Installing Debian Linux on a Dell Inspiron 8200

Disclaimer

This page is meant to help other people installing Linux on their Laptop-Computers. I am in no way responsible if you use this information and damage your hardware or software or data (or anything else).

What is given?

Laptop Computer: Dell Inspiron 8200

Network connection

I do have a very fast Internet connection, thus I have installed Debian more or less completely over network. But to install Debian from CDs should not be too different from this. I used the netinst-CD-Rom-Image to install woody.

What was my aim?

I wanted to have a replacement for my current desktop station which I can carry with me. Most of the time I work with the computer Linux is used. I have Linux and Windows 2000 installed. I also wanted to get every piece of hardware, every feature of this notebook running. I think this is fulfilled.

Start

The Computer came with a preinstalled Windows XP home. I just booted this once and then rebooted the system with the Debian Netinst Image (woody_netinst-20020215-i386.iso).

Partitioning

I had absolutely no use of the installed Windows XP and thus deleted all partitions and created new ones as follows:
Partition Name Will be used for Size
hda1 will be Suspend to disk partition later 1 GB, maybe I enlarge my RAM :-)
hda2 Windows 2000 5 GB
hda3 linux boot/root is used during installation and later there will be some parts of the System
hda5 LVM VG will contain most parts of my Linux system, home etc. 15 GB
hda6 Space, accessible from both: Windows and Linux, Win95 FAT32 8GB

Network

Then the installation continued and I loaded the network-driver. The 3c59x-module turned out to be working instantly. This enabled me to get the base-system from a close-to-me Debian-mirror over network. My network-settings were configured over DHCP. Then I made the system bootable (in MBR) from the dbootstrap-utility.

Kernel & Graphics & X

Obviously now time was come to create an own kernel (there were several things I wanted to be working). It took me some further compilations. After all the kernel with this config fits all my needs. Probably it is much to much for your needs. To get all the tools I needed for the compilation I just 
apt-get install kernel-source-2.4.18
apt-get install nvidia-kernel-src
apt-get install nvidia-glx-src
Then I configured the kernel and 
make-kpkg kernel_image
make-kpkg modules_image
This results in two .deb packages and to make the NVidia-drivers complete I had to unpack the glx-archive and 
dpkg-buildpackage
in its directory. This automagically downloads the needed files from the NVidia-Website and makes a .deb-Paket from it. Then I installed the three .deb-pakets and rebooted, installed X and configured it that way. This config has one special feature for me: It makes it possible to connect a USB-Mouse (the 5 buttons + wheel one from M$) at any time and use it under X as well as the two built-in Mouse-Replacements. Now the most critical parts are up and running.

Audio

To use the audio-hardware load the i810audio module. Sometimes this driver is referred to as Intel ICH audio driver. 
modprobe i810audio

Extra-Buttons

To use the extra-buttons above the keyboard I use this ~/.Xmodmap and the i8kutils: 
apt-get install i8kutils
If you are not using debian you can get these tools from Massimo Dal Zotto's Page. In the FAQ there is some information on how to configure this.

IRDA

To use the irda-interface (just tested with a Siemens S45 mobile): 
apt-get install irda-utils irda-common
modprobe ircomm-tty
modprobe irda
modprobe ircomm
and configure in bios irda to be COM4 (/dev/ttyS3) or where else you want it. After this 
    scmxx -d /dev/ircomm3 --info
worked fine.

CD-Burner

To use the cdburner you have to use the scsi-emulation, which only works if you don't already use you cdrom with the "normal" ide-driver: 
modprobe ide-scsi
modprobe cdrom
modprobe sg
this make your cdrom/dvd/cdrw drive accessible as scsi-device 0:0:0

PCMCIA

PCMCIA worked out of the box (apt-get install pcmcia-cs) thus I had not to configure anything at all. I tested this with two cards: Rodney Gordon wrote me: 
 If someone is using the pcmcia-cs
    with an internal dell wireless card, it works fine with the
    orinoco driver but if it shares an interrupt you get an annoying
    message in your logs every few mins, this is fixed in cvs or
    greater than .33

Built-In Modem

To make the built-in modem work one has to use some binary only driver from here, get one of the hsflinmodem packages, untar the archive, after this enter the directory and make install and call hsfconfig. After this the modem is available as /dev/ttyHSF0.

Framebuffer

After a small hint from the Linux-Dell-Laptops-Mailinglist I figured out that I can use the vesa-framebuffer at a resolution of 1600x1200 with the modenumber 838 with 16Bits colordepth.

Fans

Massimo Dal Zotto wrote some utilities for Dell laptops. There are some you can use to control the two built-in fans. They can be downloaded here.

Also there is a plugin for gkrellm which can be found here

Powermanagment

ACPI works not. But APM works fine. I did not really investigate hard in suspend to disk, but suspend to ram works fine except with the nvidia-drivers, but with a small patch to those (outlined in the Linux-Dell-Laptops-Mailinglist-FAQ) you even can make this work: 
    edit the file nv.c from the NVidia Drivers. Search for suspend,
    there is a #if 0 statement and shortly below, there is two times
    "return 1;". Change this both to "return 0;" and make sure there
    is a line Option "NvAGP" "0" in your XF86Config4 and after
    recompiling and installing the new NVdrivers the modules NVdriver
    is apm-suspendable.

    Thanks to Rudolf Usselmann & James Hendrick)

Harddrive speed

I was wondering about the harddrive speed, which was imo very much lower than on my old system (desktop PII 350). I played a little bit with hdparm and got some very good results. In the beginning the performance was quiet poor. 
hdparm -t /dev/hda
reported results around 2 or 3 MB/s. With the settings I get with 
hdparm -d 1 -c 3 :
    
racker:/usr/src# hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 I/O support  =  3 (32-bit w/sync)
 unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 nowerr       =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    =  8 (on)
 geometry     = 3648/255/63, sectors = 58605120, start = 0
 busstate     =  1 (on)
I get results around (often above ) 20MB/s with lower CPU usage.
Thomas Deselaers
Last modified: Wed May 8 17:49:35 CEST 2002