Last updated: June 15, 2007
This page describes the results of installing Suse Linux 10.2 on a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop. Since the Dell Latitude D600 laptop is similar to the 600m, this page will be applicable to that model as well. Aside from some minor issues, in my experience the Dell 600 laptop works very well with Suse 10.2 linux.
See also Installing Suse 10 on a Dell Inspiron 600m for details on Suse 10, and Installing Suse 10.1 on a Dell 600m for details on Suse 10.1.
After working with Suse 10.2 for a while, I have found that the most frequent annoyance is the instability of the Gnome main menu. Sometimes it will not work at all (i.e. nothing happens when you click on the Gnome main menu button), not show up at all, or whatever. To fix this, I typically:
The second most frequent annoyance is the "runaway nautilus process" that eats up cpu. This happens when you have nautilus open to a folder containing media files that are changing in size, such as files being downloaded from a stream etc. My best guess is that Nautilus tries to create a thumbnail for it and ends up in a loop trying to do that. The only way to fix this is to kill the nautilus process that is eating the cpu cycles, which of course resets all nautilus processes. Fun! But at least that fixes the problem. The solution is simply to not open a nautilus folder containing media files being downloaded/created. At least, this is my best explanation of the problem.
In summary, Suse Linux 10.2 works very well on my Dell Inspiron 600m laptop.
Like its predecessor, Suse 10.2 is a nice upgrade to Suse 10.1. Nice graphics (Gnome 2.16.1! KDE 3.55!) and updated applications make for a great environment to work in. The installation manager actually works (yay!), and it's a smooth user experience for the most part. Of course, every version of Suse has its own set of bugs; Suse 10 had slow USB writing, Suse 10.1 had a broken updater, and my main complaint with Suse 10.2 is it's tendency to have a slow Gnome main menu (which can be fixed, but is annoying).
Unlike the previous upgrade (from 10 to 10.1), I had a reason to upgrade - my laptop's hard drive ran into trouble and I could no longer boot. I tried fixing it with the usual tricks, but when I didn't make any immediate progress, I purchased a new hard drive for my laptop (a 100GB Western Digital). I wanted the extra space anyway, and I bought a 2.5" hard drive enclosure and put the old hard drive in that for convenient portable storage.
Suse 10.2 ships with the open source Broadcom wireless drivers, though they don't work out of the box and some troubleshooting is required. I have yet to spend the time to get it working, but when I do, I'll update the information here. Hopefully we won't need to rely on Ndiswrapper any more!
I have been using Linux as my desktop OS for a couple years now for day-to-day tasks, watching/listening/manipulating multimedia, software development etc. (as opposed to using it in conjunction with windows), and things have gone exceptionally well. Suse installs on the Dell 600m and works well right away (though some tweaking is needed for wireless to work, and the usual non-OSS codecs have to be installed, but that's par for the course for linux). I do not like the current Novell/Microsoft relationship, but I don't want to switch to Ubuntu (why? well... I guess I just go against the grain). One day, when I'm uber/hardcore, I'll make the move to Gentoo!
I have also been using Suse to RIP DVDs and convert media for the iPod Video. There are a lot of guides out there with various directions, and when I get a chance, I'll add my current methods here.
