bank.

I oversee a lab of 16 Dell Precision 360s running Red Hat Linux 9. Here
is some info (also customizable via the 360/n MiniTower option on Dell's
webpage).

Pentium4 2.4 GHz (HT-enabled)
512 MB DDR400 SDRAM ECC
36 GB U320 10k rpm SCSI HD
LSI (mptfusion) U320 SCSI adapter, non-raid (no ext connector)
Dell 1901fp
Nvidia Quadro4 NVS 280 dual DVI/VGA
on-board Intel8x0 sound chipset
Intel e1000 on-board LAN
16X DVD-ROM
3.5" floppy diskette drive
PS/2 keyboard (entry-level)
no modem
Dell USB 2-button optical scroll mouse (Logitech)
no zip drive, USB memory key, or zip disk packs
...

Since Intel donated these machines as part of an educational grant, they
initially had Windows XP installed. We hijacked that right off the bat,
replacing them with Red Hat 9. Very smooth install.

[One of the workstations is "mine"; I installed Debian Woody after
creating a custom kernel and dumping that onto a diskette as part of the
2-diskette rescue/root set. The kernel config is largely stolen from
RH9's, but I threw out initrd and compiled in ("y") mptfusion, i2o, ext3
and scsi support. Since I'm the sole user, I dist-upgraded to Sid, and
I use GNOME 2.5.5 with Gtk+-2.3.4, Glib-2.3.3, and Pango-1.3.3.]

They're kept up to date via yum (thanks, Kevin!), and they all run
2.6.3-rc1-bk2 kernels (I just copy the necessary files over the net).
The only tainted kernel modules they use are Nvidia's binary-only
1.0-5336 drivers.

HTH.

-- 
Daniel T. Chen          crimsun at fungus.sh.nu
GPG key:   www.sh.nu/~crimsun/pubkey.gpg.asc
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