Hardware Configuration
| Hardware | Works Under Linux | Notes |
| Intel Core 2 Duo T5800, 2.0GHz, 800Mhz, 2M L2 Cache | Yes | 3988.79 BogoMIPS. Total of 2 processors activated (7977.63 BogoMIPS). |
| 3GB, DDR2 SDRAM, 2 DIMM for Inspiron 13 | Yes | Linux detects all 3 GB of RAM according to the "free" command. |
| Glossy, wide screen 13.3 inch LCD (1280x800) w/ 2.0M pixel Camera | Yes, have not tried the webcam | The 1280 x 800 LCD panel is nice and bright. Both of the brightness keys FN up/down work and even includes a nifty on screen display. |
| 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS | Yes | The default Fedora NVIDIA driver works but is slow according to glxgears 128 FPS as opposed to 3,427 FPS with the NVIDIA driver. According to Dell the card has 128 MB of RAM this agrees with MS Windows Vista. Fedora detects 256 MB of RAM which is denoted in the Xorg.0.log file and the NVIDIA Display Settings application. So how much RAM does the card have? |
| 250G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive | Yes | The drive is partitioned for dual boot with Windows Vista and Fedora 10. 250 GB is very large so both operating systems have plenty of room. |
| 8X Slot Load CD / DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive) | Yes | I have not tried to burn a CD / DVD yet but reading from the drive works. |
| Intel 4965AGN Wireless-N Mini Card | Yes | This card has excellent Linux support in Fedora. The Network Manager Applet in GNOME is excellent allowing easy management of wireless networks. Suspend seems to work with the card, after waking up the computer the network card connects to the previous wireless network. |
| Dell Wireless 355 Blue tooth Module (2.0+EDR) | Maybe | dmesg shows the Blue tooth card as detected but I have not tried any blue tooth devices yet. |
| USB Ports | Yes | Full USB 2.0 speeds. |
| External Video Port | Yes | Works with FN F8 key after NVIDIA driver install. |
| Suspend/Hibernate | Yes | Both work out of the box without any extra configuration. Close the LCD and the machine hibernates. You can also select which option you want from the system menu. |
| SD/MMC Card Reader | Yes | Works great for taking pictures from a digital camera. |
Shrinking the Partition to Make Room for Fedora 10
I used the built in MS Windows Vista Partition management tool. Directions for the new tool are here http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/resize-a-partition-for-free-in-windows-vista/. I was only allowed to shrink the hard disk by 100 GB so the tool does have some limitations.
Install Fedora 10
Perform a normal install of Fedora 10, the graphical install works great! After installation all the hardware will function on the laptop including the wireless. You should set up your network and immediately run the following commands to update the system:
- Become the root user (all updates are done by the root user, need to enter root password):
su -
- To update all the packages:
yum update
This update will take some time but is a necessary step to insure you have the latest updates and bug fixes.
Setting up Dual Boot
NOTE: Don't panic after you reboot. My system was not able to boot back into Windows Vista which
caused me to break out in a cold sweat. I have little knowledge about Vista, this is my first
computer with it installed, but the following seemed to work for me. The key error message is "BOOTMGR
is missing" which you can google for to discover other methods to repair if the suggestion below does
not work.
I installed Fedora 10 almost immediately after shrinking the partition. When I set up grub, it offered the usual "other" for Vista. Fedora 10 worked fine, but when I tried to boot Vista, it came up with the "BOOTMGR is missing" message.
But it turned out there is a simple fix. Vista boots from the C: drive as you'd expect, but the C: drive is actually /dev/sda3 - there are two smaller partitions defined prior to the one which ends up being drive C:. These partitions were installed by Dell for recovery. The first of these isn't a normal, formatted partition, but the second is (called Recovery) and Grub chose it (/dev/sda2) to try to boot. All I did was alter the /boot/grub/menu.lst file so the line which reads
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
now reads
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
Take note you must be the root user to edit the file /boot/grub/menu.1st.
Adding Software Repositories
Fedora, along with most modern Linux systems, includes a built in process to install software over the internet. The Fedora Project installs a repository that updates the system packages with free software only. From the Fedora Project's web site. The Fedora Project strongly encourages using free and open source software. Fedora has licensing guidelines that enforce the following requirements:
- If it is proprietary, it cannot be included in Fedora.
- If it is legally encumbered, it cannot be included in Fedora.
- If it violates United States federal law, it cannot be included in Fedora.
Other repositories might contain software that has been not been included in the official Fedora software repository. The proprietary software and drivers (like the NVIDIA card) may be available from the respective owners and other vendors. Fedora Project instead highly recommends that you support the right vendors and get hardware that can work with completely free and open source software.
Personally I like NVIDIA products they provide good performance and I don't care if their driver is closed source. You should consider your position on this issue carefully before following the instructions in this HowTo. Enter the following commands to add the repository rpmfusion and Adobe's repository:
- Open a terminal.
- Become Root:
su -
- Run the following command:
rpm -Uvh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-10.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
- Run the following commands to add the Adobe repository:
rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux
Installing NVIDIA Drivers
Installing the NVIDIA drivers makes the system perform much better in terms of screen refresh speed. I noticed that when web browsing with the default driver the page scrolling was slow. The drivers are provided by rpmfusion and are designed to work with Fedora 10.
- Open a terminal.
- Become Root:
su -
- Run the following command:
yum install kmod-nvidia
- Reboot the computer:
reboot
The next time the computer reboots you should see a NVIDIA splash screen.
Installing Adobe Applications like Flash and Acrobat
To allow Fedora to use Flash to play videos (like on youtube) follow the instructions below.
- Open a terminal.
- Become Root:
su -
- Install the flash plugin and Firefox software:
yum install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64} pulseaudio-libs.i386 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i386 libcurl.i386
- Configure Firefox:
mozilla-plugin-config -i -g -v
Fedora comes built in with an application called "Document Viewer" a nice PDF viewer but it still has some trouble displaying various PDFs. I like to have the official product from Adobe called Acrobat for those PDF files I can't see in Fedora's default PDF viewer.
To install Adobe Acrobat
- Open a terminal.
- Become Root:
su -
- Install Adobe Acrobat:
yum install AdobeReader_enu-8.1.3-1.i486
If you right click on a PDF you will now have a option to open the file Adobe Reader 8.
