Laptop Dell Latitude E6410
These notes are very succinct, only enlightening differences with Laptop_Dell_Latitude_E6500 notes.
Editing BIOS settings
- System Configuration
- Integrated NIC; Enabled
- SATA Operation: AHCI
- Latitude ON Reader: disabled
- Virtualization support
- Enable VT for Direct I/O: enabled
Installation
Partitioning
- Create part#1, 255MB, ext2, /boot
- Create part#2, 4GB, physical volume for encryption (will be our swap) => swap
- Create part#3, 30GB, physical volume for encryption (will be our root) => ext4, user_xattr
- Create part#5, 90GB, not formatted (will be our /home)
- Create part#6, 35.8GB, not formatted (will be our /professional)
Video
No perfect solution yet...
$ lspci|grep -i nv 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [NVS 3100M] (rev a2) 01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
From nouveau codenames, NV50 family: NVA8 (GT218). 3D codename of NV50: Tesla
Some info in French here
nouveau
Pro:
- dual-screen with DP/hdmi output works with Xrandr
- nice console framebuffer resolution
Con:
- flickering of screen at all resolutions after a while
- seems to have only a reduced palette. I've an unpleasant stratification on the Debian theme
- audio via HDMI not supported (seems to be still TODO, cf feature matrix)
- 3D (e.g. compiz) fails
nvidia
Pro:
- smoother palette
- 3D works
Con:
- flickering of screen at all resolutions after a while
- no proper support of Xrandr, for multiple output you need to use TwinView e.g. via nvidia-settings
- audio via HDMI fails
- console font gets thicker, sth to do with auto detection of DPI. with nvidia-xconfig --no-use-edid-dpi fonts get really tiny...
Howto:
cf http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
aptitude install nvidia-glx zless /usr/share/doc/nvidia-vdpau-driver/README.txt.gz
Create /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Section "Module" Load "glx" EndSection
Section "Device" Identifier "Video Card" Driver "nvidia" EndSection
Then update it:
nvidia-xconfig --mouse alpsps/2 --dynamic-twinview --twinview
Choice
As I'm not yet happy with any of those solutions, I switch from one driver to the other from time to time.
To do that easily,e.g. from nvidia to nouveau:
- Move /etc/X11/xorg.conf away
- Edit /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-kernel-common.conf and blacklist nvidia instead of nouveau
- Reboot
Touchpad
Was a hell to get something else than a stupid "ps/2 mouse"
A few bugreports are tracking the problem, e.g. on Fedora and Ubuntu, where I could find a very freshly patched psmouse driver
wget http://people.canonical.com/~sforshee/alps-touchpad/psmouse-alps-0.9/psmouse-alps-dkms_0.9_all.deb sudo modprobe -r psmouse sudo dpkg -i psmouse-alps-dkms_0.9_all.deb sudo modprobe psmouse
And everything works like a charm, e.g.
synclient -l synclient CircularScrolling=1 synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=1 synclient HorizTwoFingerScroll=1
Audio
Internal mic was working OOB but I cannot output sound on the HDMI.
Tried several snd_hda_intel options such as model=dell-s14 but no progress.
Some info...
- Card:HDA Intel Chip: IDT 92HD81B1C5
- Card:HDA NVidia Chip: Nvidia GPU 0b HDMI/DP
- http://credentiality2.blogspot.com/2011/07/nvidia-evga-g210-card-hdmi-audio-and.html
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto
- http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-Audio-Models.txt
Apparently hdmi audio is not supported by nouveau, only by proprietary drivers, pfff
Suspend
Suspend to RAM sometimes freezes and I've to force power off.
Magic SysRq
To use Magic SysRq, one must:
- press & hold Alt
- press & hold Fn
- press & hold SysRq(F10)
- release Fn
- press command keys
One usual way to reboot cleanly:
sysrq + REISUB
- R: release keyboard raw mode
- E: SIGTERM all processes
- I: SIGKILL all processes
- S: sync filesystems
- U: remount read-only filesystems
- B: reboot
ABORT
I've systematic crashes when undocking + suspend-to-RAM so I finally chose to swap that laptop with a Laptop Dell Latitude E5420.