Dell D-420 ultraportable - anyone tried one?

[Crashdamage]

I just ordered a Dell D-420 ultraportable, I should have it a couple of days. I never thought I'd ever buy anything from Dell, but it was the best combination of everything I need and little that I don't. Plus I got a good deal on a 'scratch & dent' one configured just right. Anyway, it'll have to run the friggin' XPee Pro SP2 it comes with most of the time for work, but I do intend to at least try to use Linux in a dual-boot, preferrably 2007.1 as soon as it's released.

 

The D-420 has been out a while now and it's actually a fairly standard Intel Core Duo 1660 machine. Video is just integrated Intel 950, no SATA HD, etc. So I would think this would be a good candidate for running Linux (another reason I choose it). Mine has built-in WiFi standard of course, lus the Bluetooth option and is stuffed with 2G of memory to keep XPee happy. I don't care if the WiFi-catcher feature or card works - I'll never use the WiFi 'cause I have a Verizon PC5740 PCMCIA broadband card (so I skipped the optional Dell built-in broadband card). But I do badly need the wireless broadband and Bluetooth to work. I've never tried before to get either working under Linux. I'm not even gonna install KDE, and only the basic Gnome libraries so all the software I use will run. Fluxbox will be the WM.

 

I've found little info on Linux installs on the D-420, some about Unbuntu but virtually nothing about using Mandriva. Does anyone know of any info about a Mandriva/D-420 combination? Thanks!

[JonEberger]

Hi Crash,

 

How did your 420 end up working out. I have a D-620 which I'm running (gasp!) FC6. It works great including the wireless/wi-fi-catcher. Which wireless NIC did you get?

 

Jon

[Crashdamage]

Sorry, but I've been REALLY busy with work, like 13-15 hrs/day 7 days a week. Just haven't had time to play with this since I got it. Work looks like it's finally going to ease up some and hopefully I'll have some time to work on this. I didn't want to start in 'til 2007 Spring had been out for a bit anyway so the inevitable initial bugs could be addressed.

 

I'll be doing an install pretty soon, maybe in the next week or two. I promise to post back with a little info on the experience.

 

BTW, I really like the little D-420, it's been a nice unit so far. As I said in my original post I got mine fully loaded, I even ended up going for the built-in Verizon 3G broadband wireless so I could blow-off the PCMIA card once some checking showed I could get the built-in broadband card working in Linux. Seems everything will work fine, it just remains to be seen how much tweaking it will take. From what I've learned so far researching similar hardware I feel very optimistic about a good outcome with minimal hassle.

Edited July 1, 2007 by Crashdamage

[Crashdamage]

OK, this weekend I did an install of 2007 Spring from the Mini CD version. So far mostly OK. My existing Win XPee Pro install was unscathed by the experience and 2007.1 found and configured almost everything fine. Both the mouse pointer and pad work perfectly right off, the display is good without doing a thing, ethernet no problem, etc. Got the generic Open Office and Firefox/Mozilla.org rpms installed and Flash 9 and Java going. But there are a few hang-ups. Here's my (very early) impressions so far:

 

1. Bluetooth works - apparently anyway. It says it's waiting for file transfers, but I haven't actually used it yet.

 

2. WiFi a no-go. I need a BCM43xx driver rpm available from Official or Club depositories but not free or PLF. So I may re-join the Club to get it and offer some support for Mandriva again.

 

3. Verizon wireless broadband also a no-go, but I knew that would take some work. Should be do-able.

 

4. Haven't messed with hibernate, laptop power settings, etc. yet. Hoping for good news when I do.

 

5. Even though I carefully hand-picked the packages I wanted so as to install only what I needed, 2007.1 still stubbornly installed piles of friggin' KDE crap. Had to manually remove it all later. Kinda defeated the purpose of using the 2007.1 Mini CD, but the ftp install went fine otherwise.

 

6. Of all things, Midnight Commander works but looks like hell. Never would have expected a text-based app to display incorrectly. This has GOT to be fixed - gotta have MC! Oddly, other text-based stuff, including my favorite browser, LInks, work fine. I'm using it on the D-420 to write this.

