Inspiron 6000 and Debian

I recently bought a laptop - a dell inspiron 6000. It is what the dell guys call 'work station replacement', and that is what I wanted.

I have always wanted to tinker with Linux and now finally I have got it. For those of you, who are just starting with Linux, Fedora is a very good option. This comes from someone who burnt his hands with Debian first. Debian has an awful installer and it should come with "Installed by linux experts, don't do it at home" warning.

Fedora, on the other hand is a dream. Everything works, even my 1900x1200 screen (Its another thing that I really don't like this resolution, it is too small, to give an idea, the entire www.cnn.com page comes in 1/3 of the screen.)

So this is what I did:
- Reinstalled Win XP professional in 30 GB (I had 60 GB). For those of you have not installed Win XP, first remove all partitions, and then when Win XP asks for the space for XP installation, allocate the space you think you need. I divided 50-50.

- Tried to install Debian with its crappy installer. (The default debian installer comes with an old version of Linux kernel). My laptop's battery ran out and I was left with unstable installation (OK, no fault of debian).

- Re-installed debian, this time with power cord connected. It was installed. X windows and network never worked.

- Someone suggested Fedora, and it was a great advice. Fedora's installation is beautiful. It is so simple that I am not even going to document it. It will go through painlessly. One quirk I faced though was that whenever I changed CDs ( there are 4 of them), it did not recognize it the first time. Retrying worked.

Now, If only I can bring myself to tinker with linux - the main reason I bought the laptop for.