| Disclaimer |
I'm not responsible if any of these instructions damage or blow up your computer! These instructions worked for me, but you might have different kernel/hardware/software/etc versions. |
| Reason |
So, I've recently purchased a laptop and put Fedora Core 1 on it. I still haven't gotten many things to work, but I thought it might be helpful if I posted some info on what I did get. This will be a continually changing page. See other guides (which have proven very helpful) here. |
| Specs |
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| Installation |
The installation was rather straightforward. After wiping the harddrive, I first installed Windows XP from the original CD and made the necessary partitions. I gave 10GB to windows, 10GB to linux, 8GB to a shared fat32 partition (that the two OSs can both access), and the rest for the linux swap partition. The Fedora installation went smoothly. The Display should be set as "Dell 1024x768 Laptop Display Panel" (for 15" XGA), and for the touchpad you can just select a normal two button PS/2 mouse. |
| Wireless |
Because the TrueMobile 1300 is notorious for not working in linux (at least as far as I could find online), I specifically asked for a TrueMobile 1150 pcmcia card. This card is supported by the 2.4.22 kernel version of the drivers (orinoco_cs), and so it worked without modifying anything. Fedora automatically created an ethernet connection for it, which is wrong since you cannot change the wireless settings like that, so I deleted it and created a new Wireless Connection. Simply create a new wireless connection (Network configuration [redhat-config-network] -> New -> Wireless Connection, and fill in the WEP key settings, etc. Supposedly, if you want it to try to connect to a list of Access Points automatically, edit /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts and add the configurations for each access point. This did not work for me. Hence, annoyingly, the wireless connects to any old access point, unless you supply an SSID and key. If you want multiple configurations (e.g. for when you're at home or school), you have to add multiple connections (as shown above using redhat-config-network) with different nicknames, SSIDs, and keys. One thing to note is that this will NOT work unless you have at least one connection with a nickname of "eth0" (or whatever device it's on). Also, make sure they are all added to the current profile! If all else fails, you can add the connections manually in /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices and /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, following the files that are there already (e.g. ifcfg-eth0), and changing the nicknames and keys (note that each connection has its own key file, e.g. keys-eth0). In order to use software such as Airsnort and kismet to find wireless access points, the card has to support "monitor mode". The orinoco_cs driver I had does not support it, so it had to be patched:
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| Ethernet |
I had no problems with the ethernet. It was detected automatically, and works flawlessly. |
| Multimedia |
In order to install various multimedia support for mozilla, see this page. The only trouble I had is that xine didn't install until I got the alsa-lib-1.0.2-2.fr.i386.rpm (from the FreshRPMs site). Also, sound for xine and xmms didn't seem to work until I installed the esound-devel package. I saw some web page that stated this has to be installed for esound to work, although I'm not sure what versions that's for. |
| TODO |
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Linux
When I first got my Inspiron 5100 laptop, I put linux (Fedora Core 1) on it and detailed the problems and some solutions I came across. By now core 6 is out, and this is well outdated. However, it seems to come up for many google searches, so I'm leaving it up. Hopefully it answers your questions :)