 

7. Haven't installed any 3D stuff - I have no serious interest - so I can't speak to how they may or may not work on a D-420, but I expect there would be no significant problem. I may play around with Metisse just for grins after I get more pressing issues resolved.

 

Still got a lot of stuff to do to get it all working, some more of my favorite apps installed, etc. I skipped anything KDE altogether but installed Gnome and logged into it for the first time in several years. Jeez, I'd forgotten how much I hate both KDE and Gnome. What a complicated mess to configure...uuuggghhh...and I'm so spoiled now by the speed of working with a simple WM. I wanted to do a nice configuration of Gnome for giving Linux demos to poor Win-slaves, but I don't know if it's gonna be worth all the trouble. Maybe instead of showing Linux Win-clones to Win-slaves I should just show them something completely different?

 

Fortunately, Fluxbox is still there and my custom menu and hotkey configuration files (copied from my main box, still on Mandrake 10.1) work fine with the newer version of Flux, so I feel fairly at home with Linux on the D-420 now - if I can just get MC straightened up!

 

All in all, 2007.1 seems like a very good release, attractive, fairly polished and stable. But there's really nothing new in it I need, so my main everyday desktop box will keep running Mandrake 10.1 'til I build a new box in a year or two. No reason to change.

 

I'll post again after I sort out the hardware a little better, maybe even with a little how-to, assuming I can figure out how-to.

[JonEberger]

Hi Crash,

 

For powermanagement, are you going to define the acpi commands in teh events directory, or are you going to use a tool such as kpowersave?

 

Jon

[adamw]

There's nothing useful related to bcm43xx in Club repos. What bcm43xx needs to work is the firmware from the Windows driver, which we can't redistribute even in Club. What you need to do to try and use bcm43xx is to grab this file:

 

http://boredklink.googlepages.com/wl_apsta.o

 

then install the package bcm43xx-fwcutter and run this command as root:

 

bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta.o

 

that will extract the firmware and dump it in /lib/firmware . Then restart networking and see if the driver works.

 

Frankly, it's not much more than a 50/50 shot anyway, the bcm43xx in 2.6.17 was fairly broken for many adapters. 2.6.20 and later have a rather better bcm43xx, so you may find it works better if you use kernel-tmb from /contrib. Otherwise, if it doesn't work well, the best alternative is just to use ndiswrapper, which generally works very well with Broadcom chips.

 

I have a Broadcom chip in this laptop, and it works excellently with bcm43xx on kernel-tmb. If I have to use the stock kernel for some reason, I switch to ndiswrapper.

[Crashdamage]

adamw wrote:

"There's nothing useful related to bcm43xx in Club repos."

 

Well, when I tried to configure wireless networking in MCC (yeah, I tried the quick'n dirty method) it popped up a message that claimed there is. I'll work more on WiFi later and try your advice. I only spent a few minutes fooling with WiFi, it's a low priority for me, but I'll get to it.

 

JonEberger wrote:

"For powermanagement, are you going to define the acpi commands in the events directory, or are you going to use a tool such as kpowersave?"

 

I haven't started fooling around on power stuff yet. I never used Linux much on a laptop before, never got into the power stuff when I did, so I don't know what I'm doing yet. But I imagine I'll define the commands. I don't have anything KDE installed and don't intend to. I'm not much of a GUI kinda guy anymore.

 

Otherwise...

I still don't have Bluetooth working quite right yet. Installed a battery-powered Bluetooth-enabled HP 460 portable printer hooked up via USB no problem. But even though it's detected through Bluetooth it won't print via Bluetooth. So Bluetooth seems (only slightly) broken, no doubt just needs some configuration. I tried some quickie config tools but I can't get the Gnome config tool to work and if I try to config via MCC it keeps insisting on installing kbluetooth (or something like that) and I'm not gonna do it. Time to use a more basic method. I only spent a few minutes on Bluetooth so far also, but it's next up to fix.

 

Now the really GOOD news...

