Fedora 7: Dell Latitude C400, TrueMobile 1350 Wireless
 

Navigation:  

Overview

My main purpose here is to describe the wireless setup. Over the years when I've searched for help installing wireless the bulk of the comments are along the line of "just use ndiswrapper" or "you need the latest firmware". This is my personal LINE-BY-LINE tedious breakdown of how to get it working.
Feel free to skip to the wireless part on page 3
If you're looking to do this with Fedora Core 6, stop and instead go HERE

System Summary

Dell Latitude C400 Notebook
866 MHz Pentium III (M)
512MB Sodimm PC133
100GB Hard Drive
Dell TrueMobile 1350 mini-pci card
Ethernet LAN used during install
Dual Boot:
Windows XP Professional (Dell's Default)
Fedora 7

Initial Setup:

I installed Windows first on 25GB of the drive. I prefer to use grub as my boot loader. It does really need a quick fix-up of the grub.conf file to be a convenient way to dual-boot. More on that when we get to that step.
At this point I have a Windows partition, and a media partition already set up with the rest of the disk unformatted (where I'll install Fedora).
* Insert the F7 DVD and boot.
* If you haven't already allow the system to verify the integrity of your install disk.
* Language - English, : Next :
* Keyboard - U.S. English, : Next :
* Install or Upgrade? - Install Fedora, : Next :

Partitioning:

The default option in the dropdown menu is "Remove all partitions on selected drives and create default layout." If you're not dual booting with Windows and have no files on the disk you wish to save, this is fine. For me, no- I select "Create Custom Layout" Don't worry about the "Advanced Storage Configuration" options.
My Partitioning Scheme:

  /dev/sda1    Windows         25 Gig     (don't format!)
  /dev/sda2    Media           30 Gig     (don't format!)
  /dev/sda3    SWAP            1024 MB    format - (Virtual RAM)
  /dev/sda5    ext3    /boot   100  MB    format - boot partition
  /dev/sda6    ext3    /       (the rest) format - root directory
  

The installer will automatically build the home and system directories under the root/ directory.
* Once you describe your partition scheme : Next :
* Select "The GRUB boot loader will be installed on /dev/sda"
If dual-booting, there should be two systems listed. One, set as default, Fedora and Another called "other". Select other and edit. Call it "Windows" and if desired, set it as the default boot option. Don't worry about boot loader password or advanced boot loader options. : Next :

Network, Timezone, Root Password

* Configure your settings normally. Probably Active on boot, Automatic hostname via DHCP is okay.
* Note 1: Wireless card not recognized at this point
* Note 2: Your computer will hang for a minute trying to connect to eth0 if you don't have it plugged in at boot time. This can be annoying so keep it in mind when deciding to activate it at boot time. You can easily change this later though. : Next :
Set your timezone : Next :
Set your root password (mine is abc) : Next :

Next: Overview and Initial Setup   |   Last: Wireless Setup >




You can comment on my blog post of this article here: http://cisengineer.com/word/?p=12


Free counters provided by Andale.