Linux on Inspiron 8000

At this page you can found detailed instructions for installing SuSE Linux 7.0 and MS Windows 2000 on Dell Inspiron 8000 notebook.
When creating this page I used my notes made during installation as well as many hints found on Dell's talk site and discussion groups. However I'm mainly Windows developer and this is my first experience with Linux so if you know of better ways to do things described here, please do let me know.
I hope this will be useful to anybody trying to install Linux on Inspiron 8000.

Hardware configuration of my notebook:
CPU Intel Pentium III 850MHz with SpeedStep technology (700MHz when powered from battery)
256MB RAM (SO DIMM RAM 100MHz chips)
32GB Hard disk
15" TFT LCD display, 1600x1200 max resolution (absolutely brilliant!)
ATI Rage 128 LT, 32MB video RAM
Toshiba DVD ROM in Fixed Bay
Maestro 3i Allegro Sound Card
Sony CDRW in Media Bay interchangeable with a floppy drive or a second battery
Aztech MiniPCI internal modem 56K (Winmodem with Lucent chip)
Intel PRO based internal network card
TV output, IEEE 1394 FireWire port, IRDA port

It took me several attempts to figure out the best way to partition my hard disk because I had problems with Suspend-To-Disk partition (see APM section below).
Finally I used these steps to partition my hard disk:

Create primary partition, 250MB, and make it active, format as MSDOS or VFAT. (/dev/hda1 in Linux)
Create Suspend-To-Disk partition cca 560MB using Dell's MKS2D.EXE tool. The size of the partition should be at least size of RAM + size of video RAM + some bytes extra. However keep in mind that if you ever expand your laptop's RAM, your Suspend-To-Disk partition will not work so it might be a good idea to use maximum capacity for RAM 512MB.
Using Partition Magic 6.0 create extended partition using the remaining capacity of the hard disk.
In extended partiotion create a logical partition 10GB and format it as FAT32. It will be used for Win2K installation. (/dev/hda5 in Linux)
Create another 10GB logical partition and format as FAT32 again. It will be used for Win2K data files. (/dev/hda6 in Linux)
Create 10MB logical partition and format as Ext2FS. It will be /boot partition for Linux (/dev/hda7)
Create 512MB logical partition and format as Linux swap. It will be /swap partition for Linux (/dev/hda8)
Create another logical partition using remaining disk space. It will Linux root partition (/dev/hda9)

Now the system is ready for Windows 2000 installation. You can test if your Suspend-To-Disk is working by booting to MS DOS from a floppy disk and pressing Fn+A. You should see a grey text screen with message 'Saving memory to disk' and after cca 30 sec the laptop should power off. When you press power button, after the usual POST screen you'll see the grey screen again this with message 'Resuming memory from disk' and MS DOS should be resumed.

It seems there are several ways how to setup your S2D partition, other users reported successfully creating partions using PHDISK.EXE tool. However the steps described above worked for me so if you need more information try searching Yahoo discussion group for "S2D".

Installation of MS Windows 2000 is very easy and straightforward. Only remember to install Intel chipset drivers first before installing drivers for video card, modem etc.

You can use Disk Manager to hide Suspend-To-Disk partition: go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management, select Disk Management and right-click the second partition then select Change Drive Letter and Path and remove drive letter.

Because you installed Linux at the end of your hard disk, you can't boot Linux directly. Boot partition is beyond 1024 cylinder limit and the version of LILO program from SuSE installation cannot handle this. Also you have MS Windows 2000 installed so you need a way to choose a system at boot time. My solution was to use Windows boot manager and add an entry for SuSE Linux in boot menu:

I strongly recommend to upgrade from kernel version 2.2.16 provided on installation medium to the latest version which is at the moment 2.4.2 (or 2.4.3 but there are only minor differences between 2.4.2 and 2.4.3).

There is a driver in 2.4.2 kernel but it is experimental so I downloaded driver from ALSA (0.5.10b):

I don't have any PCMCIA cards because my laptop is 'all-in-one' solution but I did setup PCMCIA services anyway:

Luckilly in my laptop I have Aztech MiniPCI combo with Lucent chip based modem and IntelPRO chipset based NIC. The internal modem in Inspiron is a WinModem which means there is no real DSP but most of the job is done by the main CPU using a Windows driver. However for this type of modem there is a Linux driver as well.

Download oms and omi packages from LiVid, unpack and compile and enjoy DVD in Linux. The DVD player is currently in version 0.1 and it doesn't provide such comfort as Windows DVD applications but it's a step forward anyway.
You may need to upgrade some libraries before compiling DVD package but I first installed Enlightenment desktop, new versions of Eterm, gkrellm etc and DVD compiled straight away.

Other option is VideoLAN but compared to LiVid it seems to be a bit slower but it could be just a configuration problem.

Although the built-in touch pad is easy to use, it's much faster to move mouse pointer using normal external mouse. So I bought USB Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical. It works almost on every surface, especially on the bedsheet in your bed when you don't want to get up in the morning.:-)

DRI stands for Direct Rendering Infrastructure and enables fast access to 3D accelerated functions of your video card. You need this if you want to play games like Quake 3 Arena in Linux.

You can 'save' your current computer state to RAM and power down all other devices including CPU and hard disk. This Suspend-To-Memory mode is activated by Fn+ESC. At this state the laptop consumes very litle power from batteries and can stay this way for a few days before battery is depleted. However I have Win2K set up the way that after some time Suspend-To-Disk kicks in and laptop is powered down completely. I haven't tried out how exactly it works in Linux.

Other option for power saving is Suspend-To-Disk. In this case you need a special partition on your hard disk where current memory contents, video RAM and CPU registers are saved so that computer can be powered off. When you turn the laptop on, memory contents will be resumed from S2D partition and you can go on working with your operating system and all applications will be in the same state as before. This suspend operation (also called hibernation) is invoked by pressing Fn+A. However note that Windows 2000 handles hibernation differently. It doesn't use BIOS but creates it's own file hiberfil.sys for storing memory content.

Fn+A	activate Suspend-To-Disk / Hibernation
Fn+Esc	activate Suspend-To-Memory
Fn+D	turn off LCD
Fn+H	spin down hard disk