Of course, getting Verizon broadband working was my #1 priority among the wireless options on this machine, and I got the built-in Verizon Wireless broadband Mini PCI card working perfectly. Runs just as fast as in Windows and is just as easy to use. Actually was fairly easy, just installed wvdial and used this post by LinuxCruiser for a rough basis:

 

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums...id=31642#M31642

 

I made a lot of changes from that info, but it gave me a good starting point. Anyone wants to know exactly what I did can just ask.

 

Now I can move on to Bluetooth, WiFi and power settings, in that order. I fully intend to get everything working perfectly and I'm sure I'll win those, they don't seem too tough. I have no doubt at all now that this little Dell is gonna make a nice Mandriva Linux portable! But if anyone else reading this wants to try, they should keep in mind while all the basic stuff works nice out-of-the-box, the wireless hardware will require some Linux expertise.

[Crashdamage]

OK, here's where I am to this point...

 

Got my Bluetooth printer going. No big deal, just had to learn a little about hcitool and do some minor configuration.

 

For power control I'm using laptop-mode, a nice simple tool that seems effective. The default settings look reasonable, and I've left them alone at least for now.

 

WiFi has been the only thing that's taken much effort and I STILL don't have it working.

 

adamw - the link you kindly gave to download the firmware to use the bcm43xx module is not a working link. I installed 'bcm43xx-fwcutter-006-1mdv-2007.1 but of course without the other files from the link I get a failure:

 

# bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta.o

Cannot open input file wl_apsta.o

 

Just for grins, to see what would happen, I did:

 

# modprobe bcm43xx

...no errors. But then...

 

# iwconfig

 

...returns 'no wireless extensions' for all interfaces.

 

Result: Unable to configure manually or the GUI way in MCC either. Obviously, I need a good link for the required files, I can't find one.

 

Oh well, on to trying ndiswrapper...first remove the bcm43xx module to avoid any weird conflicts:

 

# rmmod bcm43xx

 

OK, went to dell.com and downloaded the latest driver for my Dell/Broadcom 1390 internal, package name 'R151517.exe'. Unpacked file, copied 'bcmwl5.inf' and 'bcmwl5.sys' to a folder created on my /usr/local partition. Did:

 

# cd /usr/local/Dell1390_Drivers/151517

 

...installed the driver:

 

# ndiswrapper -i bcmw15.inf

installing bcmwl5

 

OK, but then a check of ndiswrapper fails:

 

# ndiswrapper -l

ncmwl5 invalid driver

 

So I tried a somewhat earlier version of the bcmwl5 driver, from the package 'R149747.exe'. Same result.

 

Time to dig a little deeper...

 

# dmesg | grep ndiswrapper

ndiswrapper version 1.21 loaded (preempt=no,smp=yes)

ndiswrapper (load_wrap_driver:113): loadndiswrapper failed (65280); check system log for messages from 'loadndisdriver'

 

Log message basically says "It failed." no real useful information.

 

Result: I'm stuck here and would appreciate any help. Never fooled with ndiswrapper before and not real sure I know what I'm doing, right or wrong. Everything else works, I don't want to let a friggin' WiFi card beat me now!

Edited July 22, 2007 by Crashdamage

[JonEberger]

Hi Crash,

 

The display seems to imply that you're using Ndiswrapper 1.21. That's pretty old. Are you using this from the easyurpmi repos or from ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net? I always went and compiled from source and that's when I had the most success with Ndiswrapper. If you have the kernel sources, this should be super easy. The sourceforge.net page seems to show versions 1.4x.

 

If you have a working windows install with that NIC, I'd copy the driver directly and give it a shot too. It should be fairly stable.

 

Jon

[Crashdamage]

JonEberger:

ndiswrapper-1.21 is the version that comes with 2007.1 so using the KISS rule, I just installed it. I may get the later source from the website and install it with checkinstall and see if that helps. But before I do that...

 

adamw:

I found a good source for 'firmware wl_apsta.o' dowloaded it and sucessfully ran:

 

# bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta.o

 

Then reloaded the bcm43xx module, but 'iwconfig' stil returns 'no wireless extensions' for all listed interfaces. I'll play around with this some more later, I'm outta time right now. I'd rather not have to use ndiswrapper if a simple module will do.