installing linux on Dell Inspiron 2600--problem with Intel 830M graphics chip

Can Anyone Help Me?

 

I am a novice to linux, although I have worked in times past as an applications computer programmer.  I recently acquired a Dell Inspiron 2600 laptop, and wish to reconfigure it to run linux.  I originally turned to Mandrake 10.0 since I am a resident of Europe, and since that seemed to be a more European linux solution.  However, the Dell Inspiron 2600 has an Intel 830M graphics chip which is not supported by that release of Mandrake.  I went to the Intel website and downloaded the 20030425 driver which is supposed to fix the problem, for some releases at least of Redhat and Suse.  Thinking that the driver might work if I simply changed the library names in the dripkg/kernel-modules directory to match the Mandrake 10.0 kernel, I tried that, but to no avail: the actual kernel code plays a role.  So I thought to myself--since I subsequently heard that Redhat works directly with Dell--that I should turn to Redhat.  However, it is cl! ear that the 20030425 driver only supports Redhat 8.0 at the latest release.  So my question is this: has the appropriate software been put directly into later Redhat kernels, so that if I load Fedora I will have no problem with the graphics on the laptop (I can use the command line, but have no access to the gui's)?  Or is there another solution to this problem?  If anyone has any questions, they should reply to this email address, and I will be happy to provide further technical information.  Thank you all very much.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Tom Jones