Hi,
I have a Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop with WinXp and I am planning to install Opensuse 11.1 (dual boot). I would like to know the compatibility results for Audio, Video, Ethernet, Wireless, Bluetooth and Power Management. I checked the below link
HCL/Laptops/Dell - openSUSE
but there are notes saying “Needs ACPI=off to boot” & "Modem not tested"
Appreciate if anyone could advice me on this (i.e. will there be any compatibility issues)?
Thanking you so much in advance.
Regards
Kathirvel
Kathirvel wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop with WinXp and I am planning to
> install Opensuse 11.1 (dual boot). I would like to know the
> compatibility results for Audio, Video, Ethernet, Wireless, Bluetooth
> and Power Management. I checked the below link
> ‘HCL/Laptops/Dell - openSUSE’
> (http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Laptops/Dell#Inspiron)
>
> but there are notes saying “Needs ACPI=off to boot” & “Modem not
> tested”
>
> Appreciate if anyone could advice me on this (i.e. will there be any
> compatibility issues)?
There are likely to be some issues, but not likely anything serious.
It just depends on exactly what hardware is on your device.
Download, burn, and boot the KDE Live CD for openSUSE 11.1. Once it is
running, open a terminal and issue the following command:
/sbin/lspci -nnv
You will see several “stanzas” of output with each one looking like
04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311
802.11b/g WLAN [14e4:4311] (rev 02)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:137c]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
Memory at fc000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
Kernel modules: ssb
Extract only the first two lines of each - i.e. the one that starts
with stuff like 04:00.0, and the one that starts with Subsystem. Post
the results. From that info, we can tell you what hardware will work.
Larry
[/size]
Thanks a lot Larry. I will do this as adviced and update this thread with the requested information.
Thanks, Kathirvel
On the real Install ISO’s (Net CD, DVD) there’s an Intel firmware compatability checker, that can also give info about any likely problems.
Laptops are tricky with BIOS, and if you find the Suspend to Disk/RAM thread in Soapbox, you’ll see some links on ACPI issues, which explain some troubles.
You might like to check out Dell forum, they have Linux section, a search of it, may flag any serious issues with your laptop model.
Running with ACPI=off may not really be a satisfactory solution.
Thanking you so much. I planning to give a try with live cd first and make sure everything is fine and proceed with the actual install.
Hi Larry,
As adviced I used the KDE live CD for the openSUSE 11.1, and the results are below:
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller [8086:2590] (rev 03:OSubsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller [8086:2592] (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller [8086:2792] (rev 03) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller [8086:2668] (rev 03) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2660] (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
00:1c.3 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 4 [8086:2666] (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 [8086:2658] (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 [8086:2659] (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 [8086:265a] (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
00:1d.3 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 [8086:265b] (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller [8086:265c] (rev 03) (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev d3) (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode])
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge [8086:2641] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
00:1f.1 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller [8086:266f] (rev 03) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX [14e4:170c] (rev 02)
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01c9]
02:03.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4318] (rev 02)
Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1370 WLAN Mini-PCI Card [1028:0005]
Thanking you in advance for your help.
Regards
Kathirvel[/size]
Kathirvel,
The chances are good that your laptop will work with little difficulty. You won’t know about the audio until openSUSE is loaded, but your disk controller and your wired connection should work.
Your wireless card will need external firmware, but BCM4318’s are handled by the b43 driver. If you will have wired access after Linux is installed, then issue the following command:
sudo /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware
After that you will need to use the NetworkManager applet to add a new connection.
If you will not have Internet access in Linux, then one of the stickies in the wireless forum tells you what to do for that case.
Larry
Kathirvel, we can probably find out about the audio functionality prior to installing, but it will take some extra work, and may not be as easy to determine as other functions.
1st, its possible the sound works with the live cd. You can test that by running in a gnome terminal or kde konsole:
speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav
or
speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav
if even ONE of those works then you are fine for sound.
The openSUSE-11.1 live CD comes with a mix of 1.0.17/1.0.18 of alsa. Since 1.0.17 of alsa, there is an audio diagnostic script one can run, that gives one lots of info on one’s Linux audio. Hence if you can get this laptop to connect to the internet (via a wired connection), then when running the live CD, open a gnome terminal or kde konsole and type “su” (no quotes) to get root permissions and then once the prompt changes to # type:
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh
That will post the PC’s audio config to the internet and give you a URL. Post the URL here.
If you do not have any internet connectivity (yet) with the liveCD, then you can instead type:
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh --no-upload
and then go to /tmp and look for the text file that is stored there (alsa-info.txt or something like that). Copy that to a USB stick, and then post that to a pastebin site, such as general pastebin - simplified internet collaboration
and we can look at that and give you advice re: the audio.
I suspect sound will work with minimal problems.
Thanks a lot Larry. I guess that openSUSE 11.1 should not be a big problem and I am confident that the issues can be sorted. I used Fedora before and was okay with it. Thanks for very detailed information.
Regards
Kathirvel
Dear oldcpu,
Thank you so much for the detailed reply. I have the results requested by you.
linux@linux:~> speaker-test -c2 -15 -twav
speaker-test 1.0.18
speaker-test: invalid option – ‘1’
Unknown option ‘?’
linux@linux:~> speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -15 -twav
speaker-test 1.0.18
speaker-test: invalid option – ‘1’
Unknown option ‘?’
linux@linux:~>
There was no sound output for this test. And as adviced the alsa-info text has been uploaded.
Could you please help in this regard?
Thanking you once again for this?
Regards
Kathirvel
That is a small “L” and not a “one”. ie: speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav
This laptop has a stac9200. This is supported by the Linux alsa sound driver. Its possible sound will work immediately with 11.1 with no additional tuning (where openSUSE-11.1 comes with a mix of alsa 1.0.17 and 1.0.18) . But there is an alsa update in 1.0.19 of alsa to the STAC9200 which may improve the functionality of the mixer, and once the laptop has internet access, it is a relatively easy job to update alsa to 1.0.19. I can walk you thru that if and when the time comes.
Thanks a lot oldcpu, this command worked in my laptop. I am more confident that ever, I am very pleased with openSUSE 11.1. Infact my brother was doing all these tests as the laptop was with him.
I am not such a lover of windows as I prefer and support the opensource software, but most of the times I had bad experiences with linux; mainly hardware support (fedora core 4 etc). I work as a SAP Consultant, when I came across SAP Trail Version on SLES 10 vmware edition, I kind-of loved SUSE linux more than the SAP application installed on it.
openSUSE has evolved so much these years and I couldnt wait to start back with linux. I will install this month end, (only then I will have my laptop) and might you guys again if I stumble on anything.
Thanking you oldcpu, lwfinger, robopensuse for all the valuable suggestion and support.
Regards
Kathirvel
Hi All,
I finally installed opensuse 11.1 on my laptop and it had been fantastic. Except wireless everything worked automatically.
Then i went through the sticky threads in wireless section and I am able to browse using the wireless network as well.
Thanks a lot for all the help and support.
Regards, Kathirvel