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

From Wheezy netinstall iso

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

• http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1668737.html

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.