I hope that you find these Suse guides useful. If you're feeling generous, consider a donation to a non-profit that I contribute my time to: Spirit of Canada: Stories We Remember. Thanks for your time, and I hope you found what you were looking for. And hey - thanks for using Linux! It's the choice of the intelligent generation. :)
General Hardware Specifications of Dell Inspiron 600m:
| Hardware Components | Status under Linux | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pentium M Processor, 1.6 GHz | Works | |
| 14.1 SXGA+ TFT Display | Works | |
| ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 Video | Works | This is working well at 1400x1050 (SXGA+) 24-bit
color resolution. The ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 still does not support XGL, which is par for the course for ATI graphics cards under linux. When possible, go with Nvidia in linux! Booooo ATI! |
| 1024MB, SDRAM, 2DIMMs | Works | |
| Western Digital 100 GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive | Works | I replaced the standard hard drive that came with the laptop to get more space. It was quick and easy (you can do it yourself), done in less than 10 minutes, and cost around $100 Canadian. |
| Broadcom 570x Gigabit Integrated Network Card | Works | |
| Internal BCM V.92 56k Modem | Did not test | |
| Samsung CDRW/DVD Drive | Works | |
| Internal miniPCI Dell TrueMobile WLAN 1450 Dual-band Wireless Networking (Wi-Fi Certified) | Needs troubleshooting* | *See Wireless Notes section. |
| Integrated Bluetooth | Did not test. | |
| Dell Keyboard | Works* | The special keys such as volume control and mute do not work for me at present - I'll have to troubleshoot that. Not a big deal, but I'll look into it when I get more time. |
| ALPS TouchPad | Works | |
| SigmaTel C-Major Audio | Works | |
| O2Micro SmartCard Reader | Did not test | |
| Intel 82801DB/DBM USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller | Works |
This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.18.2-34-default, which is the kernel installed with Suse 10.2.
See also the Suse 10 and Suse 10.1Installing and Configuring Software and Services pages for additional information on software and services.
Note that I disabled IPv6 support during installation, since I don't have any need at the moment for IPv6.
Like previous versions of Suse Linux, you'll need to install the proprietary codecs to enable things like mp3 and windows media playback. Par for the course, and if you've been using Suse (or most other distros) for any length of time, you'll be used to it.
The Banshee music player does not include mp3 playback support, since mp3 is a licensed standard and not an open one. It can rip CDs into mp3 format, but it can't play them back. Banshee can also rip to Ogg Vorbis or Flac formats, making it very versatile and easy to use.
To add mp3 playback support to Banshee, you need to install a gstreamer plug-in.
Thanks to liaty from linuxquestions.org for the answer to this one! To see the post that helped me out, see banshee mp3 on linuxquestions.org.
First, make sure gstreamer010 is installed (check in YaST). Also ensure that the development packages are installed (e.g. gstreamer010-devel).
In Suse 10.1, gstreamer is installed in /opt/gnome/lib/gstreamer-0.10. Other distributions may install gstreamer in a different location, so you need to know where that is before continuing here, so that you know the correct prefix to use when running the configure command (below). Suse 10.1 users can just follow these directions.
Go to fluendo.com and download either gst-fluendo-mp3-0.10.2.tar.bz2 (bzipped) or gst-fluendo-mp3-0.10.2.tar.gz (gzipped). It doesn't matter which.
Untar the file you just downloaded (e.g. tar -xvf gst-fluendo-mp3-0.10.2.tar.bz2, and change into the directory created from the extraction.
If the make command returns errors, then you may be missing dependencies. Did you install the gstreamer010-devel package? If not, install the package, run the configure command again, and try the make again.
And that's it! Unlike windows, no reboot required. Banshee should now play mp3s.
Here you will find instructions for how to configure your wireless card to work with Suse 10.2. My particular wireless network card was the Dell TrueMobile WLAN 1450 a/b/g card using the BCM4309 Broadcom chipset.
Coming soon, when I get around to needing my wifi. Sorry =/
As you may have heard (or experienced, if you have installed Suse 10.2!), Gnome has a new menu system. Gone is the windows-style hierarchical menu. In it's place is a category-based menu, where commonly-used programs are displayed and clicking the More Applications button displays the rest of the installed applications (well, the ones that have menu shortcuts, anyway!), which are arranged by category.
Everything starts out great, but over time, the menu will slow to a crawl, and sometimes quit showing up completely. At least, in my experience. There is a file in your home directory named .recently-used.xbel. This file contains information about recently-used programs, and grows over time. If it gets too large, your main menu slows down, and maybe even becomes unusable. Deleting this file is harmless, and will speed up the use of the main menu considerably. The problem is, it always comes back. :(
Try changing the permissions on it to read-only, and that should help considerably.
