Dell Latitude D830

CentOS 5.2 64bit

1. Hardware

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7300 @ 2.00GHz

4096 MB RAM (3947.33 MB usable by CentOS)

Bios A13

320 GB WD Scorpio Black Edition 7200RPM

15.4" 1920x1200

lspci output :

• Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
• Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
• Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0])

• Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)

• Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

2. Installation

Works out of the box :

• Xorg : 1920x1200 resolution automatically detected, "i810" driver used according to /var/log/Xorg.0.log

• Suspend to RAM : NEVER fails !!! better than Ubuntu 8.04 !

• Suspend to Disk
• Compiz : OK (except for memory leak ??), but need to use X11 output instead of Xv for MPlayer (and VLC too) which degrades performance in full-screen
• Sound
• CD and DVD writing

Works after a little tweaking :

• Wireless : using iwlwifi (see below)
• Freetype bytecode rendering is disabled by default due to US patent restrictions.See below how to enable it.

• Sound buttons (volume up, down and mute) : use System-->Preferences-->Keyboard Shortcuts. Choose the feature and simply hit the correct key to make it work.

Doesn't work (yet) :

• Fans : not detected by ACPI which means they are always on

Didn't check (yet):

• built-in smartcard reader from O2Micro

• built-in fingerprint reader(have to test thinkfinger package from RPMForge)
• bluetooth

Storage:

• AHCI was set in the bios prior to installation
• hdparm : 76MB/s
• Added noatime,nodiratime in /etc/fstab

3. Wireless

The RHEL 5.3 beta kernel (http://people.redhat.com/dzickus/el5/) includes iwlwifi which is much better than the old ipw3945 module available from RPMforge. Everything that worked out of the box using the CentOS kernel is still working.

Installation:

• Install the latest 5.3 beta kernel (currently 2.6.18-128.el5)

• Dowload iwlwifi-3945-ucode-15.28.2.8.tgz from http://intellinuxwireless.org

• Copy iwlwifi-3945-2.2.ucode to /lib/firmware and rename it to iwlwifi-3945-2.1.ucode

Enable NetworkManager :

• chkconfig NetworkManager on

• chkconfig network off
• service network off

• service NetworkManager start

4. Third-party applications

Enabled RPMforge repository. (MPlayer, ...)

Added vpnc and NetworkManager-vpnc packages from EPEL repository

Adobe Reader 8 (32 bit): acroread browser plugin : 100% CPU solved by checking the proxy option but leaving it empty

Adobe Flash (64 bit alpha version)

Skype (32 bit)

OpenOffice 3.0 (64 bit)

Sun Java (64 bit)

5. Fonts

TODO: how to install msttcorefonts

Freetype is needed to display TrueType fonts but the version installed by default has bytecode rendering disabled due to US patent restrictions.

TODO : how to enable bytecode rendering

6. Printing

Need to use browser interface to use Windows printer in domain (otherwise password removed from URI with the gnome configuration tool)