Debian on a Dell 4150?

[Spiros Kapetanakis <spiros@cs.york.ac.uk>]

Hello fellow Debianers,

I have recently bought a new laptop (it finally came yesterday) and
want to put Linux on it. It's a Dell Inspiron 4150:

1.6GHz P4
14.1 XGA LCD 1024x768 screen
256+182MB Ram
32MB ATI Radeon 7500c
DVD/CD-RW combo drive
floppy drive swappable with the DVD/CD-RW combo
20GB HD
soundcard (Crystal chipset)
56.6k V90 internal modem & network adapter combo

Now, I have the Debian 3.0 woody DVD which I've installed on my desktop
PC but I've never done the installation on a laptop. I know there's a
lot of info scattered all over the show out there but I haven't seen
any info on the Inspiron 4150. The reason why I chose it is because
other people with different Inspirons have managed to get everything
working (with the possible exception of the modem). I compared the
other specs and it seems that I should at least be able to get X,
sound, DVD playback and CD writing working. It may be a little harder
with the modem and network card.

Initially, I have the following questions:

1. How do I resize the other operating system's partition (it's the XP
variety) without having to reinstall? The only reason why I need to do
this instead of just wiping out completely is so because I don't really
want to fiddle with the other OS, I wouldn't know where to start. When I
get everything working under Linux, I'm going to wipe the other OS anyway.

2. When the installation asks me to make a boot floppy, I _KNOW_ that
I should do it. But, the DVD will be in the drive at the time so I
won't have a floppy.  How do I go round this problem?

3. I typically have different partitions for /, /boot, /usr,
/usr/local, /home, /tmp and /var. Should I do this with my laptop or
should I stick with one big partition and a swap partition? Is it
advisable to have multiple partitions on a laptop?

4. Is there anyone out there that has installed Debian on an Inspiron
4150? What did you do about this hibernate partition that I hear
people talking about?

OK, that's it for now, looking forward to your feedback.


spizkapa