Linux on Dell Inspiron 3500

I bought a Dell Inspiron 3500 notebook in September 1999. Overall, I must say that this is an excellent notebook. I have been scouting around for a suitable notebook for several months, and my most important requirement was for the notebook to run Linux well. My other important considerations were: XGA LCD resolution, look reasonably sleek, reasonable weight, and of course affordable (S$3K to S$4K).

My Dell notebook is a Celeron 366 MHz model with 128 MB RAM, 14.1" XGA LCD screen and 6.4GB of disk. Everything that I care about works properly under Linux (some kludges were necessary to get sound working nicely, but hey, it does work). The only let down is that the notebook came with one dead pixel on the LCD screen (one permanently-on green dot) for which I was unable to get a replacement.

Update (24/Apr/2000): After 8 months, there are now four dead pixels --- three permanently-on green dots!)
Update (5/May/2000): I got Dell to replace my LCD. When my notebook was returned, the "new" LCD already had one dead pixel. After 3 days, a second dead pixel showed up.
Update (18/May/2000): 2 days ago, the 3rd dead pixel (purple... ie, red+blue, so that counts as two dead pixels eh?) appeared, and today, the 4th came up. I'm getting quite disappointed with Dell's QA.
Update (10/Aug/2000): I got Dell to replace my LCD again, and was assured verbally that they will give me a "perfect" LCD sceen. This sounds like an indirect admission that they had previously knowingly shipped me faulty LCD screens. Well, I haven't found any fault with this screen so far, so I'm happy for now.

Pre-Installation

The notebook came with Win95 pre-installed. I decided to keep it on my hard disk. The first task was to repartition the disk to make space for Linux and to create a hibernate partition so that hibernate continues to work correctly in Linux.

The 6.4 GB disk contained a single C: partition. I defragmented the C: drive, rebooted and ran FIPS 2.0 (which comes with Red Hat 6.0). I split the single partition into two parts, a 1.5GB partition for the original C: drive and the remainder taking up the rest of the disk. Reboot, then use standard FDISK to delete the other partition.

Creating a Hibernate Partition

Next, I use the Dell utility PHDISK /CREATE /PARTITION to create the save-to-disk (ie., hibernate) partition. The pre-installed system comes setup with a hibernate file in the Windows partition which probably isn't going to work too nicely in Linux judging from feedback I read on the web. I felt this was a safer method, so I thought since I have a fresh system, I might as well try turning the hibernate file into a hibernate partition. It works great.

Another reason for wanting to do this is if you plan to remove the Windows partition some day. Then, you would be left without a hibernate file/partition. So if you're installing Linux now on a brand new system, you might as well create the hibernate partition now.

Installing Red Hat

Red Hat installation is usually a non-event. The distribution is excellent and easy to use. There is a minor quirk however with version 6.0: The installation process does not detect PCMCIA if warm booted from Windows (and hence does not ask about loading PCMCIA support). The solution is simple, just do a cold boot before starting the Red Hat installation.

Upgrading to Red Hat 6.1

I have since upgraded my notebook to Red Hat 6.1... mostly a non-event too. I had originally wanted to do a FTP install via my PCMCIA network card, but for some reason, PCMCIA was not detected at all. The above-mentioned solution to cold boot does not help solve the problem. As a result, I made a CDROM and installed from there instead. The new GUI-based installation is nice, but it doesn't add new functionality.

Hardware Issues

As I noted above, generally everything that I care about works as designed.

Sound

As reported by many others, the OSS/Free sound drivers do not work on the Inspiron 3500 after recovery from a suspend. The proposed solution has been to get the commercial OSS drivers. I like to avoid paying for a small little component of Linux when the whole thing is essentially free. Fortunately, Chris Studholme has figured a clever workaround. Check out his solution here.

Note that the newer OSS/Free in the recent kernels are supposed to have support for the NM256AV chipset that the Inspiron 3500 uses. However, as noted by Red Hat, this doesn't quite work and instead hangs the notebook.

APM

Except for the XFree86 screen-blanking quirk mentioned below, APM support works very well. It works perfectly in every way, including standby, suspend and hibernate. Here is the relevant part of my kernel configuration:

CONFIG_APM=y
# CONFIG_APM_IGNORE_USER_SUSPEND is not set
CONFIG_APM_DO_ENABLE=y
CONFIG_APM_CPU_IDLE=y
CONFIG_APM_DISPLAY_BLANK=y
CONFIG_APM_POWER_OFF=y
CONFIG_APM_IGNORE_MULTIPLE_SUSPEND=y
CONFIG_APM_IGNORE_SUSPEND_BOUNCE=y
# CONFIG_APM_RTC_IS_GMT is not set
# CONFIG_APM_ALLOW_INTS is not set

X Server Support

XFree86 3.3.3 upwards supports the NeoMagic 256AV chipset nicely. The only issue is the XFere86 screen-blanking. After returning from a suspend or hibernate, you must at least 'visit' a text-mode display once before the screen-blanking in XFree86 will work. Eg., press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to go to text virtual console 1, then Ctrl-Alt-F7 to go back to your X display. You can also run "chvt 1; chvt 7". Both are really kludges. XFree86 3.3.5 upwards has apparently fixed this problem.

Linux on the Inspiron 3500 works with external displays without having to muck around with intern_disp and extern_disp settings inside the XF86Config file. The Ctrl-F8 for switching display mode works like in Windows. However, no matter what I've tried so far, the external display is always 60Hz. If someone figures out a fix, please let me know :)

Lucent WaveLAN

If you plan to use the Lucent WaveLAN PCMCIA cards, you're in luck. Lucent has provided Linux drivers. Your can get the details on my WaveLAN/RoamAbout Support in Linux web page.

Update (13/Mar/2000): There is also a GPL Lucent WaveLAN driver available. This driver works, but I haven't tried the more exotic features like WEP.

Miscellaneous

You can connect both a keyboard and a mouse with a PS/2 Y-cable to the PS/2 port on the Inspiron 3500. It is hot-pluggable. If you think this is a trivial issue, it isn't. I know there are notebooks out there that either don't support a Y-cable attachment or don't allow hot-plug.