{"id":681,"date":"2007-12-09T06:43:07","date_gmt":"2007-12-09T11:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m"},"modified":"2007-12-09T06:43:11","modified_gmt":"2007-12-09T11:43:11","slug":"fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m","title":{"rendered":"Fedora 8 on the Dell Inspiron 640m"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been harsh when it comes to Linux on laptops. Simply put, the week before going to foss.in (i.e. last week), I got tired with my <i>tried<\/i> daily usage of Ubuntu (besides, I went through Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon). So I went with Fedora 8. You&#8217;ve got to <i>love<\/i> rdiff-backup.<\/p>\n<p>What works?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wireless, out of the box. This is ipw3945d. Fedora comes with the firmware now, so all is well, it just works out of the box.<\/li>\n<li>X mirror out, out of the box. Finally, I can present, using my Linux box, without worry that it would suck with an external display. Just hit Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, ensure the external display is connected, and voila! I get a mirrored display. I&#8217;m sure setting it up to be dual-screen is the next uphill task, but lets just keep the good memory of things &#8220;just working&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Suspend, and <b>resume<\/b>, out of the box. I can place my laptop to sleep, and wake it up, and all works. Sure, I need to hit Alt+F1, then go to Alt+F7 to see the screensaver login (otherwise, it remains blank), but this tiny workaround is very worthwhile to ensure that my laptop, works like a laptop.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What doesn&#8217;t work?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The WiFi light on my Dell doesn&#8217;t turn on. The Bluetooth one is, but the WiFi one remains permanently off. Who cares?<\/li>\n<li>Occasionally (and I mean, very occasionally), the laptop doesn&#8217;t wake up from sleep. I haven&#8217;t figured out why yet.<\/li>\n<li>Pressing Fn+Up or Fn+Down, to get the brightness controls going doesn&#8217;t work. While I can control the brightness just fine, its the GNOME applet not displaying it fine. Sound seems to work, so I&#8217;m wondering what it might be.<\/li>\n<li>Occasionally, yum barfs, but I&#8217;m on a really slow, and unreliable link. yum clean all, seems to fix things.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t tried hibernate. I haven&#8217;t played with the TV Out. However, my laptop seems to be working more like a laptop, than when I had Ubuntu installed.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, a minor point of annoyance. I can get Compiz working. But playing videos with it enabled, makes the video jerky, slow, and well, sucky. So I clearly can&#8217;t use Compiz, yet. But hey, it works (bottom-line and all, right?).<\/p>\n<p>Technorati Tags: <a class=\"performancingtags\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/fedora\" rel=\"tag\">fedora<\/a>, <a class=\"performancingtags\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/linux\" rel=\"tag\">linux<\/a>, <a class=\"performancingtags\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/fedora%208\" rel=\"tag\">fedora 8<\/a>, <a class=\"performancingtags\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/laptop\" rel=\"tag\">laptop<\/a>, <a class=\"performancingtags\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/dell%20inspiron%20640m\" rel=\"tag\">dell inspiron 640m<\/a>, <a class=\"performancingtags\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/inspiron%20640m\" rel=\"tag\">inspiron 640m<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-email\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"\" class=\"share-email sd-button share-icon\" href=\"mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20Fedora%208%20on%20the%20Dell%20Inspiron%20640m&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bytebot.net%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2007%2F12%2F09%2Ffedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m&share=email\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to email a link to a friend\" data-email-share-error-title=\"Do you have email set up?\" data-email-share-error-text=\"If you&#039;re having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. You may need to create a new email yourself.\" data-email-share-nonce=\"e64de23f66\" data-email-share-track-url=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m?share=email\"><span>Email<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-facebook\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-facebook-681\" class=\"share-facebook sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m?share=facebook\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Facebook\" ><span>Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-linkedin\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-linkedin-681\" class=\"share-linkedin sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m?share=linkedin\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on LinkedIn\" ><span>LinkedIn<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-twitter\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-twitter-681\" class=\"share-twitter sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m?share=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Twitter\" ><span>Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-end\"><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been harsh when it comes to Linux on laptops. Simply put, the week before going to foss.in (i.e. last week), I got tired with my tried daily usage of Ubuntu (besides, I went through Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon). So I went with Fedora 8. You&#8217;ve got to love rdiff-backup. What works? Wireless, out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-email\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"\" class=\"share-email sd-button share-icon\" href=\"mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20Fedora%208%20on%20the%20Dell%20Inspiron%20640m&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bytebot.net%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2007%2F12%2F09%2Ffedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m&share=email\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to email a link to a friend\" data-email-share-error-title=\"Do you have email set up?