[TriLUG] Debian on Dell

[Faheem Mitha]

Hi Daniel,

I was just about to write and thank you for your previous very helpful
message. :-)

On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 crimsun at fungus.sh.nu wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 05:27:24PM -0500, Faheem Mitha wrote:
> > 1) One thing I am wondering about is the "8X DVD+RW/+R, Data Only". I have
> > no experience with something like this in Linux. Can one burn and play
> > DVDs.  CD-R/CD-RW's with this thing under Linux? I was wondering if it
> > would be better to get separate DVD (read-only drive) and CD-RW drives to
> > be on the safe side.
>
> You can burn/play both DVDs, DVD+R(W)s, CDs, CD-R(W)s under Linux with
> that drive. It really doesn't matter if you have two separate drives;
> you'd just be wasting space in the case.

Can you tell me the make of the drive? Also, does regular SCSI
emulation (for 2.4.x) still get the hardware support for burning
working, or do I have to do more?

> > 2) They are also being rather coy about the ethernet card. I assume
> > (educated guess based on Daniel Chen's earlier message and other info)
> > that there is an onboard Intel card (which works with the e1000 driver),
>
> Make sure you press them regarding the e1000s. And if you use a 2.6
> kernel (recommended), use at least 2.6.4-rc1.

So it is possible they might be using some other ethernet card? And could
there be problems in that case? Sigh...

I'm still trying to use 2.6.x (2.6.2) on my home machine. I've been
having annoying problems with my mouse pointer being too jumpy. I
thought that passing the psmouse.proto=bare option to the kernel
should fix it, but it doesn't seem to.

> > 3) I managed to get the Nvidia GeForce4 MX 440 card on a Dell Optiplex
> > GX270 to work under X. I could not manage to work it with the nv X driver
> > (as of 4.2 in testing) but the proprietary nvidia driver (ndvidia) worked.
> > I hope it will be the same with this "nVidia, Quadro NVS 280". Daniel
> > Chen's earlier Trilug message seems to confirm this.
>
> 'nv' in 4.2 does not support the GF4-family of pci ids. You'll need 4.3;
> Norbert provides backports for Woody from Sid for binary-i386 here:
>
> http://people.debian.org/~nobse/xfree86/

Oh, so the Geforce4 and the Quadro both work with X 4.3? I can get it from
unstable (I'm running sarge).

> > A question: I have heard that the nvidia kernel modules are binary. How
> > come they seem to work with pretty much any kernel I try? Usually binary
> > kernel modules (in my experience) are very sensitive to the version of the
> > kernel being compiled against). At any rate, it seems part of the kernel
> > driver is actually being compiled. The documentation says
>
> You probably mean "binary-only" in place of "binary" -- Nvidia cannot
> provide open-source drivers (note ATI has also adopted this strategy for
> their fgl drivers), but they do provide a "glue" layer (which you
> compile per-kernel) between the binary interface (which you don't
> compile).
>
> > "Since the Linux kernel does not support a binary driver interface, we
> > provide for rebuilding these files on the target machine (or distribution)
> > and then linking with the binary version of the NV kernel driver."
> >
> > but I'm not sure what this means.
>
> See above statement regarding the "glue" layer.

I see. Thanks for the information.

> > A friend of mine said the SCSI controller on Precisions was Adaptec but
> > Daniel said it was LSI, which is presumably well supported by the
> > mptfusion kernel modules. I'd prefer Adaptec, though.
>
> _This_ particular set of computers that Intel funded has LSI, which uses
> the mptfusion driver. Both work.

Looks like the ethernet drivers vary too...

> > 5) I'd welcome suggestions on changes in the configuration below to reduce
> > cost while impacting functionality as little as possible.
> [...]
> >  Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy II with onboard 1394
>    ^^^^^^ Kill this option. For workstations, just use the built-in
>    sound chipset (Intel8x0), which works just fine with ALSA.
>
>    Make sure you use the latest version of ALSA, 1.0.3.

I've had lots of trouble with ALSA, at least on 2.4.x, which I am still
using. I did get a similar integrated sound chipset (Intel8x0) working on
both an IBM machine and on a Dell Optiplex, though I had to switch off
KDE's arts daemon, which was interfering with it. I just figure the Audigy
would work more nicely.

> >  Speakers:  Dell Two Piece Stereo System
>    ^^^^^^^^^ Likewise, are these really necessary?

They are cheap :-) And presumably provide better sound quality than
the built-in speaker.

Thank you very much for your valuable expertise.

                                                            Faheem.