Any Dell D820's or D830's with linux?

I'm considering a T7200 D820 with NVIDIA Quadro NVS 120M
I think it's A Intel 945PM chipset.

I'm also considering the D830, but it seems a bit too new. It's got the Intel 965PM chipset (if you choose a nv graphics.) I don't want to fight putting linux on it. It has the choice of NVIDIA® Quadro® NVS 135M or
NVIDIA® Quadro® NVS 140M, or Mobile Intel® GMA X3100 for graphics. The X3100 is hard to get working. I hear Intel has released a driver, but I've heard complaints the it may make the screen blurry. So, I would pick one of the nv's, if they are supported.

It looks like the Intel 3945 wifi is supported with the ipw3945 on both machines. But, I don't think 4965 is very well support yet for the D830? Anyone confirm, deny?

Can't anyone offer any advice or share experiences with linux on either or both of this system?

 

Hi,

I am also planning to buy a D830 and running Linux on it. Looks like there are some problems, but all in all it should work.
So, in more detail what I found out so far:

• According to ThinkWiki and nVidia's Linux forums the current nVidia drivers should fully support the nVidia Quadro NVS 140M. (OK, besides power saving features of course.)
• Drivers for the 4965AGN are under development here. They seem to be quite functional already, however not complete. You can also use NDISwrapper.
• Some problems exist with the Intel High Definition Audio chip on the D830 (and the D630 too). It seems to be a bug in alsa. A patch already exits and will be incorporated its next release. Here is another HowTo.
• Another problematic part (with some kernels) is the DVD drive. You have to use the ide-generic module in order to access it. Specify it at boot in GRUB if you have problems during the install. Later you can just load it via modprobe. I'm not sure in how far this affects the funtionality of the drive (burnig, whatever...). This is basically a kernel issue and will hopefully resolved in future releases.

This is what I have gathered during my research on the D830. I'm also just your next door's Linux noob, so don't quote me on it. I might be wrong... plus I'm sleepy right now.

bye

 

Yeah, it seems like a safe bet if you don't mind a bit of work. And, it will only get better with the distros catch up.

Probably going to order tomorrow. Will post back when I know something....

 

Got my D830 yesterday. I have the nvidia 135M graphics, and Xorg is running fine with the proprietary drivers. So far, sound isn't working. I'm running ARCHLinux.

 

Hi there,

I got my D830 yesterday, and after putting up with Windows for twenty minutes I nuked it and installed PCLinuxOS 2007.

Issues so far: sound did not work, but I managed to get that working with a quick compile of the newest alsa module

DVD is not working yet, worked fine during the LiveCD installation.

Also, my hard drive seems to make an odd sound like its spinning down once a minute or so, quite annoying and I dont know how to fix it!

I havent tried the WLAN stuff yet.

 

Hm, I ordered mine on 08-27-2007 and the Dell website says I will receive it on 10-09-2007. :'(
In some blog I read the delay is due to display shortages.

Hey, I will also put Archlinux on it.

 

I put ARCH on mine. I can't get the wifi to STAY UP. Really sucks. I have to reboot the whole machine (power cycle), in order to get the wifi going again. Can't figure out why; so I can't even predict it. (Btw, I don't think this is related to ARCH)

 

hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda

But it might get over written by your battery scripts or something, it depends on the distro. But if you can find an hdparm (maybe somewhere in /etc) changing the -B 1 to -B 255 will fix the spin down issue. It's suppose to spin down after X seconds where X is in hdparm -B 1 -s X /dev/sda but it doesn't always work that way (in my case for example). 255 will disable spin down.

 

For what it's worth, I have a D830 with nvidia 140M graphics card. Have installed win xp64 and suse 10.2 (it came with vista 32bit). getting all the drivers together for xp64 was a pain, including the wireless card. Suse installation was painless, wireless card works fine, and nvidia driver installed fine. However, even though it recognises the installed graphics card, suse insists that it is a framebuffer device and consequently runs terribly (not mention not as widescreen but as 1280x1084).

So all in all, D830 is fine with linux, just need to get nvidia running correctly. Anyone any idea how I can tell xorg.conf to use the card properly?