Install Fedora Core 4 on Dell Latitude D610
As a gift for christmas 2005 my wife became a Dell Latitude D610.
This document tries to cover out howto install and configure linux on the mentioned hardware.
Hardware
- CPU : Intel Pentium M 1,73GHz
- RAM : DDR2 1024 MB 533MHz
- Chipset : Intel 915GM
- Harddisk : 40GB something, replaced by 60GB Hitachi 8MB cache
- Video : Intel 915, 64MB memory
- VGA : 15 Pin VGA Connector, rear
- optical Drive: DVD+/-RW, LG GCC-4244N, right side
- Display : 14,1" 1400x1050
- Audio : AC'97 Intel ICH6
- Network : Broadcom GBit Ethernet and Intel WLAN 811.2b/g
- PCMCIA : 1 32-bit Slot, left side
- Battery : 4800 mAh, Manufactured by Sanyo
- Keyboard : 85 Key, including 12 Funktionkeys
- Mouse : AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint touchpad, PS/2 Trackpoint, 4 Button
- USB : 4 USB 2.0
- Bluetooth : Built-in
- TV-Out : S-Video Out
- Parallel : 25 Pin Connector, rear
- special Keys : 3 keys on the top of keyboard
Why Latitude D610
We discussed it for several weeks, and decided to get a Dell Latitude D610, because pricing was okay, shipping was free as a special offer, and Dell doubled the amount of memory with no extra cost. Also the Latitude Series are business notebooks with better quality and 3 years on-site support.
Notes on the hardware
The Dell D610 is so called Sonoma platform, this describes that the device contains Intel 915GM chipset with Pentium M Dothan CPU and Intel WLAN 811.2b/g. Also there are a number of things interesting on this platform. As there is:
- DDR RAM 533 Mhz
- Serial ATA harddisk
- Intel 915GM Chipset
The following things should be mentioned:
- The audio speakers are not really good. Also to get volume management work for the internal speakers you have to enable the "external amplifier" in your mixer.
- I tried many hours to get DMA working for the DVD drive with Fedora Core 4, please see section below.
- There are a lot of dreadful stickers on the notebook, which are for markting only purposes. These were the first i removed ;)
- Magnesium case, very strong build
- lightweight, 2.1kg
- performance as desktop replacement
Installation
The installation works smoothly, the hardware was completly detected by the installer.
Fedora Core uses kernel 2.6.14 in conjunction with glibc 2.3.5 and gcc 4.0.2.
I used the following disk layout for :
- /dev/sda3 1GB for /
- /dev/sda1 100MB for /boot
- /dev/sda7 48GB for /home
- /dev/sda5 8GB for /usr
- /dev/sda6 1,5GB for /var
Here you can find the lspci output as a complete overview of the builtin hardware.
Networking
The GigaBit Ethernet card is a Broadcom, the kernel module used is "tg3. The Intel WLAN can be used in conjunction with ipw2200 module, firmware can be downloaded at sourceforge. Both works well and perform good.
X11 graphical userinterface
First of all i had to "patch" the bios by adding the following line to my rc.local file, to get 1400x1050 work.
/usr/sbin/915resolution 3c 1400 1050
Therefor the utility 915resolution is required. It can be found here. Also you find there a usefull i810_drv.o module as a replacement for xorg i810 driver.
Fedora uses xorg 6.8.2 for the graphical interface.
The i810 driver as described above is used to get it work. I used the Option "VideoRAM 65535" to tell the Xserver that there is 64MB memory avaible for the video adapter. i810_drv supports different pipes for the display types supported, including television on the TV Out connector.
The touchpad is a AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint (can be found in /proc/bus/input/devices), the trackpoint is detected as PS/2 mouse.
The touchpad can be used with the "synaptics" driver. There are special options available to this driver for the ALPS touchpad. Take a look here. But i do not use them.
Here my xorg.conf.
Sound
Sound works well with the i810 alsa driver. To get Volume control work for the internal speakers, you have to enable the "External Amplifier" button in the mixer (don't ask me why), external speakers work without this settings.
DVD/RW and the module thing
The DVD/RW device is detected correctly. The DVD is connected to the secondary master IDE port, so it is named /dev/hdc. DMA is NOT enabled by default, to enable DMA the following way will work:
- rebuild your kernel and modularize the IDE drivers. This kernel configuration works in my case.
- add the following line to /etc/modprobe.conf: "options libata atapi_enabled=1"
- add the following to your /etc/grub.conf at the end of the line of your new kernel "hdc=noprobe". This prevents the kernel ide driver from probing for this device, that the SATA ata_piix driver can handle the drive. Also don't forget the idle=halt as described later.
- now the DVD drive will be recognized as /dev/scd0
The DVD drive shows a much better performance, also the systemload was extremly lower than before.
DVD burning works well with growisofs, playing audio also. mp3 support in xmms and gstreamer requires special rpm packets, because of mp3 licensing issue RedHat removed mp3 support. I installed libdvdcss from livna yum respository, so watching commercial DVD's also works.
Next i will try if hotswapping the DVD will work on linux, i'll keep you informed when i'll have success.
Harddisk
The D610 has a SATA harddisk drive. It will be detected as SCSI device, because of 2.6.14 kernel libata. The device is so called /dev/sda. The drive was a 40gb with 5400 u/min. We replaced it with a Hitachi 60gb HTS548060M9AT00 drive with 8MB cache.
The harddisk produces a high noise klick sound while idle. This can be disable with the kernel parameter
idle=halt
USB
USB is detected correctly, controller one as ehci, controlle no. two as uhci, all ports work.
TV Out connector
The TV Out connector can be used by using the i810 driver option MonitorLayout. Consult i810 driver man page for details. I haven't tried it yet, because i have no cable available, and there was no cable delievered with the notebook.
Power Management
Power Management is done via ACPI. I does not have much time at the moment to configure in details. Display specific settings are done via X11 screensaver options for DPMS. Details will follow within the next 4 weeks ;). The battery will take the system 2:50h up, not really much but enough to do some work. In case of wireless usage or the optical drive is used, the battery will take down to 2 hours.
Software repositories
I use yum for installing and updating software. I added the livna repository. The config file can be found here. At the moment i am waiting that Dag Wieers will update his repository to Fedora Core 4.
Summary
I can say this notebook is pretty fine, it is really small, with a nice display, great keyboard and lightweight too. The battery should perform longer, because 2:50h is not really much for a Centrino. The only hitch is the lack of DMA for the DVD drive, but i think i'll fix this next week. I'll keep you informed ;)
Config Files and Links
My xorg.conf can be found here
A complete lspci -v -v output is lspci output
Additional yum repository configuration
Take a look at Livna and FreshRPMS, this two contains various nice add-on packages including mp3 and dvd software.
Two of the best Linux laptop ressources:
TuxMobil.Org
Linux Laptop Net
last updated: Dec 28 2005 04:30 pm