fedora on a dell m1210

well, if anyone is interested, fedora core 8 works pretty well on an m1210. most of the hardware worked after install with some minor configuration changes or updates. i updated 2.6.23.1-42 to 2.6.23.8-63 after installing and once everything was set up i updated to 2.6.23.9-85. the only thing i had to fix was uvcvideo which required rebuilding the module for the new kernel version.

main hardware:

Code:

Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 800 MHz FSB),
A/V Communication Package (Integrated Camera and Microphone)
Video Card 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 TurboCache
Optical Storage Device 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write
Wireless Networking Cards Intel PRO/Wireless 3945a/g
Wireless 350 Bluetooth Module
5-in-1 Memory Card Reader

working:
webcam/mic - both work with linux-uvc driver. mic works after adding asoundrc file for pulseaudio
wireless - 3945a/g works with iwl3945 driver provided by kernel out of the box. wpa-psk requires wpa_supplicant which works.
bluetooth - worked out of box
sound - worked out of box. may need to change settings for sound to 'pulseaudio' including applications. alsa-plugins-pulseaudio needs to be installed if you're using alsa/pulseaudio.
5-in-1 card reader - sd cards worked out of box. unsure of the other 4 card types as i never use them. but i heard there have been problems even with windows.
nvidia - need kmod-nvidia or driver from nvidia. the kmod-nvidia from livna works fine so far.
usb - worked out of box.
cd/dvd recorder - cd/dvd recording works with k3b. ripping works with k9copy.
wine/wow - wine installs fine. at the moment wow needs the gecko .cab in /usr/share/wine/gecko for wow to update without a gecko/mozilla html error.
codecs, flash, java, etc - packages provided by respective sites.

not working:
wine/alsa does not like pulseaudio. this is the last of many problems i need to sort out. i'm sure i'll run into a few more sound issues with pulseaudio. i just haven't gone through every sound scenario yet. all my sound issues have been resolved through pulseaudio's site. it apprears they have not addressed the wine issue. or maybe they have. dunno. just started looking into it. also, since i last checked, winehq's position is that they will not add support for pulseaudio. other than that, everything that i would normally use in windows works so i'm not sure what else needs to be 'fixed' unless someone can mention something i haven't covered in regards to the hardware.

as a side note, when installing fedora, the installer uses local volume management (lvm). meaning, if you want to use something like ghost or acronis to image your drive to a bootable dvd, you might run into problems. after trying out several backup solutions that i borrowed from friends, i finally found one that worked. ghost, acronis, and several others would give read errors and crap out on me. even though they 'support' lvm. i ended up using mondo rescue which worked surprisingly fast. and it's free. it took a total of 20-30 minutes to backup my complete drive, burn to a bootable dvd, and restore to a backup drive. both drives were the same size. going to a larger drive would require using lvm tools to extend/resize the volume. if you have lvm and want to remove it, you could format/partition the new drive and then tell mondo not to format/partition the new drive. then you could restore the data from your backup manually. mondo rescue saved me a lot of work. i highly recommend it.

here's an image of compiz and wow:

 

Thank you szandor

 

finally got sound working in wine. apparently wine/alsa/alsa-plugins-pulseaudio, is suppose to work but so far from the bug reports, i only see the oss fix for wine-0.9.52-2.fc8. in order to get sound working, if you're using alsa/pulseaudio is to open the sound preferences and enable esd under the 'sounds' tab. under the 'devices' tab, you may need to point everything to alsa if 'default' does not work. i also had to run winecfg and set the windows version under applications to 'windows xp' even though i copied the wow directory over from a vista box. lastly, under the audio tab, alsa and esd both need to be checked. not sure about oss but you'll need to use the padsp wrapper. it should be something like:

$padsp winecfg
verify oss is checked
$cd .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/ && padsp wine Wow.exe

 

I installed FC8 with gnome, the only problem I had was wireless. With audio, I only had to turn the volume up. Fixed wireless with online help, dmesg and common sense.

The problem that I have now is that, the wireless keep disconnecting. Probably dwpa/wep thin, I might look at it later. The other issue, which is what puzzles me until now, is that Gnome becomes sluggish after a while. When I first install, everything was snappy. After all the updates and wireless was fixed, things started to get slow.

I remember the same thing happen when I installed MEPIS a few months back. Gnome isn't heavy for my system. Something is wrong. I also tried plain XWindows (plus terminal makes a super-lightweight desktop env), I like it, but firefox would crash after a while.

Any suggestion?

 

I liked Fedora 8, but had problems browsing my local network....do you have one and have you tried? curious.

 

it looks like you're running 64-bit. i installed 32-bit. i'm probably not going to be much help in regards to comparison. however, i haven't run into any latency issues with the 32-bit version.

 

i have a windows laptop i shared out for samba which works fine. i have no problem browsing between linux boxes. how do you mean you had problems?

 

I didn't try browsing local network. Maybe I will do that later.

 

you can use ssh with nautilus to browse remote linux boxes from your local linux box. i am using nfs as i do most of my work through a terminal from work.

 

I had problems browsing my windows boxes with Fedora 8, so did others on the forum over there...that's why I asked.

 

ah ok. hmm, from windows to linux, never had an issue. i'll have to check out linux to windows. i've always used smbclient as i was ssh'ing to the samba server and not using nautilus locally. i would imagine if i never had issues with smbclient i wouldn't have one with nautilus. i'll check it out later.

 

as a side note, all audio issues have been resolved. alsa/wine/pulseaudio are getting along. everything works. next step is getting the ipod classic to work. i love this goddamn laptop!