Talk:HCL/Laptops/Dell

From openSUSE

Suse 10.0 and higher on Dell Latitude C400 with Intel Corporation 82830 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller] (rev 04)

I have been running a few versions of SUSE on the laptop. But since 10.0 I have come across a trouble with graphics (i810 driver). When switching between console (text mode) and X server the screen becomes blurry. The same is about hibernation. The solution to it to set in /etc/X11/xorg.conf the following:

- in Section "Screen" -> DefaultDepth 16 (instalation puts it to 24),

- in Section Section "Device" -> VideoRam 32768 (this line does not exist after the installation).

After this all works fine. Stiopa 19:23, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi,

I have installed 10.0 on my Inspiron 2600 and wanted to share the knowledge but the edit for that table is pretty daunting. Is there a tutorial on tables somewhere so I don't screw it up? Also, I have more information than will fit in the table.

Alternately, If this is what the discussion page is for, My Machine, Inspiron 2600 laptop, 128m ram 100gb hdd, 20gb WinXP, 15gb Open Suse partition (& swap) the remainder is a single ntfs format partition. Multiboot with Grub.

I installed 10.0 by downloading the single CD setup & completing the install thru the Internet. The only problem encountered was X not starting with the message "No video bios modes for chosen depth"

The problem was Dell's decision to not implement user (on the bios setup screen) control of how much system memory pool to give to the Intel 810 video system. After a great deal of troubleshooting & searching the Final solution was to backgrade the bios to version "A08" found on the Dell FTP site at ftp.dell.com/bios in the file I2600a08.exe.

After backgrading the bios Grub showed the GUI boot screen. I then had to (probably due to all my troubleshooting efforts) cp back the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.install to /etc/X11/xorg.conf & rerun sax2 then all was well.

I am hopeful that if I have put this information in the wrong place that it will be moved to the right place & I will be told where that is so I can do it right next time. Thanks, Daniel Staples

Suse 10.0 on Dell Inspiron 4000

I installed Suse 10.0 on my Dell Inspiron 4000 this evening. I am pleased to report that it was a flawless experience! The machine in question has an Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384 MB RAM and I installed a new Fujitsu 40 GB HDD with 8MB cache. I downloaded and burned the 5 CDs from OpenSuse, and installed from there. Suse detected and installed all of my hardware without issues, it even detected my SMC 2635W wireless card, and installed all appropriate drivers. My Sony CD burner was also detected appropriately, as was my Synaptics Touchpad. Even the scrolling features of it, as well as tap to click work. Suse is the only OS on this system, that is why I replaced the HDD. I have an ATI graphics system with it's own VRAM, so I had no issues with sharing system memory. I used YaST to update Suse after install, and again everything was flawless. The only thing that I had to change in the default configuration was the monitor. It was set as VESA 800x600 @16bit, I changed that to LCD 1024x768 @24 bit. I am very pleased with Suse Linux!

Jeff

Suse 9.3 on Inspiron 8100

I have SUSE 9.3 Pro working on my Insprion 8100 laptop (1GHz, 512 MB RAM, 8 GB/30GB Linux partition) for some time now. I have had no problems now for about six months and the best part is that it works with wireless card and the suspend feature I mention these two features because these are really necessary part of a laptop user "experience" and I wouldn't use an OS on a laptop without these features. I initially had trouble with suspend when it had APM isntalled. With APM it would suspend but will not wake up and I had to force reboot by pressing the power button. But then I removed APM and put in acpi and it has worked great since then.

OpenSUSE 10.1 GM on Dell Inspiron 630m / XPS M140

Flawless experience, I am shocked/amazing/grateful for the painless installation and hardware support that OpenSUSE has given me. The specs of my machine: Intel Centrino platform (Intel 915GM chipset), Intel Pentium-M 1.86GHz, 1,024MB 667MHz DDR2, GMA900 integrated graphics, Broadcom 44x ethernet, Intel 2200/bg wireless (ipw2200), 1280x800 14" widescreen display. Everything was detected perfectly (though I haven't checked the modem and probably won't). My LCD was detected and its maximum resolution set, ethernet/wireless were a snap. I had XGL up and running in under 5 minutes (a bit sluggish at times on this machine, but the fact that it was up and running so quickly was astonishing). Front audio buttons (vol up/down/mute, play/pause, stop, etc.) were not working until I ran gnome-keybinding-properties. It was point-click-tap to configure that. All in all an excellent experience, after using various distros for many years (RedHat for its 'user-friendliness', hah) and landing on Gentoo for the longest time for its configurability, I think I've found my desktop Linux of choice.

openSuse 10.2 on Dell Latitude C610

I installed 10.2 on my Dell C610. Picked up a Netgear wireless card as well, since my laptop didn't have a miniPCI wifi card installed.

So far, so good... it seems like all the laptop's bells and whistles, including a lot of the function controls, translate well on the KDE desktop (haven't tried Gnome.) I'm still learning linux, and I found most of what I needed on this wiki site. If you want wireless, go with the netgear wireless card (the 511T) listed in the HCL Wireless section, it works great with Opensuse.

openSUSE 11.0 on Inspiron B130

ndiswrapper no longer seems to be required. The firmware can be installed using /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware. I then brought it up with iwconfig wlan0 up and connected through WiFi Radar. I'm unsure as to how to edit the article as there are confilcting instructions between 10.x and 11.