Not Much Linux Love for the D630
I decided to install Ubuntu Linux on my new laptop, which I recently named “Graphitica.” It did not go well.
Apparently, the D630 is not yet well supported. The main install disk failed cryptically. The alternate (text-based) install worked better, but then X failed to work. The wireless card also fails to load some part of the driver properly. Basically, its a big mess. I’m willing to do some work to get a new operating system installed, but right now the task seems a bit too large, so I probably won’t resume this battle until after school is out for the quarter (after August 17th).
July 29th, 2007 at 10:42:37 pm
The integrated, shared memory architecture graphics cards found in a lot of lower end notebooks tend not to be well supported under Linux. Do you know what sort of wireless card is in your notebook and have you tried inserting another mini-pci card to see if your model notebook only whitelists a certain few cards?
Are you still in the period of return ability on your notebook? Dell is actually selling notebooks with Ubuntu Linux preloaded or you could always just get the same equivalent PC model and do it yourself.
http://www.dell.com/linux
July 29th, 2007 at 11:26:44 pm
punch it that should work….oh wait thats the redneck way to fix things my bad.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:31:40 am
No worries, Linux is somewhat behind on hardware support due to the lack of cooperation from manufacturers, but it will likely get there in a couple of months; I’ve already got Gentoo Linux running nicely on my D630.
As for Wi-Fi, there are alpha-quality drivers out there for the Intel 4965AGN chip, but it won’t work with kernel versions before 2.6.22; if you feel like experimenting, look out for iwlwifi or iwl4965.
July 30th, 2007 at 10:42:06 pm
Thanks Marti, I’ll look into it when I start spending time on this project again. Maybe I can hit you up for some pointers along the way?