\" data-email-share-error-text=\"If you&#039;re having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. You may need to create a new email yourself.\" data-email-share-nonce=\"e64de23f66\" data-email-share-track-url=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m?share=email\"><span>Email<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-facebook\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-facebook-681\" class=\"share-facebook sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m?share=facebook\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Facebook\" ><span>Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-linkedin\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-linkedin-681\" class=\"share-linkedin sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m?share=linkedin\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on LinkedIn\" ><span>LinkedIn<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-twitter\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-twitter-681\" class=\"share-twitter sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/09\/fedora-8-on-the-dell-inspiron-640m?share=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Twitter\" ><span>Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-end\"><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-aZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":659,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/11\/08\/why-i-liked-ubuntu-and-my-thoughts-on-gutsy-werewolf-aka-fedora-8","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":0},"title":"Why I liked Ubuntu (and my thoughts on Gutsy Werewolf, aka Fedora 8)","date":"8\/11\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the reasons I like Ubuntu is because they have a really swanky commercial repository, and they make it easy for me to get some commercial software, without pulling an RMS-styled \"Freedom is a feature\" on me. Don't get me wrong, I still love Fedora with all my heart,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":517,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/04\/17\/dell-inspiron-640m-linux-support-getting-a-little-better","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":1},"title":"Dell Inspiron 640m Linux support getting &#8220;a little&#8221; better","date":"17\/4\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I upgraded my kernel, so am running 2.6.20-1.2944.fc6 and am pleased to announce that on the Dell Inspiron 640m, brightness control works. Well, sort of. I can reduce brightness and increase brightness, but increasing brightness (Fn+ UpArrow) while in X, still causes X to crash. All that's recorded is:Apr\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":428,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2006\/08\/29\/will-we-get-skypeout-via-gtalk","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":2},"title":"Will we get SkypeOut via GTalk?","date":"29\/8\/2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Caught Why Do Fools Fall in Love. Not my kind of show. I did see Episode 9 of The Ghost Whisperer and there was a Fedora Core (GNOME-based) desktop, and a spreadsheet was open in her antique store. Fedora in the movies! Now, Skype is still one of the only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":543,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/05\/01\/ubuntu-linux-pre-loaded-on-dells","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":3},"title":"Ubuntu Linux pre-loaded on Dell&#8217;s","date":"1\/5\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This is where all the rave is at, today. Guess May really is a good month :-) I've been meaning to write about this for quite a while (linux being pre-loaded), and this seems to be a fairly good time.It all started with Morgan Collett's post about Linux preloaded -\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":291,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2005\/03\/24\/its-a-good-friday","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":4},"title":"Its a Good Friday!","date":"24\/3\/2005","format":false,"excerpt":"So it was nice to see Coastguard from Cybersource. Using IceWM, Knoppix, and Firefox for all its functionality, which involves Internet banking. FWIW, I bank with several banks (ING, ANZ, Commonwealth), and they all seem to work well on my Linux box running Firefox. Granted I have the Java plugin,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":224,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2004\/10\/10\/observations","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":5},"title":"Observations","date":"10\/10\/2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been on the nahant-beta-list for a while now and don't notice a heap of posts there, like the users you'd get on Fedora lists, or the testers on fedora-test-list. Either RHEL4-beta \"just works\", or many aren't testing it as rigorously as they are Fedora. I wonder what Red Hat's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}