Revision as of 12:16, 4 January 2016

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).

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:

1. update Ubuntu to 9.04
2. read google, disabled WMM support because dmesg said "wireless event too big"
3. disable wireless security on the router
4. verify you can use wireless
5. enable wireless security WPA-personal (not, as I had it before, wpa-personal2)
6. verify you can use wireless
7. 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

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://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view?id=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

See also

• my computers