linux on Latitude D810 (or D610)

i would suggest fedora core 3 from fedora.redhat.com

it worked on one of my desktops that any other distro would not run on.  it is also what i run on my server. 

easy to setup and use.

I purchased a D610 and installed FC3 on it a few days ago. Everything works perfectly. The display, video card (X300), power management, Wifi (2915), Bluetooth, sound, etc all worked right after setup finished. No manual configuration was needed.

Oops I fibbed, the Intel 2915 Wifi card needed the IPW2200 driver which I downloaded a RPM for after installing Fedora Core 3.

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for the information regarding the FC3 installation on your D610 - it sounds good
that you did not have any major difficulties. If it worked without
problems with the X300 graphics card on your D610, I guess it is likely that it will
also work for the ATI Radeon X600 card if I decide to go for the D810. Does the FC3
distribution include driver routines for these new graphic cards or did you have to go the ATI
web site for the latest driver routines in order to get it to work properly?


-Peter

Peter,

I used the driver that was automatically installed by FC3 as part of Xorg. Glxgears is reporing 600 fps, which is quite a bit more than I saw from the 700M. However not being much of a gamer I have no idea if that is a good number.

For anyone considering running Linux on a laptop, I must say the Latitude D610 is an excellent candidate. I've only had it for a week, and so far I've got everything I want working (I'm even syncing my Axim) under Fedora Core 3. After installation, only three parts needed a little work: the Intel wifi card (the Dell card will probably need a little tweaking as well; it uses the Broadcom chipset which requires a ndiswrapper), sound, and 3D hardware acceleration.

To fix the wifi card: head over to ipw2200.sf.net and download the latest driver tarball (currently 1.0.1-23) as well as the latest firmware (2.2-5). Unzip the driver, make && make install it; unzip the firmware, copy it to /lib/firmware and create a symbolic link ( ln -s /lib/firmware /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware). Reboot and it should be autodetected and work.

As to the sound: it does work however by default the primary PCM channel is set to mute on boot. To fix this run aumix and set PCM to 100, escape out of it, run /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0, now add '/usr/sbin/alsactl restore 0 to /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

Lastly the ATI driver for 3D acceleration at the hardware level (as opposed to Mesa): download the latest ATI fglrx driver and switch to run level 3 (telinit 3). Force install the driver (rpm -Uvh --force fglrx_6_8_0-8.10.19-1.i386.rpm), next cd to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod and run make (sh make.sh). Drop back a directory and run make install (cd .. && sh make_install.sh). Restart X by telinit 5 and you should be set.

Well actually the procedure described below does not make X use the new fglrx driver. X is still using the radeon driver that comes with Fedora. To use the new driver search your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for "radeon" (all lower case), and change it to fglrx.

*However*, this does not work. When I restart X after this, I get blank screen. I have to press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get back a prompt and kill X. I looked at my X log file, and I don't see any errors in there. So, I'm kinda stumped right now about this.

Does anyone at Dell know what's going on here?

I don't like the radeon driver that Fedora has since it limits you to 24 bit color, and seems to consume a lot of battery power.

---

@SDNick484 wrote:
For anyone considering running Linux on a laptop, I must say the Latitude D610 is an excellent candidate. I've only had it for a week, and so far I've got everything I want working (I'm even syncing my Axim) under Fedora Core 3. After installation, only three parts needed a little work: the Intel wifi card (the Dell card will probably need a little tweaking as well; it uses the Broadcom chipset which requires a ndiswrapper), sound, and 3D hardware acceleration.

To fix the wifi card: head over to ipw2200.sf.net and download the latest driver tarball (currently 1.0.1-23) as well as the latest firmware (2.2-5). Unzip the driver, make && make install it; unzip the firmware, copy it to /lib/firmware and create a symbolic link ( ln -s /lib/firmware /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware). Reboot and it should be autodetected and work.

As to the sound: it does work however by default the primary PCM channel is set to mute on boot. To fix this run aumix and set PCM to 100, escape out of it, run /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0, now add '/usr/sbin/alsactl restore 0 to /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

Lastly the ATI driver for 3D acceleration at the hardware level (as opposed to Mesa): download the latest ATI fglrx driver and switch to run level 3 (telinit 3). Force install the driver (rpm -Uvh --force fglrx_6_8_0-8.10.19-1.i386.rpm), next cd to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod and run make (sh make.sh). Drop back a directory and run make install (cd .. && sh make_install.sh). Restart X by telinit 5 and you should be set.

---

That's interesting, prior to installing fglrx when you ran glxinfo|grep direct you got no; but now it says it's enabled (even without switching to fglrx in your xorg.conf). The livna repository has kernel modules as well as fglrx drivers which work with the vanilla kernels put out by Red Hat, however I've had trouble building them for recompiled kernels.

Cool... I'm going to try the livna rpms...

It seems the livna rpm's run into the same problem. In case anyone get's stuck booting to a blank screen in init 5, the way to fix it is to reboot and from grub enter press e on the kernel version you want to boot to, now press e on the second line (should end in label / rhgb) enter init 3 and press escape. Now press b and boot to run level 3. Now log in as root and edit /etc/X11/xor.conf (specifically change the line driver = "fglrx" to driver = "radeon". You can now start x again (either reboot or type telinit 5).

Sorry this is off topic, but is everyone else experiencing terrible battery life with their D610s? Either in XP or FC3 I am getting ~ 2:45 battery life from the 6 cell battery.

The D610 replaced an Inspiron 700M that was stolen. The 700M with a 8 cell battery had a 5 to 6 hour battery life running FC3. I have ordered another 700M and am sending back the D610. I like the higher resolution 1400x1050 screen versus the 1280x800 on the 700M. But a few extra pixels does not make up for half the battery life.

Yes, the livna rpms have the same issue.


I have the same problem with battery life also. I have not tried XP, but under Fedora, the battery life is terrible. When I was looking at buying this laptop, I did read that the Radeon graphics card significantly reduces the battery life compared to the other option, Intel GMA900.

So I dunno. Did you talk to a Dell rep about this?

I got it to work. Here is my Device section:

Section "Device"

# Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
# Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
# Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "fglrx"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "ATI Radeon M300"
Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS, AUTO"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "PanelSize" "1400x1050"
Option "DynamicClocks" "yes"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "on"
Option "DPMS" "on"
EndSection