I know some of my PC's have a more difficult time with Linux than others.What is the problem with Linux and the Dim 4550.The 4550 is an Intel 845 chipset.Is it the ones that use on-board sound?Is it the on-board ethernet?Those features can be disabled and seperate PCI cards used.A friend has a Dim 4550 Pentium 4 2.66Mhz with 256 or 512 of RAM.

Nope; the posts I found on the search of the forum (which were old) seemed to imply that it was the motherboard itself. This is a very nice machine that has served me well as my first XP tower, but other folks bought them specifically for multi-OS booting and were very disapointed.

It sounds like your friend's tower is almost exactly what I have, only with fewer hardware upgrades; do you know which distro he's running? Is he a newbie or fairly experienced?

You did, inadvertantly, give me some MUCH NEEDED info on my Compaqs which I had almost given up on. Much obliged. ;)

My Presario S5000NX ran a live CD of Slackware beautifully yesterday, but with no sound (which I now know how to fix) and without being able to recognize its floppy drive.

I'm loving Mandrake on my older Dell, which DOES have onboard sound and video but never gave me any trouble, but hoping for something a bit lighter on my 4550, either Slax, Darned(sic) Small Linux, or something I don't know about yet.

What concerns you about running linux on the Dimension 4550? It's a no brainer. I had previously run Red Hat Enterprise 3 on this machine, and I'm now running Red Hat Enterprise 4 (2.6 kernel). With the standard stuff (factory drive, factory CD), etc., installation should be a breeze. USB 2.0 and sound are supported out of the box, as is the video.

My machine is highly modified. My RAM is at 1.0 Gb (the max), and I upgraded the stock CPU to a 3.06 Ghz (512k cache, 533 MHz FSB) hyperthreaded chip. I installed the A08 BIOS from this site, which supports hyperthreading, and I run the linux SMP kernel. I have a Lite-On 16x DVD+/-RW DL drive. In addition to the stock 60 Gb IDE drive, I have a 10,000 RPM WD Raptor SATA enterprise drive, connected to a SIIG 3112 dual SATA controller. I can boot from either drive, as determined by the boot order in "setup."

My machine boots the originally installed Windows XP home, or alternatively, Red Hat Enterprise 3 or 4. I used Partition magic 8.0 to redo the partitions for dual booting. I use GRUB as the bootloader (not the infomagic boot loader).

If you're going to install RHEL 4 (2.6 kernel) there are some quirks when booting from the SATA drive (not an issue with the stock 4550). Also, with this particular version, you'll have to turn off legacy USB support in the BIOS (but not with RHEL 3), or else it won't recognize your keyboard. Email me if you have questions about any of these upgrades. Neall

Well, I'm not sure why anyone had problems when the machine first came out, given that I installed RHEL 3 on a stock Dimension 4550, without an issue. My guess is that there was less support provided in RH9, but that's an obsolete version now. Definitely no problems with RHEL 3, which you can download for free, and only minor problems with RHEL 4 (which is similar to Fedora Core 3), if you use fancy, non-stock hardware. Red Hat insists you purchase an update license (which can be had with "Red Hat Professional Workstation" bought online for $79), but you can download and install and run the OS just fine without (though that violates their license agreement). Or try Fedora. Or Whtebox, which is an open-source RHEL 3 clone.

There is nothing inherently "strange" about the Dimension 4550, as far as its hardware chipsets, that would give linux a headache. The i845 chipset is common, as is the stock IDE controller and the built-in ethernet (which is an Intel Pro 100/T). Ditto for the sound. As you found out, many linux distros are happy on the 4550. I'd still suggest you flash the latest BIOS, even if you aren't interested in SMP/hyperthreading. My 4550 with Red Hat linux has been trouble free... I run it 24/7 as a server. Neall

Thanks bunches, Neall. I also upgraded the RAM to a full gig, but no other modifications since I'm very twitchy about this particular machine and literally haven't even reformatted yet. It is my first Dell, purchased brand new new and with many factory-installed upgrade options, and I'm still more than somewhat of a newbie.

I've had no problems whatsoever running Slax (Live CD of Slackware)once I realized that I had to log on as root for the sound to work, and Darn (sic) Small Linux runs quite well too, although for the hardware it's kind of "underkill" and I want a more full-featured distro on my hard drive eventually.

I have Mandrake on my other Dell, largely because of the ease of installation and because I know so many people who use it and can help me if I ever run into any trouble, but in retrospect there are better choices out there. I'm leaning more towards Slackware or Red Hat with the cream of my crop, probably dual-booting with a smallish XP partition and my files on a separate FAT32 partition so I can read and write from both operating systems.

I guess I just needed to be reassured that others have walked down this path and succeeded after seeing the posts about problems people were having when the machine first came out.