Dell Inspiron 15 3000 series

[JKelly]

A friend of mine gave me his old laptop. I am currently looking up the bios firmware and getting it ready to wipe windows off of it to install Ubuntu. I want to turn this into my everyday laptop. I did order a new keyboard and replaced that. Have replaced the battery too.

Once I figure out what hardware is in this laptop I will start the process to do a clean install.

Would it make the much of a difference if I install the 22.04.4 LTS over the newest one that was just released in April?

Thanks!

J

 

[JKelly]

Found the specs. It’s a Dell Inspiron 15-3555 laptop. I’m in the process of cleaning it up physically. And, looking up the drivers and compatibility with which Ubuntu distro.

Here are the specs: AMD-A6-6310 APU with AMD Radeon R$ graphics 1.80Ghz. 4 GB RAM, 64 bit OS and x64 based processor. 132 GB hard drive.

almost 16 inch screen.

J

 

[MikeWalsh]

Mama had one of these 3000-series Dell "15"s, several years ago. She lost interest in it after 18 months or so (the arthritis was making it impossible for her to type anything by then), so it sat in the cupboard for 2-3 years. It eventually found its way to my sister, but while it was "idle" I 'borrowed' it for a while; I ran Puppy on it from a USB 3.0 flash drive.

That way, I didn't touch the existing Win 7 install it had on the HDD.....which sis was expressing interest in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As for 22.04 LTS, I'd go for it. I know it's a bit older, but there's been a shed-load of criticism aimed at 24.04.....and 22.04 will still be supported for at least another 3 years, PLUS the bugs will be pretty much 'ironed-out' by now & it should be fairly stable. (Could even be OK for 8 years, though I'm not at all sure how this 10-yr 'extended support' stuff from Canonical works).

Dells are "good'uns" where Linux is concerned. Never had any issues with running Linux on a Dell of any sort.....


Mike.

 

[JKelly]

Mama had one of these, several years ago. She lost interest in it after 18 months or so (the arthritis was making it impossible for her to type anything by then), so it sat in the cupboard for 2-3 years. It eventually found its way to my sister, but while it was "idle" I 'borrowed' it for a while; I ran Puppy on it from a USB 3.0 flash drive.

That way, I didn't touch the existing Win 7 install it had on the HDD.....which sis was expressing interest in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As for 22.04 LTS, I'd go for it. I know it's a bit older, but there's been a shed-load of criticism aimed at 24.04.....and 22.04 will still be supported for at least another 3 years, PLUS the bugs will be pretty well ironed-out by now. (Could even be OK for 8 years, though I'm not at all sure how this 10-yr 'extended support' stuff from Canonical works).


Mike.

LOL! I was looking at the pro of it and thought….ummm maybe not right now! I’m researching how to do the bootable USB drive now from the experts on the forums here. I just need a Linux machine to use for college, Python and CLI etc.

I nearly threw the laptop through the bay window of my living room when windows 11 booted and started glitching so badly that I knew my friend downloaded this OS and it is not capable of running that OS correctly.

I put the laptop up and doing research. I plan to wipe the windows OS off this bad boy before I chuck it through a window or door…..

J.

 

[Condobloke]

Bootable USB = download it from a reputable source or download it via torrent

"make" the bootable usb = Balena Etcher

Go into bios and disable secure boot and fast boot <<<<....yes, it matters

22.04 ubuntu is ok, either that ior Linux Mint 21.3 (rock stable)

Speaking of 'wiping' whatever the hell is on the drive?.....is the drive a HDD?....or hopefully a SSD ??

If you have the $ means and the motivation.....are you able/capable of putting an SSD in it ??

That will give you a perfect clean slate and a serious uptick in speed.

If you stay with whatever is in it now......there is no need to wipe it clean. When you boot to your new OS and select to usee the entire drive to Install, that action will wipe the drive for you, perfectly.

(Costs of SSD have decreased greatly in recent months/years)

You probably have thoughts/questions re what the hell sort of drive is in it and how do I find out??.....the rotten windows on it wont cooperate for me to fins out.....what do I do.....

For the moment, concentrate on getting your bootable usb done......then boot to that usb stcik....that will give you a running, LIVE version of whatever os you choose.
(Important:...A LIVE veersion means it is not fully installed.....itism actually running in the 4gb of ram......which then means that as soon as either you shut down or reboot.....the ""os"" will disappear off the laptop.
It will still be on your usb stick....dont panic....you can boot it up again if you wish to.

