[FrontPage] [TitleIndex] [WordIndex] 

This is a read-only archived version of wiki.centos.org

Dell XPS M1330

1. The Laptop

The Dell XPS M1330 is a fully-featured thin and light laptop weighing in at just under 2Kg that is extremely well supported on Linux. For a general review, see:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3826

2. Hardware

$ /sbin/lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
03:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
03:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN Network Connection (rev 61)

3. Installation

Installation of CentOS 5.2 from optical media was straight forward. Improved hardware support for sound and webcam is available in CentOS 5.3. I chose a 32-bit install.

3.1. CPU

The CPU is capable of frequency scaling to enhance battery life and this feature is supported by the cpufreq_ondemand module provided by the cpuspeed service. A 2.0GHz processor will scale back to 1.0GHz when running on battery. CPU temperature may be monitored through ACPI (cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature) or through the additional coretemp module available as a kABI tracking kmod package from the ELRepo repository.

3.2. Hard Drive

The Dell XPS M1330 can be specified with hard drives of varying size, all of which are 2.5" SATAII devices supported by the ahci kernel driver.

3.3. DVD Writer

The DVD drive is MATSHITA DVD+/-RW UJ-857G ATAPI device. It's a super slim slot loading device that's connected to a legacy PATA controller supported by the kernel ata_piix driver.

3.4. Firewire

A mini-FireWire (IEEE 1394) port is provided by a multi-function Ricoh R5C832 chip. Not tested.

3.5. Graphics

The Dell XPS M1330 can be specified with either integrated Intel X3100 or discrete nVidia 8600M GS. The integrated Intel X3100 uses the i915 driver and is fully supported out of the box. Users of the nVidia 8600M GS option may need to install the propriety nVidia drivers from ELRepo.

3.6. Network

Wired networking is provided by a Broadcom BCM5906M chipset that supports 10/100MBit only. This device is supported out of the box by the kernel tg3 driver.

The Dell XPS M1330 can ship with a number of wireless options although more recent samples appear to predominantly use the Intel 4965AGN chipset. The Intel 4965AGN chipset is supported by the iwlagn driver and mac80211 stack provided by the CentOS kernel. However, the firmware is missing but can be installed from ELRepo: 

yum install iwl4965-firmware

The interface may be controlled using NetworkManager for connection to a WPA-PSK encrypted wireless LAN.

3.7. Power Management

Both suspend and hibernate modes appear to work fine and the laptop is extremely quick to resume from suspend. CPU frequency scaling and dimming of LED backlit display work as expected, and in typical power saving mode nearly 6 hours of battery life may be expected at idle from the 9 cell battery (around 5 hours of light use).

3.8. Sound

The Dell XPS M1330 uses the Intel HDA with SigmaTel STAC92XX codec. Sound is fully supported and works out of the box with the updated ALSA drivers (1.0.17) in CentOS 5.3.

3.9. USB

The Dell XPS M1330 provides 2 USB ports that work as expected.

3.10. Webcam

The Dell XPS M1330 has a webcam integrated into the screen. Which webcam you get will depend on which screen you specify. The super slim LED backlit display uses a 640×480 resolution camera whilst the CCFL backlit display uses a 1280×960 camera.

The camera on the LED backlit display is supported out of the box in CentOS 5.3 by the Linux UVC kernel driver. The camera works (tested in Skype) but the internal microphone needs to be activated and volume levels adjusted:

In GNOME:

In KDE:

2023-09-11 07:22