Novice Installation Questions (Dell Inspiron 1420 Laptop)

Kallen · n00b Joined: 08 Jul 2008 Posts: 1

Intro

Hi, I'm pretty new to linux and gentoo. I just bought a new laptop from Dell, and I'm interested in learning how to get gentoo working on it. I did a search from the forums, and some other guy has also tried asking for help with a similar Inspiron 1420, though he might have been unsuccessful with his endeavors in the end. For the record, I have gotten a working gentoo running once before on my desktop, but had to switch back to windows for other reasons.

How far I got

I've tried installing from the LiveCD (networkless) using the command line dialog-based installer, and it seemingly finished installing fine. However, upon reboot, it fails to initialize xdm: "Error: could not start the Display Manager". During bootup, it also says "Setting up xdm ... start-stop-daemon: stat /usr/bin/xdm: No such file or directory".

One other question, does the current LiveCD support my Ethernet Controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02). I'm assuming this is my Wireless Ethernet.

I'm really hoping I can get gentoo to work!

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 8:24 pm Post subject:

Xdm is a part of X. When you finish the install, all you have is a base system. From there, you have to add packages as you desire OR require them, assuming you have used the manual installation. If you are one of the lucky few that has successfully installed Gentoo using the GUI installer, congrats. You have done something that few can do, or have the patience to wait for it to finish (like myself).

If the latter is the case, and you got a successful install from the GUI, you probably haven't set up X properly yet. If this is the case, i heartily recommend you read all the documents on this page, especially the stuff about X, and whichever desktop environment you wish to install.

Blessed be!
Pappy

EDIT: Don't assume. Send the results of lspci so we can know exactly what kind of hardware you have.
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