Yesternight, I finally installed Fedora 7 on my laptop - only to find the boot process was hanging at “Uncompressing linux kernel” message. Adding an “acpi=off” to grub did the trick.
Out of the box support for Dell XPS M1210 with default (& full) installation of Fedora seemed a bit lacking to me.
- The Wifi interface, though was shown detected, was not working (ipw2200 was installed by default)
- Sound did not worked - on & after Firstboot
- Graphics were not sharp, although F7 did picked up the max default resolution for the laptop - 1280×800
Other issues were
- NTFS partition, containing Vista were not available (obvious reasons) [Update - ntfs-3g is indeed available on the Fedora install DVD, I might have overlooked the fact that its already installed.]
- MP3 could not be played (obvious reasons)
However, the function keys & the touch pad worked quite as expected.
I did though of trying Ubuntu for a second, but then Fedora was not bad atall - specially when I get all the *-debug rpm’s prebuilt 
So I decided to plug in my ethernet jack & solve all the problems one at a time - & as it turned out, people had already faced & solved these problems for FC6.
Some very good links that I found were FC6 Tips & Tricks (v1.3) and Personal FC6 Installation guide
More information about XPS 1210’s hardware is on Gentoo Wiki - here & here.
So, after spending some time on internet, I managed to solve audio, video problems. Audio just started working by itself since I ran system-config-soundcard & clicked “Reload Audio Drivers”. Video is now crisp & clear with Nvidia Drivers installed. NTFS partitions can be easily mounted using ntfs-3g. For MP3 support, please head over to the above two links.
I also did managed to get ipw3945 on my system, wifi is up again - I still need to test it at Sandy’s place tonight with his Wifi router.
The leftovers now…
- The Ricoh card reader
- Dual headphone jacks
- Logitech Cam & Mike - detection, hotkey, video streaming…
- The touchpad seems to be a bit scary when doing horizontal movements. Even the slightest touch sometimes makes FF to go back/forth in history. My Bro’s HP has one of the softest & best touchpad I’ve ever used. It just seems to magically know that when you want to click & when you want to scroll… wow!
- Media control buttons on the laptop
- Power management, Suspend to RAM when laptop’s lid id is closed, etc…
If I can somehow finish this list, the support for Dell XPS M1210 might be F&F!!!
Filed by Mayank Jain (makuchaku) at June 22nd, 2007 under
Dell XPS M1210 - my laptop,
Fedora Core,
GNU/Linux |
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