Anyway....when you get it booted....click on menu...type in disks then hit enter....click on the main drive.....and it will tell you on that page what the device is....mine looks like this:

more questions....just ask

 

[JKelly]

Bootable USB = download it from a reputable source or download it via torrent

"make" the bootable usb = Balena Etcher

Go into bios and disable secure boot and fast boot <<<<....yes, it matters

22.04 ubuntu is ok, either that ior Linux Mint 21.3 (rock stable)

Speaking of 'wiping' whatever the hell is on the drive?.....is the drive a HDD?....or hopefully a SSD ??

If you have the $ means and the motivation.....are you able/capable of putting an SSD in it ??

That will give you a perfect clean slate and a serious uptick in speed.

If you stay with whatever is in it now......there is no need to wipe it clean. When you boot to your new OS and select to usee the entire drive to Install, that action will wipe the drive for you, perfectly.

(Costs of SSD have decreased greatly in recent months/years)

You probably have thoughts/questions re what the hell sort of drive is in it and how do I find out??.....the rotten windows on it wont cooperate for me to fins out.....what do I do.....

For the moment, concentrate on getting your bootable usb done......then boot to that usb stcik....that will give you a running, LIVE version of whatever os you choose.
(Important:...A LIVE veersion means it is not fully installed.....itism actually running in the 4gb of ram......which then means that as soon as either you shut down or reboot.....the ""os"" will disappear off the laptop.
It will still be on your usb stick....dont panic....you can boot it up again if you wish to.

Anyway....when you get it booted....click on menu...type in disks then hit enter....click on the main drive.....and it will tell you on that page what the device is....mine looks like this:
View attachment 19758

more questions....just ask

Thank you so much! I could really hug you right now. I’ve booted the @#$@#!$#@$ thing 6 times and windows 11 keeps glitching so badly that I had to shut it down. I will do that to find out the hard drive specs! I’m following that tutorial of yours tomorrow after doctors for my kiddos. We think they might have strep. JOY…..not.

J.

 

[Condobloke]

That procedure in disks will tell you what drive is present....I can also drum up an inxi command to run in Terminal that will tel, you los and lots.....anbd is simple to do.
More about that later....one step at a time

Good luck with the kiddos.

 

[Brickwizard]

Welcome
This machine is 10 yrs old and prime for running Linux, 90% of components will not cause any installation problems,
However, it will probably have a BCM wi-fi, to install the drivers for this, you will need to connect to the internet [by hard-wire or tethered mobile] and install the B43 fwcutter from the distribution repository.

if it has been running win 8.2 or higher, make sure you disable windows fast boot and secure boot

 

[JKelly]

Welcome
This machine is 10 yrs old and prime for running Linux, 90% of components will not cause any installation problems,
However, it will probably have a BCM wi-fi, to install the drivers for this, you will need to connect to the internet [by hard-wire or tethered mobile] and install the B43 fwcutter from the distribution repository.

if it has been running win 8.2 or higher, make sure you disable windows fast boot and secure boot

I think it might have that. But, can I put this on a flash drive and install from the drive? We do not have wired internet. I will look into that. Thank you.

 

[Brickwizard]

you can download your chosen distribution and write it to a USB to install to the machine, you will get a usable desktop but obviously if you cannot connect to the internet it's not a lot of good, their is a way out, and that is if you have access to some old USB Wi-Fi dongles one may install and using that you will be able to install the fwcutter. [if your machine indeed has BCM built in [it was always dells go to wi-fi]

 

[The Duck]

Found the specs. It’s a Dell Inspiron 15-3555 laptop. I’m in the process of cleaning it up physically. And, looking up the drivers and compatibility with which Ubuntu distro.

Here are the specs: AMD-A6-6310 APU with AMD Radeon R$ graphics 1.80Ghz. 4 GB RAM, 64 bit OS and x64 based processor. 132 GB hard drive.

almost 16 inch screen.

J

With only 4.0GB of memory I'd install a Linux distro with a lighter desktop environment such as Xfce.

Gnome desktop environment requires a lot of system resources and will use up that 4.0GB of memory.

 

[Brickwizard]

With only 4.0GB of memory I'd install a Linux distro with a lighter desktop environment such as Xfce.

Hi, my Dell lappy is 4 yrs older and had 4gb ram I run Mint LMDE +Cinamon, and it's fine [I use LMDE as its a bit less bulky than the ubuntu [mint 21] offering] the only concession I have made was to swap out the plate spinner for a ssd

 

[APTI]

A friend of mine gave me his old laptop. I am currently looking up the bios firmware and getting it ready to wipe windows off of it to install Ubuntu. I want to turn this into my everyday laptop. I did order a new keyboard and replaced that. Have replaced the battery too.

