Dell Inspiron E1505

Note: Updated information for Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) is in italics.

Installation of Ubuntu 6.06.1 on a Dell Inspiron E1505 went rather well. Before I installed I did a little research and discovered this bug in the Ubuntu forums:

“After installing dapper several people have reported their computers have failed to boot with the error ‘real-time-clock stopped’
The error prevents the computer entering bios setup or booting from a cd so is fairly fatal, it can be resolved by removing the coin-cell battery and replacing it again after several seconds.”

I have not seen this bug after six months of use. Reports state that it still exists on the Edgy release. I did have boot issues on both Dapper and Edgy. Dapper would at times fail on the sound device. It would boot but I would have no sound. On Edgy the sound always works, however I had occasional issues on boot that locked it up; something about a “soft CPU lock”. Rebooting 3-5 times would get me in, but this was unsatisfactory. I went into the BIOS and disabled use of the Intel Dual Core; so I’m running on “one” cpu core, that fixed the boot issue. I’ll what for the next version to try turning it back on. I’ve turned the Dual Core back on with Feisty and updated the BIOS to version A12, so far there are no issues.

In an attempt to avoid this unresolved Dapper bug I flashed the BIOS to the latest version A08. I don’t know if this will help, but I haven’t had any issues so far. BIOS version A09 with Edgy, which causes Bug #74284. Fix is under heading “Media Buttons” below. This is not an issue with BIOS A12 and Feisty.


Description:

  • Dell Inspiron E1505 Dual Core T2500 (2GHz/667MHz/2 X 1MB L2 Cache)

  • 15.4 inch UltraSharp Wide Screen SXGA+ Display with TrueLife

  • 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 DIMM

  • 256MB NVidia GeForce Go 7300 TurboCache

  • 100GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive

  • 8X DVD +/- RW Drive

  • Integrated SoundBlaster Audigy

  • Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11 a/g

  • Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth

  • Network Card Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX

  • Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Memory Card Reader

  • FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd

  • Internal 56K Modem

  • 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Battery

Installation of Ubuntu 6.06.1 was rather straight forward. I first booted into Windows XP and removed all the junk software Dell installs and defragged the hard drive. I then booted up Ubuntu’s Live CD to see how Dapper worked on this laptop and the live installer in action. I haven’t dual booted in years, but wanted to keep the Windows XP this time because I purchased Dell’s Customer Complete Care. Keeping XP should avoid any we don’t support Linux issues for Dell support department. Clicking the install icon fired up the installer. I manually created partitions after resizing the Windows XP partition; leaving Dell’s recovery and utility partitions alone. Installation went very quickly.

Dual Core T2500
The default kernel package is the linux-image-386. To get the full use of the processor install the 686 packages:

  • linux-image-686 (Dapper)

  • linux-restricted-modules-686 (Dapper)

  • linux-image-generic (Edgy & Feisty)

  • linux-image-2.6.17-10-generic (Edgy)
  • linux-image-2.6.20-16-generic (Feisty)

You will need to reboot.
Note: SpeedStep works.

NVidia GeForce Go 7300
Ubuntu configures xorg to use the “nv” driver; which works fine, but I wanted the full 3D NVidia goodness for my games such as Second Life.

Install package:

  • nvidia-glx

Open a console and type:

  • sudo nvidia-xconfig

The NVidia and USplash have issues on this laptop which renders the consoles unusable. To fix it edit grub’s menu.lst file from a console:

  • sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

  • remove ALL references to “splash”

  • I also commented out the following:

On Edgy & Feisty the Nvidia USplash issues are gone, so ignore above or re-enable (or not) splash on this release.
#title Windows NT/2000/XP
#root (hd0,3)
#savedefault
#makeactive
#chainloader +1

I didn’t want the Dell restore partition in the Grub boot menu.

15.4 inch UltraSharp Wide Screen SXGA+
This screens maximum resolution is 1680×1050, which was set up correctly, however other resolutions were not available and the default depth was set at 16. This would not do for gaming, so I edited xorg.conf:

  • sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

  • In Section “Screen” change “DefaultDepth” from 16 to 24

  • For every SubSection “Display” I added these Modes: “1680×1050″ “1440×900″ “1280×1024″ “1280×800″ “1024×768″ “800×600″

Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11 a/g
The wireless worked out of box using the ipw3945 module in the 686 Ubuntu kernel. The packages network-manager and network-manager-gnome are needed to get WPA to work from what I’ve read. I don’t need WPA right now, so this is untested.

I am able to turn the wireless on and off without issues using the keyboard shortcuts.

Integrated SoundBlaster Audigy
(HDA Intel / SigmaTel STA9200)
Sound worked fine until I tried the Second Life Linux alpha client; sound was very choppy. To fix this issue:

  • sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options

  • add to the end of the file: “options snd-hda-intel position_fix=1″

  • reboot

Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth
Modules are loaded. Untested

Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 Memory Card Reader
Untested

FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd
Untested

Internal 56K Modem
Untested. I believe a commercial driver is available. I don’t need the modem, so I don’t expect to investigate further.

Hibernate & Suspend
Untested

Synaptics Touchpad
Works fine except for the horizontal scrolling.

Media Buttons
The Mute, Volume Up and Volume Down buttons worked out of box. The other media buttons only took a minute to set in System –> Preferences –> Keyboard Shortcuts; these buttons however will only work with Gnome applications.

The MediaDirect button does not work. If you want it to work you will need to use the Windows XP boot loader and keep Windows on a partition. This involves installing Grub on a partition other then the MBR and the use of the alternative install CD for Ubuntu.

If you are experiencing Bug #74284 (FN brightness keys do not work).

  • sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
  • add blacklist video
  • reboot

Other Issues
The system bell in the console is a terrible loud beep. To disable edit:

  • sudo gedit /etc/inputrc

  • uncomment “set bell-style none”

Another annoyance; which I guess is supposed to be a feature, is that Ubuntu adds all partitions to /etc/fstab and mounts them at boot. This puts icons on the desktop to the Dell Restore, Dell Utility, and Windows XP partitions. To disable edit:

  • sudo gedit /etc/fstab

  • Comment out those partitions (add a “#” in from of each line with vfat or ntfs listed as its type)

A similar annoyance/feature is that under Places –> Computer these partitions will continue to show. I don’t know of a way to hide or remove them here.

Hardware monitoring:

  • sudo apt-get install sensors-applet

This gives you an applet that, once you add it to the panel, will monitor your CPU temperature. There is also a CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor you can add to the panel if interested. The frequency doesn’t change much, so it’s not that interesting. Under Ubuntu my CPU stays at 1GHz or 50% most of the time. If you also want to monitor the fans you will need the i8k modules loaded and you may also want the i8kutils package.

  • sudo gedit /etc/modules

  • Add this at the end: “i8k force=1″

  • To get the module loaded now without having to reboot: “sudo modprobe i8k force=1″

Adding the “i8k force=1″ will get the module loaded after each boot. The “Hardware Sensors Monitor” can now check the fan speeds. If you didn’t reboot restart the “Hardware Sensors Monitor”. The i8kutils package provides command line tools to view and manipulate the fans. Note: This notebooks BIOS handles the fans and works, so I don’t mess with it. If you feel that your laptop is running too hot you can run “i8kmon” as a daemon that controls the fans automatically per your instructions in a config file. See the documentation in /usr/share/doc/i8kutils/ for details.

Conclusion
I’m very satisfied with this notebook. It works best Ubuntu’s latest release (Edgy).