alternatives to Dell Optiplex 320 mini-tower

[Craig White]

On Thu, 2008-01-31 at 13:21 -1000, Dave Burns wrote:
> A few months ago, I tried to install fedora on a Dell  Optiplex 320
> mini-tower. After some problems and googling, I found out that this
> model's bios, graphics setup, and(something else I forgot) seem to
> resist mightily the idea of running fedora. People seemed to have
> problems getting grub running and the SATA disk in that model doesn't
> like LVM. This guy
> (http://wirelessness.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/installing-fedora-linux-on-a-dell-optiplex-320/)
> claims to have gotten fc6 running on a 320, after 19 hours of
> tweaking. I tried following his advice, but didn't get far.
> 
> Now I am wondering whether anyone on the list can suggest either a
> comparable PC from Dell that will not be so annoying, or perhaps the
> whole issue has become moot since then (fc8?) and I should try again?
> The workstation 490s have given me no trouble, but they cost more.
> 
> By the way, knoppix runs fine on the 320 - what's up with that?
----
I've got several bugzilla entries on that specific topic.

This is all about kernel support for various hardware and though I had
no real issues with FC6, Fedora 7 and Fedora 8 brought new issues.

The Knoppix or whatever isn't likely to work with the newer kernels.

Basically, with FC7, it should work with x86_64 without any futzing,
i386 does require a dance but I have forgotten what it was.

With FC8, you need to add the following to boot it with x86_64...
pci=noacpi clocksource=acpi_pm

see...
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=219715
and
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=379201

Craig