June 22, 2007
(Posted at 1:02 pm)Fedora 7 on Dell XPS 1210
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!!!
You will have a very smooth install with no hassles. Btw, the Media control buttons worked for me perfect the first time. My webcam was working on Ekiga and thanks for that info on setting it up and taking still pics too
Oh yes, forgot to add… my /proc tells me that I just have CPU core
[root@Warrior 19 SIMPLY RDB]# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7200 @ 2.00GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 1997.385
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 1
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc up pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 3997.38
clflush size : 64
Comment by makuchaku — June 22, 2007 @ 2:16 pm