Laptop Dell Latitude E6410

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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...

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].

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