Latitude 2100
This is a wiki/blog about my adventures with my Latitude 2100 featuring a touchscreen and factory-preinstalled Linux. It comes with an Atom processor 1.6GHz (1 processor/1 core/2 threads).
Contents |
Sizing
I can watch videos with this notebook/netbook but scrolling in a browser is too slow for me some times. Never had issues with the available space on harddisk (80G). RAM is enough for my usage (2G).
Operating system
Once I had Ubuntu 9.04 installed from a refactoring partition from another Latitude 2100, the following worked out of the box:
- touchscreen
- wireless
- sound
- bluetooth
software
- ubuntu-netbook-remix
- launchpad
- dell team
TouchScreen
My Latitude 2100 has Ubuntu as its operating system. It is Ubuntu 8.10 and upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04 makes the touchscreen not work as intended. With Ubuntu 8.10 you can calibrate the touchscreen using the command
calibration
This is counter-productive with Ubuntu 9.04.
WireLess
My Latitude 2100 has an Intel WiFi 5100 and I have a LinkSys WAG160N DSL router with firmware V1.00.07. Instead of a version number as it should have according to http://www.linksysbycisco.com/DE/de/support/WAG160N/download, it has "annex B" written.
problems with the LinkSys WAG160N router
first attempt
I got wireless working once like this:
- update Ubuntu to 9.04
- read google, disabled WMM support because dmesg said "wireless event too big"
- disable wireless security on the router
- verify you can use wireless
- enable wireless security WPA-personal (not, as I had it before, wpa-personal2)
- verify you can use wireless
- re-enable WMM support
however, this stopped working, probably because of the kernel update I had to perform around 2009-07-31.
second attempt
Read
- http://www.linksysbycisco.com/DE/de/supportgplcode?gplsku=#WAG160N
- http://blog.mario-grosse.de/841-firmware-upgrade-linksys-wag160n
Downloaded .15 firmware from http://www.linksysbycisco.com/DE/de/support/WAG160N/download and installed it.
- disabled WMM support
- worked
general problems
I think once I had to install the package ipw-firmware. Also see iwl: https://wiki.debian.org/iwlwifi
After following http://thinkwiki.de/Linux_Intel_Wifi_Link and typing Fn_F6 Scanning in yast2 lan worked with SUSE 12.1.
It did for sure not work after updating the firmware and before typing Fn_F6. The output then was:
linux-wmem:~ # iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=off
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
linux-wmem:~ # iwlist wlan0 scanning
wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning : Network is down
After I did this, SUSE 13.2 worked with no problems also.
Sound
My Latitude 2100 has an Intel High-Definition Audio 82801G (ICH7 family). It can play sound and it can record sound as long as you plug a microphone in. In the BIOS the "microphone" is enabled. Regarding the internal microphone I am suffering the following issue: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-media/+bug/290543
amixer -c 0 cset iface=MIXER,name="Capture Switch" on
- http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/SoundcardTesting
- https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=529467
With the factory installation of Ubuntu 9.04 the following stuff works without problems:
audacity dd if=/dev/dsp of=audio.raw; dd if=audio.raw of=/dev/dsp
Note however that the stock Ubuntu alsa drivers do not work correctly regarding sound recording. To fix this, the factory installation contains a package named alsa-dkms.
Directly after installing, sound recording is a bit quiet which is bad for e.g. skype. To change the volume, use gnome-volume-manager.
BlueTooth
With the latest 8.10 kernel, the following commands work:
hwinfo --bluetooth hcitool scan bluetooth-applet
Features
- Fight the memory effect of your battery: Press Fn_F2 and the system will not charge the battery if plugged in.
- Quickly restore the factory delivery state of the system by choosing a special entry in grub
- Some notebooks forget they should boot from USB once you disconnect the USB disk. This one does not.
GeekBenchMark
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/235408
My contribution
I contributed a bug report that led to SUSE being able to record sound on this netbook: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=529467
