Opinion on this set of hardware.

Hi experts,

I’m going to buy this dell laptop. Its pretty expensive for me… so I want to know how would openSuse 12.1 / 12.2 would flare on this hardware. I mean at the plug and play level.

  • 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i5-3210M processor (3M Cache, up to 3.1 GHz)
  • 15.6" HD WLED True-Life (1366x768) - ICC
  • 4GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz
  • 500GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
  • AMD Radeon™ HD 7670M DDR3 1GB

And the device is going to come with no OS preinstalled.

Please speak about it all… coz its one time investment and I don’t intend to experiment with this.

Thanks

The Radeon should be OK
Your only real unknown is probably the wireless, but things are much improved theses days.
You may have to consider http://forums.opensuse.org/content/102-booting-opensuse-uefi-bios-elilo-grub2-linux-only-multi-booting.html

> the device is going to come with no OS preinstalled.

are you getting it from Dell with no OS?

what does Dell tell you about the hardware? that is, do they list only
several different versions of Windows as suitable? (Dell has some
offerings which lists both Windows and Linux…and, offers some
hardware which is ‘certified’ for certain Linux distributions)

what is the Dell model/series number?

do you have the opportunity to boot an openSUSE Live CD on it prior to
buying?


dd

Here is the complete Specs

[LEFT]

  • 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i5-3210M processor (3M Cache, up to 3.1 GHz)

  • 4GB 1 DIMM (4GB x1) DDR3 1600Mhz

  • Mobile Intel® 7 Series Express Chipset (HM77)

  • AMD Radeon™ HD 7670M DDR3 1GB

  • 15.6" HD WLED True-Life (1366x768) - ICC

  • Stereo speakers with Waves MaxxAudio® 3 processing
    Built-in digital microphone

  • 500GB SATA hard drive (5400RPM)

  • Onboard tray-loading DVD+/-RW (standard)

  • Native HD 1.0MP webcam with digital microphone

  • Dell Wireless 1704 802.11n + Bluetooth 4.0
    Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 2230 + Bluetooth 4.0
    Integrated Ethernet 10/100

Ports, Slots & Chassis

  • Externally Accessible

(3) USB 3.0 + (1) USB 3.0 PowerShare
RJ45 Ethernet,
HDMI™ v1.4a,
VGA,

8-in-1 Media Card Reader

Digital (SD) Memory Card
Secure Digital Extended Capacity (SDXC)
Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC)
Multi Media Card (MMC)
MultiMedia Card plus (MMC+)
Memory Stick (MS)
Memory Stick PRO (MS Pro)
xD Picture Card (xD)

This is for a windows 7 machine. However, I’m getting one without an OS and I know MaxxAudio 3 won’t work, but thats ok. Dell doesn’t offer without OS but its available on online stores without OS. And sadly I don’t have an option to boot them with a live CD.
[/LEFT]

Grrrrrrr !! UEFI… this was my nightmare… I hate Microsoft…

Hi
I’m running UEFI/elio here on this Dell, if your only running linux you
shouldn’t have issues as you can probably disable.


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 3.0.34-0.7-default
up 5 days 12:16, 4 users, load average: 0.13, 0.28, 0.23
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU

On 2012-07-15 09:06, melvinjose wrote:
>
> Hi experts,
>
> I’m going to buy this dell laptop. Its pretty expensive for me… so I
> want to know how would openSuse 12.1 / 12.2 would flare on this
> hardware. I mean at the plug and play level.

HCL


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

On 07/15/2012 10:06 AM, melvinjose wrote:
> Here is the complete Specs

i’ve looked at a lot of Dell laptops, and this is the very first one i
have come across with neither a model nor series number…

or, did i miss where your wrote that in any of your three posts?


dd

I would not pull the trigger unless you are absolutely sure that the switchable graphics (you will have the embedded Intel HD Graphics 4000 and the discrete Radeon HD 7670M) plays nice … perhaps someone can advise you on that.

On 2012-07-15 19:36, Tyler K wrote:

> I would not pull the trigger unless you are absolutely sure that the
> switchable graphics (you will have the embedded Intel HD Graphics 4000
> and the discrete Radeon HD 7670M) plays nice … perhaps someone can
> advise you on that.

Switchable graphics are a big problem. I would stay far from them till they solve them.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

I agree
Big problem

I managed to fish that out from the some corner of the website… it was much like a disclaimer… lol :smiley:

The model is inpiron15R and the series 5520

Do you mean it won’t work? I don’t mind it for sometime if I know this problem is going be fixed through an update or something like that.

This thread down here discusses the same - its a pretty long one but they say there are solutions

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/laptop/445072-i-have-problem-switchable-graphics-laptop.html

Looks like you need to look again.
It can be pretty tricky sorting the Wheat from the Weeds today.
Those models here in the UK all have Win7, no options to exclude it.

