Dell XPS M1330 and Ubuntu (12-28-Update)

Duuuude, I got a Dell.  This is my new Dell XPS M1330.  It’s tuxedo black – matches me and unbelievably small and powerful.

For me, this was a moment of truth. Do I want a mac or do I want to stay with Linux?  I priced them both. I considered it.  I decided that I really truly love linux.  I love my PC, just not with Windows.  I love Dell’s support.

In the end, whether you go Vista, Mac, or Linux is all a matter of personal freedom and preference.  We get alot of gently Mac ribbing on this blog, but in the end linux is like the kinda of ruddy little-brother to Macs.

So… here’s a how-to on how to get your M1330 running with linux.

Device	Compatibility
Processor – Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz	Works
Slim and Light LED Display with VGA Webcam	Works
DVD+/-RW, 8X	Works
128MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8400M GS	Works
Sound – ExpressCard Sound Blaster X-Fi® Xtreme Audio Sound Card	Works*
Dell Wireless 1505 Wireless-N Mini-card	Works
USB	Works
Firewire	?
Express Card Slot Reader	Works
Remote Control	Works
Biometric Finger Print Reader	Works*
VGA Web Camera	Works*
Media Keys	Works*
Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR)	Works
Integrated 10/100 Network Card	Works
HARD DRIVE, 160G, Serial ATA, 9, 7.2, SE080	Works*
Headphones – both jacks!	Works
ExpressCard Sound Blaster X-Fi® Xtreme Audio Sound Card	Not Yet
Hibernation	Works*
Suspend	Works*

Notes:

Install Ubuntu’s Gutsy Gibbon. It’s stable and a very good operating system for a new linux users. It’s got great helps and a bleeding edge kernel that you’ll need for Dell’s latest computer.

The m1330 has the Intel Core2 Duo.  That means you can run the AMD/64 version of ubuntu. 

Hard Drive Partitioning & Media Direct

First things first, you gotta get your hardrive properly partitioned. You need to decide whether you want to keep Vista or not. If you are new to linux, keep vista. You’ll also need to take special care to keep Dell Media Direct working. If you aren’t, you can use the Ubuntu Gutsy Install CD to torch it.

Here’s a guide to how to shrink your drive and keep the media center stuff working. There is a guide here. It involves a fresh install of Vista. You’d do that anyway, wouldn’t you? Who wants all that Dell stuff slowing down your system?

Moving Your Home Directory

Before Things get too installed, it’s a good idea to have your home directory on another drive. Partition a separate drive. I suggest this guide..

Wireless – Dell Wireless 1505 Wireless-N Mini-card

First things first, you gotta get the wireless working. It won’t work out of the box. Ndiswrapper is the way you wanna go. There’s a great guide here.

Since you are going to need WPA, do this…

sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant

Graphics – 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8400M GS

Envy is your friend. Install. Select Nvidea’s graphics driver. Reboot. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

This great guide will help you not only install Envy but also help you install Compiz Fusion.  I’ve had some performance issues with emerald and compiz.  The latest drivers (169.07) have improved some performance. Unfortunately,  I think the gtk-decorator still provides cleaner graphics.

Audio – Sound – ExpressCard Sound Blaster X-Fi® Xtreme Audio Sound Card

The super duper Sound Blaster X-Fi card isn’t supported yet. You’ll also notice that one headphone works and one doesn’t.  The internal sound card now works out of the box.

Audio – Second Headphone Jack and Microphone (Added 12-17-2007)

Dell released this fix on the second headphone jack.

The fix for the external microphone was given by one of comments below…

wget http://people.ubuntu.com/~rtg/linux-backports-modules-2.6.22-14-generic_2.6.22-14.11UNRELEASED_i386.deb sudo dpkg -i linux-backports-modules-2.6.22-14-generic_2.6.22-14.11UNRELEASED_i386.deb sudo reboot

Webcam

There are some guides that talk about how to get this to work, but my webcam worked out of the box with Gutsy. I use kopete and amsn.

sudo apt-get install amsn kopete

Biometric Finger Print Reader

The m1330 can also be configured with a fingerprint reader. There’s a great Ubuntu guide here.

