I've found the recent discussions very helpful. My previous job used to insist on Dell machines and I had good experiences of installing Debian on Dell Latitude E6500 machines but then I had to buy myself a machine and got a Toshiba having misread some information on the web suggesting that Toshiba were linux friendly. Neither Squeeze nor Wheezy have worked nicely with the machine at all though I can't find any hardware errors so, as it's ageing a bit now too so I can justify reinstalling Windoze on it and passing it to someone, I want to replace it but this time I want something that will play well with Debian. I want reliability, quite a lot of storage (1Tb), I'm fine with a 15/16 inch screen but I'd like quite a bit of CPU power and RAM as I do a bit of statistical work (in R: mostly wonderful!) but also because I find myself forced to keep a VirtualBox VM open most of the time for the Windoze dependencies I haven't been able to shed (Orifice as compatibility is hopeless in both OO and LO and I can't force colleagues to shift!), InDesign (too many templates that I haven't time or skill to replicate in Scribus) and SPSS and AMOS). [I'm sure I'm not the only person on this list cursing this sort of enforced dependency!]
So the questions: 1) does anyone have any experience of installing Wheezy on the Inspiron 15R? If so, am I right to assume it'll work OK? 2) would you recommend 32 or 64 bit Wheezy (I don't usually hit the memory limits of R in 32 bit so I've stayed on 32 bit so far but I'll want to install 64bit Windoze 8.1 in a VM so perhaps it has to be 64 bit?) 3) How fast does it feel, in particular ... 4) ... has anyone got 64 bit Windoze 8.1 installed in a VirtualBox VM and does it run OK? Fast enough in memory/disc/CPU hogs like orifice, SPSS & InDesign? 5) If I use the Dell to create a system backup (of the Windoze 8.1 recovery partition presumably) will I be able to restore this into a VM? (I'm very reluctant to pay twice for Windoze but Dell, at least in the UK, don't sell the Inspiron other than with Windoze.) Many thanks in anticipation of advice/experiences, Chris -- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-laptop-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/2034560997.7028805.1400233259904.javamail.zim...@psyctc.org