Once I figure out what hardware is in this laptop I will start the process to do a clean install.

Would it make the much of a difference if I install the 22.04.4 LTS over the newest one that was just released in April?

Thanks!

J

Please do not upgrade the BIOS unless you have issues that need to be addressed by it. Otherwise if it works do not fix it. updates of BIOS can be dangerous and leave you with more problems than you started with and can brick the device or just cause incompatibilities with the OS by changing how things work. While many times the BIOS update is fine, it can leave open the door for disaster. So do not update a BIOS unless you really need to.

 

[JKelly]

Please do not upgrade the BIOS unless you have issues that need to be addressed by it. Otherwise if it works do not fix it. updates of BIOS can be dangerous and leave you with more problems than you started with and can brick the device or just cause incompatibilities with the OS by changing how things work. While many times the BIOS update is fine, it can leave open the door for disaster. So do not update a BIOS unless you really need to.

I just ran all the scans and for now it did not need to be upgraded. I had to go into the specs of it to make sure it was fine. My friend tried to install windows 11 pro on a laptop that could not support it and nearly bricked it already. This is going to be a last ditch attempt to save the thing. I am going to boot from usb first and just see how it works. That’s why I am taking it slow with the laptop.

J

 

[APTI]

I just ran all the scans and for now it did not need to be upgraded. I had to go into the specs of it to make sure it was fine. My friend tried to install windows 11 pro on a laptop that could not support it and nearly bricked it already. This is going to be a last ditch attempt to save the thing. I am going to boot from usb first and just see how it works. That’s why I am taking it slow with the laptop.

J

sounds like you are doing the right thing, test first before you wipe. Windows is very needy especially for BIOS updates. I think you will succeed just remember that 4G is the lowest RAM you want if you are going to use Gnome or anything like it. Try to get it up to 8G RAM if at all possible but that is not necessary to try out the distros. Just keep in mind the speed will pick up with RAM added so factor that in

 

[JKelly]

I was able to boot to the USB. Everything looked decent. Went to install it fully while wiping windows and got the blue screen. Took it apart and figured out that the hard drive just gave up the ghost. Now, I have to figure out if it’s worth it to even replace the hard drive or just let it go.

 

[Condobloke]

SSD's are cheap (and fast)

 

[MikeWalsh]

Please do not upgrade the BIOS unless you have issues that need to be addressed by it. Otherwise if it works do not fix it. updates of BIOS can be dangerous and leave you with more problems than you started with and can brick the device or just cause incompatibilities with the OS by changing how things work. While many times the BIOS update is fine, it can leave open the door for disaster. So do not update a BIOS unless you really need to.

That I will agree with. The only time I ever did this was on the ancient Compaq desktop that croaked in Jan 2020. This was some 5 yrs earlier, and was only because I was upgrading the single-core Athlon64 3200+ for a dual-core 3800+ X2 in good nick that I'd picked-up on Fleabay for a fiver (Socket 939 supported both, but you DID need to upgrade the BIOS to add support for the dual-core config).

Turned out to be a bit of a 'dog's dinner', if I'm honest; I got help from another Puppian who'd spent a few years working in a 'puter repair shop, and he'd done no end of BIOS updates, both under Windoze AND Linux.....so I got introduced to the delights of flashrom (which actually works very well, and is dead simple and easy-to-use).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

The Compaq had an MSI MS-7184 mobo, but because it had been made for HP under licence MSI refused to acknowledge the board's existence! And because it was more than 10 yrs old HP no longer provided any updates for it. So we went with the BIOS for the MS-7093; this was a clone of the MS-7184 except for two extra SATA ports. Same CPU socket, same RS482 northbridge, same SB400 southbridge, same controllers AND everything else.

Aside from a bit of messing-about trying to locate a password for the BIOS (the provided download had it locked for some weird reason, and the fans were howling away at full speed like a jet spooling-up for takeoff!), the install went very smoothly, and everything worked as expected.....except that ever afterwards, the machine reported itself as having an MS-7093 mobo.

I could live with that.....and I did for the next 5 years, until the caps eventually dried-out and went "Pop!" (not bad at nearly 17 yrs old, even for Rubycons & Nichicons). But as APTI points out, it's not advisable just for the sake of it; frankly, if everything's doing what it's supposed to, best advice is to leave it the hell alone.


Mike.

 

[JKelly]

SSD's are cheap (and fast)

Ordered one! Getting it in 3 days. I’ll pop that bad boy open and get started.

J