[PLUG] FreeDOS on Dell Inspiron 1501

[ॐ]

Recently I got Dell inspiron 1501 notebook.  I wanted it naked,
meaning without OS, (but they gave GNU's FreeDOS with it) but they
sent me it with free clothes ironed and kept aside, not worn on it.
The courtesy ends there because DOS does not come installed.  SO I was
wondering where to start for that day.

So i tried installing Mandriva x86_64 on it.  With all that
"pci=nomsi" stuff and all.  It did mini install which I did not like
much...  [Oh... I did not have 4 CD set for Mandriva 2007] because it
did not configure my net correctly.  So i said let me try Internet
installation of SuSe 10.2....  Great,  My experience was horror
because had I gone ahead it would have reformatted my home partition
to something else and cleaned all my 3++ years of work.  It also gave
cataloging error or something...

So finally I said let me try Mandriva 2007 32 bit set with slightly
corrupt(OpenOffice) 2nd CD.

It installed and started working flawlessly... I am now a happy
mandriva user (of last 3-4 years).

Of-course I now have OOo-2.1.0 and looking forward to installing 2.2.0

Except modem which I have not tried everything seems to work beautifully.

Sometime in future I may try installing x86_64 version of Mandriva,
till then I am first learning to reuse Laptop (after a gap of 13
years).  It was Mitac & Sun laptop then now it's Dell.

This is very very fast compared to my IBM pentium desktop that I kept
on using in a hope of retiring with it :-)

There goes my early VR...

Thanks for your patience with the wording of this message.  Any flames
and comments are welcome, with a caution that I may prefer to ignore
them :-)