In my opinion, it seems that dell tried to make this laptop as Linux un-friendly as possible. I've tried to install a couple different Linux distributions on this laptop but Red Hat 9 is the only one that I've been able to make most usable. Red Hat 8 will install very nicely, but when you reboot after the installation it will kernel panic. Gentoo did not get along with it either, as it did the same. The new 2.6 kernel based distributions have no problems with the laptop and work very well.
If you let the default install take over the
text
will be ok, but once the GUI starts it will only display a black
screen.
This is because the default resolution on the laptop is 1400x1050 and
does
not work with a 1046x768 (the default install resolution is 1046x768).
To get the GUI install to work with Red Hat 9 you need to type boot
lowres which will allow you to use the GUI install (only downside
is that it looks terrible, but it's functional)
You can also use boot
resolution=1400x1050 to install at full color
Install as normal. For the monitor use the "Generic Laptop Display
Panel
1400x1050". The video card should be detected as an "ATI Radeon
Mobility
M9" and select 1400x1050 for the resolution at 24bit.
The keyboard and mouse can be left as default, unless you want to add
an
external mouse (must be USB, there are no PS/2 ports) which works.
The Gentoo install from a stage 2
was nearly painless. The new scripts they have started using are great
from installing the ATi drivers and even compiling the kernel. I'm
using Fluxbox on it and have not had problems, even the screen blanks
with the lid closed using the Alan Cox kernel source. Still testing.
Mandrake 9.1 loaded well on this, direct rendering is not available
though. I haven't tested much, I'm awaiting the 9.2 release for
thorough testing.
Update: The 9.2 release of Mandrake runs very well "out-of-the-box".
Unfortunately when I attempted to load the module for Linuxant's
Driverloader, I would get a kernel panic. I've moved to a Mandrake
pre-10 (cooker) release that uses the 2.6 kernel and have been much
happier with it's performance and stability.
Prepare to be disappointed as of this writing, Intel has not released the specs or a driver for Linux to use the Wireless capabilities of this Laptop. The card is an Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 which is a mini-PCI using 802.11b networks. There was a discussion why Linux drivers are not available for this and other 'new' WLAN cards on the Kernel Traffic mailing list, from the sounds of things we may never see one. Read the discussion for details.
Thanks to a new project at www.linuxant.com I have been able to successfully use the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 card under Linux. Once I figured that the device is deactivated at boot by default, a quick "Fn+F2" and "iwconfig eth1 essid any" then "dhcpd eth1" I was using the built in Centrino wireless card to post on the Internet. The Driverloader is very easy to install, seemed too easy! They provide multiple packages for your flavor of Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE RPMs, Debian debs and a tarball for the rest). Their Installation instructions may seem short, but that is really all there is. Using Gentoo all I had to do was "emerge wireless-tools" and install the Driveloader and drivers. Some features do not currently work and are documented on their site but most of all they work in general.
Tested the Linuxant DriverLoader
on a fresh install of Fedora Core 1, works great also. just remember
that Fedora Core used a different compiler on the kernel and modules so
an export CC=gcc32 is needed
to compile ANY new modules.
Linuxant are also charging $20 US for the driver license, as this is a
bit on the 'double-charging' side for the card to work, it is cheaper
then buying a new mini-PCI wireless card that does work. they still
have a 30 day trail so you can see for yourself how well they work
before you buy.
Clear up some confusion with the
Linuxant Driverloader and fulfill a couple requests.
One of the most confusing parts of loading the Driverloader is until
the Windows drivers are loaded it will report that no device is found.
Opening the web browser to http://127.0.0.1:18020 is the simplest way
to load the drivers, but if you do not have a browser you can use
dldrconfig -help and find the options to load the drivers. You also
will need a valid license to activate the device, you can use a trial
license before you purchase to verify that it does indeed work for you.
I've also taken the liberty of making a zip file with the Windows
drivers for this laptop (from Dell), which can be obtained here
If Dell or Intel objects to this please contact me and they will be
removed, the zip only contains the .inf and .sys files needed for the
Driverloader.
Things are really moving with the ways to use the PRO/Wireless 2100 with Linux, Linuxant is
still releasing new version (1.66 as of today) which seem to have no new features
There is a fully Open Source version that does the exact same thing (but for free) over at
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net which I have
tried with Fedora Core 1 and they work just as well as the Linuxant drivers.
As of March 10, 2004 Intel started the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Driver for Linux project.
At the initial release it was very poor and barely worked. But being Open Source it has improved greatly including WAP support with a few things needing fixing.
I'm still using the Linuxant driverloader, but once promiscuous mode is supported there will be no reason to use a wrapper.
I am following the mailing list and it looks like they are about ready for a "stable" release.
This appears to be Dell's fault partially. They are using
ACPI
for power management (the new standard, APM is being phased out) so you
will
need to recompile the kernel for the support. I have found that
kernel-2.4.21-rc1
with the acpi patch from acpi.sourceforge.net applied will give this
support
back.
After trying this, a few problems are resolved. But battery is still
not
detected.
A) Shutdown -h will power the system off
B) Closing the display does not result in the system going into suspend
mode
giving you garbage when opened
back
up...the display stays on and suspend is deactivated.
With Fedora Core 1 you can add acpi=on in the grub config at the end of the kernel line and that will take care of most of the power problems, I'm still looking into this but I think the power save functions need to be manually tuned on. Battery seems to work fine and power off works. Display stays on when the lid is closed, again I'm looking into it.
Red Hat 9 uses xfree-4.3 which has support for the ATi Radeon chips. For best performance use the "radeon" driver in the /etc/X11/XF86Config. Here is a copy of my XF86Config which I have used to get the display working properly using the LiveCDs from Gentoo and KNOPPIX.
I finally got DRI working with Red Hat 9. After trying the SuSE 8.2
LiveCD I discovered it WAS possible and with the help from Bebo's
posting at LinuxQuestions.org.
I'm getting about 1400fps using glxgears, I had about 2000fps in SuSE
but this is better then the 350fps I was getting without direct
rendering. If anyone knows how to tweak this in Red Hat 9 for better
performance I would be interested ;-)
Also, I switched my original RH9 congif with the new one above.
ATi finally released drivers for XFree4.3, installation is the same as
with the FireGL drivers (use --force to install the RPM and set the
drive to use "fglrx" instead of "radeon"). Performance
is a little better with the new drivers and they are a lot more usable
then with the FireGL drivers. I can now run America's Army without it
crashing when refreshing the server list, plays well also!
For full screen to work in lots of games use 1152x864 for the
resolution setting as most games do not support the 1400x1050,
otherwise most other resolutions leave you with a blank display.
If anyone has any more information with installing Linux
on
a Dell Inspiron 600m, including other distributions then Red Hat 9
also,
please email me and I will
add it to this.
Last updated 10/29/03
Fully switched to running Gentoo