Suspend & Hibernation (Updated as of 12-26-2007)

Suspend and Hibernation are just buggy in linux.  Period. After much work, I have it working perfectly.  It just requires a bit of tweaking. 

sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support

Change the following settings…

… # Note that network cards and USB controllers will automatically be unloaded # unless they’re listed in MODULES_WHITELIST MODULES="uvcvideo" # Should we attempt to warm-boot the video hardware on resume?POST_VIDEO=false # Should we save and restore state using VESA BIOS Extensions?SAVE_VBE_STATE=fals

There are two bugs right now that only one CPU is scalable after a suspend.  There is a rather crude fix for this…

sudo gedit /etc/acpi/resume.d/72-acpi-pain.sh

Add the following before the last line of the file…

… modprobe -rv acpi_cpufreq modprobe -v acpi_cpufreq /etc/acpi/power.sh

Since making these changes, I’ve had no problems suspending and resuming and my cpu cores have both awoken from sleep.  WOOHOO! 

If your audio doesn’t work on resume, follow this. 

The last tweak was just an annoyance that I finally got around to fixing on Christmas Day.  If you are having problems with network-manager in Gnome not refreshing the network list on resume, these steps adapted from this guide help me…

sudo gedit /etc/acpi/resume.d/99-reload-wireless.sh

Paste the following into the editor window…

#!/bin/sh # Stop NetworkManager /etc/dbus-1/event.d/25NetworkManager stop # Unload the ipw3945 driver /sbin/modprobe -r -f ndiswrapper # Reload the ipw3945 driver /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper # Restart NetworkManager /etc/dbus-1/event.d/25NetworkManager restart

Then, we have to make it executable…

sudo chmod 755 /etc/acpi/resume.d/99-reload-wireless.sh

This unloads ndiswrapper and reloads it after resume and thus resets your wireless nic.  It’s crude, but effective. 

Thank you DELL and Ubuntu.

Bluetooth

It works.  I have a no problems sending and receiving files from my Centro.  Woohoo!

Power Consumption – Does your fans ever stop?

Some people have reported their fan perpetually running in Gutsy.  I have hearing problems, so I can’t hear the fan (grin).  It’s caused by the nvidia driver.  I can only tell you about power consumption and the temperature of my CPU.  I suggest the following changes..

Install powertop…

sudo apt-get install powertop

Read what it says and decide what you think you need.  I made the following changes on boot up…
 

sudo gedit /etc/rc.local

Then add before.. exit 0

hciconfig hci0 down ; rmmod hci_usb echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs iwpriv eth1 set_power 5 mount -o remount,noatime / hal-disable-polling –device /dev/scd0

Then, a blogger suggested that you go into SYSTEM -> ADMINISTRATION -> Services and turn off Bluetooth.  I would go into SYSTEM->PREFERENCES->SESSIONS and make the bluetooth not load at startup.  I hope this helps.

Hard Drive:  Is my Hard Drive cycling itself to death?

The relevant bug information is here.  There’s been much written about this and it is marked as critical on the fixes.  There is dispute about whether this bug actually kills your hard drive. The hard drive in our computer is designed for more cycles. In fact, cycles may not hard it all!  But, to feel safe and sound, The relevant fixes and will be moderating hard drive temperatures. I did not apply this fix because I did not feel my harddrive was being effected by this bug.

Whether you have this problem or not depends on which hard drive you purchased.  The fix and explanation is located here. 

Automatix

For the most part, Automatix is a thing of the past.  Gutsy has incorporated alot of the things which Automatix

Conclusion

I love this laptop.  I love linux on this laptop.  If you need help, contact me. 

If you have any questions about this guide, please let me know.  It’s going to be for me a work in progress.  I’m very happy with my laptop and really like the way its running. installed.  Let me know what you think.