I have an issue running the openSUSE 11.2 liveCD KDE on a Dell Vostro 3500. It boots fine to command line. It seems to boot fine to KDE (I assume it doesn’t hang cause the power button turns the laptop off without holding it). However the only thing I can see is a black screen.
I’ve checked the CD with the tool included to the CD. The hardware of the laptop seems to be fine as well
Searching on the 8086:0046 brought me to this link: PCI Devices which notes this is an Arrandale Integrated Graphics Controller (ie that is the ‘brand’ or ‘model’ of the Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator HD).
When I then do a search on the ‘think wiki’ site for the Arrandale, I am lead here: Intel Core i3 - ThinkWiki which in turn leads me here: Intel HD Graphics - ThinkWiki which I note is a write up on the 8086:0046 graphics.
It has this to say (and I quote):
The Intel HD Graphics (sometimes also called GMA HD) is the Graphics Memory Accelerator (GMA) integrated in the Intel Core i3, Intel Core i5 and select Intel Core i7 processors.
Features
Chipset: Arrandale (GMCH Ironlake)
PCI ID: 8086:0046
PCI-E
NOTE!
While almost all new ThinkPads have integrated Intel HD Graphics, on those ThinkPads with a Descrete NVIDIA GPU, the Intel GPU is disabled and cannot be enabled. There is no support for Switchable Graphics.
Linux support
A very recent Linux distribution with kernel **2.6.33 **and Intel Xorg driver 2.11 or newer is recommended.
Note that XVideo (Xv) playback at certain frame sizes does not work properly unless you have at least version 2.12 of the Intel Xorg driver.
So there is your problem.
openSUSE-11.2 has the 2.6.31 kernel. You need at least the 2.6.33.
openSUSE-11.2 has the Intel Xorg driver 2.9. You need at least the 2.11 or even better the 2.12.
It goes back to what caf4926 asked you . Why use openSUSE-11.2 ? This appears to be very new hardware, and for very new hardware you will need the latest of drivers. For that in openSUSE you will need version 11.3.
Note openSUSE-11.3 comes with the 2.6.34 kernel and the Intel Xorg driver 2.12.
I recommend you follow the inferred recommendation (in the forum of a question) of caf4926 and download openSUSE-11.3, burn and assuming a successful liveCD test, install from openSUSE-11.3 liveCD or from the DVD.
Title: Vostro 3500 has excellent Linux compatibility Reviewed by: HiddenCreek Product Uses: software developer, academic Review: I’m running Debian GNU/Linux on my brand new Vostro 3500.
Audio didn’t work until I upgraded from the standard 2.6.32 kernel to a very new 2.6.34 kernel. (Maybe 2.6.33 would work… I didn’t try.) Network only works with the proprietary ‘wl’ driver downloaded directly from Broadcom. I had to compile the ‘wl’ driver myself, but I suspect things are easier on Ubuntu compared to Debian.
I recommend the following for your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:
blacklist b43
blacklist ssb
I can’t believe a brand new laptop is so linux compatible!!! With my old HP laptop (DV2422CA) I had to wait about a year before I could run the network without ndiswrapper, and audio was always flaky.
Cons: I haven’t figured out to get a microphone to work (built-in or line-in). Maybe current linux kernel can only handle speakers/line-out/headphones, and microphone support will come later?
… note this user started with the 2.6.32 kernel and not the 2.6.31 (that is openSUSE-11.2).
Try openSUSE-11.3 with this laptop. You may have some networking problems … but one does have to take the reports of Ubuntu users with a grain of salt.
For testing a mic, I recommend you use a terminal with this command:
arecord -vv -fdat foo.wav
“foo.wav” is an arbitrary name I made up. Instead you could call it whatapain.wav or whichwaythewindblows.wav or anything …
Note when testing the integrated mic, that often the integrated (internal) mic is a digital mic. You may need to know this when tuning the mixer’s settings.
About the internal mic it works OOTB.
Now that I think about it it will be impossible to test the wifi driver using the live CD only because I have to reboot the system in order to activate the new kernel or am I missing something ?