I found this email while looking for Switchable graphics. Says the issue has been fixed with the latest AMD proprietary driver.

**
To**: Hybrid Graphics Linux <hybrid-graphics-linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

  • From
    : Gareth McCumskey <gmccumskey@xxxxxxxxx>> - Date
    : Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:39:37 +0200> - User-agent
    : Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:9.0) Gecko/20111229 Thunderbird/9.0>

Hey Guys,Some good news. I own an HP Pavilion dv7 that has a Hybrid graphics setup with an AMD 6700M HD and Intel cards and I have just installed the recently released AMD graphics driver (12.1 - AMD Catalyst™ Proprietary Display Driver - Linux x86 & Linux x86_64) and my hybrid graphics setup is now working beautifully. Suspend/Resume,switching from low power to high performance works awesomely.
So there seems to finally be some proper traction in the drivers for AMD hybrid setups in Linux. Finally I can get rid of Windows 7 completely and play my games in Linux :D:D:D
–Gareth McCumskeygarethmccumskey.blogspot.com@garethmcchttps://plus.google.com/105849771369868895436

Put it this way. I wouldn’t touch one with a Barge Pole.

My needs are simple at best. So I’d probably just opt for Intel only graphics. But you may have better luck choosing AMD CPU and nvidia GPU
Check Lenovo and Asus

I just don’t have the heart to invest on lenovo or asus. A few of my friends had pretty bad experiences. And my two dell machines haven’t shown me any sign of trouble yet. Put it this way - on hardware I trust Dell and HP with my eyes closed. Again, its just my trust!!

And as for the Switchable graphics part I believe its been fixed with the AMD Catalyst™ Proprietary Display Driver (ver.12.6 now available). Opensuse says it doesn’t add it default in the distro since its not opensource but its entirely supported.

On 16/07/12 06:46, melvinjose wrote:
> I believe its been fixed

Umm…

You! asked us.

On 07/16/2012 04:56 AM, melvinjose wrote:
> The model is inpiron15R and the series 5520

i suppose you meant inSpiron 15R, using Inspiron 15R 5520 (and google) i
found this page on the Dell site:
http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15r-5520/pd

which lists the hardware is for “Windows® 7 Home Premium SP1, 64-Bit,
English”

now, perhaps there are other pages on Dell’s nets where that hardware
lists other versions of Windows, and maybe even Linux…but, i can’t
find those…

so, the problem for Linux is that Dell and Microsoft design engineers
work together to make the hardware and operating system work as well
together as possible…they both know the ‘secrets’ of their own
system and know how to write drivers that fully take advantage of
everything the hardware has to offer (in terms of speed, quietness,
battery life, use of built in mics, cameras, etc etc etc)…

and when you load in a non-Win7 system, it may ALL work, it may
not…and i don’t how to find out what works what does not work with
openSUSE other than to:

  1. load the system you want and check for yourself (we know that is not
    possible)

  2. look at the hardware compatibility list (that Carlso already pointed
    you to)…unfortunately, i can’t find your Inspiron on that list (that
    list being horribly out of date and mostly useless, as it is impossible
    to keep up to date)

  3. so, the next best to look at smolts.org where i also do not find an
    “Inspiron 15” or 15R listed, nor anywhere find the string “5520”–have a
    look for yourself:

http://www.smolts.org/reports/view_profile/Dell,%20Inc.

hmmmmm, i see ‘they’ have given up on smolts also…

  1. the other thing to do is just use google without restricting the
    search to SUSE/openSUSE (which means it might work with Red Hat but
    not openSUSE) like:
    https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+“inspiron+15R”+5520+problem

where i also find too much to look at!

  1. the easiest way to get a laptop that works with Linux is to buy one
    that is shipped by the maker with Linux installed…

as those are most often top-of-the-line, professional machines you can
be sure it will not be the least expensive purchase of your life…

this page, for example, shows 15 Dells sold by Dell with Ubuntu installed:

http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/laptops.aspx?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz&~ck=mn#!facets=80770~0~1791343&p=1

they may or may not work with openSUSE 12.1, or any Linux other than the
Ubuntu it is shipped with…on the other hand, all of them may work
perfectly with every Linux or Windows ever shipped.


dd http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat http://tinyurl.com/DD-Hardware
http://tinyurl.com/DD-Software
What does DistroWatch write about YOU?: http://tinyurl.com/SUSEonDW

That was the most informative ever… Thanks a lot especially ](http://forums.opensuse.org/members/caf4926.html) caf4926](http://forums.opensuse.org/members/caf4926.html) and dd@home.dk. I have decided to do another set of search before I could buy this. However, this thread gives me some hope as well. The uncertainty was specifically around switchable graphics which some say has been fixed. On the brighter side nobody says it doesn’t work :).

Put aside all that, next time I don’t think I will have to post another set of hardware here for clarification. Now I know what should I be looking for. Thanks to you people a lot.