CentOS - Oct 2006 - CentOS on Dell Inspiron 640m laptop

I ordered and just received today a new Dell Inspiron 640m laptop (it also goes
by the name E1405).

Anyone tried installing CentOS on this laptop? It's the wireless drivers
I'm most concerned about; it's got the Dell 1390 internal wireless card
(not the Intel wireless).

Anyone have some feedback, on the wireless or any other issues, on running
CentOS on this laptop?

Thanks

Paul

On 11/1/06, techlists at comcast.net <techlists at comcast.net>
wrote:
> I ordered and just received today a new Dell Inspiron 640m laptop (it also
goes by the name E1405).
>
> Anyone tried installing CentOS on this laptop? It's the wireless
drivers I'm most concerned about; it's got the Dell 1390 internal
wireless card (not the Intel wireless).
Sorry, I can't help with CentOS, or the Dell wireless, but I have
openSUSE running really well on this laptop, so there should be a
solution to most problems. I couldn't get the resolution, sound, or
wireless working under Fedora, but openSUSE picked them up without any
dramas (just had to install the ipw3945 package).

The Kernel planned for openSUSE 10.2 will support the card reader, (I
think you need at least 2.6.17), so if you want this feature, then
bear in mind you'll need a linux with a fairly frequent release cycle.

The modem will require a pay for linuxant driver to get full speed.

I haven't got s2ram working. I think it has something to do with the
SATA hard drive...
> Anyone have some feedback, on the wireless or any other issues, on running
CentOS on this laptop?
Sorry that isn't more CentOS specific.

My results were:

Kubuntu 6.06 LTS: hung during setup, couldn't even start the live DVD
Fedora Core 5: no wireless, resolution not supported, no audio,
wouldn't come back to life if I closed the screen and opened it again.
openSUSE 10.1: almost everything working.

Ben

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 at 10:29pm, techlists at comcast.net wrote
> I ordered and just received today a new Dell Inspiron 640m laptop (it 
> also goes by the name E1405).
>
> Anyone tried installing CentOS on this laptop? It's the wireless
drivers
> I'm most concerned about; it's got the Dell 1390 internal wireless
card
> (not the Intel wireless).
>
> Anyone have some feedback, on the wireless or any other issues, on 
> running CentOS on this laptop?
I've got a Thinkpad Z61t, which is somewhat similar to yours (although I 
do have the Intel wireless).  To be honest, I didn't even try CentOS on 
it, figuring the hardware was too new.  I initially installed FC5, which 
mostly worked, except for standby mode (it'd go to sleep, but not wake up) 
and some video issues (vesa worked, i810 required an out-of-band upgrade 
but even then GL still crashed).  Over the weekend I upgraded to FC6, 
which is actually quite nice.  The video works very well now, and standby 
and resume works (except that I can't quite get wireless working after a 
resume, but I'm not sure if that's due to lack of trying and/or the 
complication that I'm also using WPA2).

I'm fairly certain that you'll need xorg-7.1 to get video working
natively
(rather than via vesa), which means FC6 or wait for CentOS5.  And to have 
a hope of standby working I'm pretty sure (bot not positive -- did the 
AHCI suspend patches go into 2.6.18?) you need the hard drive in 
"compatibility" mode rather than AHCI.

As for your wireless, a little bit of googling seems to indicate that 
bcm43xx has issues with it, and ndiswrapper is the way to go.

Good luck.

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University