Dell Latitude X200

** Unfortunately, I've been way too busy to spend a lot of time working on this, so I haven't had the chance to finish with the beta, or now do 8.0 on here. Someday it'll happen, but it may be December, or it may be next summer...just not sure.

Assuming I keep being good about it, this page will have all of the steps I take to get linux working on my Dell Latitude X200. Hopefully it will end up reading sort of as a HOWTO, but we'll see.

I couldn't find any good list of hardware information from Dell, so I just booted into Windows and grabbed the system information from there. Here are the whole thing, just the components section, and just the resources section. All are plain text files.

Repartition hard drive
- I wanted to keep my Windows XP install intact, so I used PowerQuest's Partition Magic software to shrink and move my Windows NTFS partition.
- I now have the Dell tools partition at the beginning, then /boot, then WinXP, then /, then a FAT32 shared partition (/shared and L:), and finally 1280MB of linux swap.
*** NOTE *** I scrapped the 7.3 install and went to the 7.4/8.0 beta (it's 7.3.92) - scroll towards the bottom below the horizontal rule to see the current procedure. I'll leave this here at least until the next final version of RedHat comes out and I update to that.
Install RedHat Linux 7.3
- I used a network install over FTP from the local RedHat mirror. (redhat.gambitdesign.com)
- For mouse, I initially chose the Alps GlidePad - this will change later
- I did a custom install (rather than choosing one of the preset options) and chose the following package groups: Printing Support, Classic X Window System, Laptop Support, KDE, Sound and Multimedia Support, Network Support, Dialup Support, Messaging and Web Tools, Graphics and Image Manipulation, NFS File Server, Windows File Server, SQL Database Server, Web Server, Router / Firewall, Network Managed Workstation, Authoring and Publishing, Utilities, Windows Compatibility / Interoperability, Games and Entertainment - you might want to install Gnome too, it could make things easier even if you don't plan on using it
- I put GRUB in the Master Boot Record, and I have it booting both Linux and Windows with no issues
- It seems to work pretty well right out of the box, with no big issues that prevent booting or starting X
- After the install, I ran rhn_register and up2date to grab the latest updates
Set up Synaptics TouchPad drivers
- http://mobilix.org/touchpad_driver.html
- Downloaded the drivers from that page, both the compiled binary and the tarball sources (the install directions are in the tarball)
- After following the instructions, it appears to be working nearly perfectly. There are some advanced options that work nicely with this driver - check the PARAMETER file
Set up wireless networking with internal Dell TrueMobile 1150 Mini-PCI card
- Edit /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia and add the following line at the end
  SCHEME=essidany
- Create file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 (eth0 is the network adapter) with the following information:
  DEVICE="eth1" ONBOOT="no" BOOTPROTO="dhcp"
- Naturally, you can change any options that you want to the way you want your machine set up. The SCHEME in /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia refers to a configuration scheme, and you can set the options for this in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts. If you have multiple PCMCIA cards, you can set up the schemes to reflect your different configurations.
- At this point, my wireless card comes up as eth1 and associates with the single AP I have nearby right now.
- When I run `iwconfig`, I get the following "Warning : Device eth1 has been compiled with version 13 of Wireless Extension, while we are using version 12. Some things may be broken..." To fix this, we recompile the wireless-tools package using the updated wireless.h include file from Kernel 2.4.18-5: `cp /usr/src/linux-2.4/include/linux/wireless.h /usr/include/linux` then recompile the package. (I grabbed the source RPM from the stock RedHat 7.3 tree, and ran an rpm --rebuild on it) You can grab my copy of it here: wireless-tools-23-2.wiext13.i386.rpm
- At this point it's working. When I want to go on the wireless connection, I can run `ifdown eth0` and `ifup eth1`. I don't want to try too much more, like doing it automatically, until I get the docking stuff taken care of.
CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive setup
- The Combo drive in the MediaBase masquerades as a firewire drive, so we need to get Firewire set up, and then get the CD-Drive supported, preferably via hotplugging to make things work better when operating without the MediaBase.
- This looks like it's going to take at minimum some kernel recompiling - I don't know whether I'll be able to make it work easily...but I'll do it sometime.
Current ToDo:
- ** Make laptop not freeze when I log out of X **
- Hotplug/Docking
- Make sure modem works
- Make sure CD-RW/DVD combo does everything it should
The new beta came out, so I'm going to reinstall using that, and see if it fixes any problems.
Install RedHat Linux beta: Limbo
- The installer looks kind of funky. The ncurses rendering stuff seems to be a little weird. It's still possible to get through, just a little annoying to look at.
- Package Groups: Authoring and Publishing, Base X Support, FTP Server, GNOME Desktop Environment, Games and Entertainment, KDE Desktop Environment, KDE Games and Entertainment, KDE Messaging and Web Tools, KDE Multimedia Software, KDE Office/Productivity Software, Kernel Development, Messaging and Web Tools, Multimedia Software, Office/Productivity Software, Printing Support, Software Development, Utilities, Web Server, Workstation Tools, X Based Games and Entertainment, X Software Development
Set up wireless
- Much easier this time now that the setup stuff seems to work
- Start X, it goes into GNOME by default
- GNOME Menu -> System Tools -> Network Configuration
- I deleted the irlan0 device since I don't actually have an IR port that I'm aware of - just highlight it and press the Delete button
- Click the Add button, choose Wireless connection, choose your wireless card, and fill in any other information as it applies to your network.
- We have the same problem with the wireless-tools, so I'll make that new RPM (we're using version 24 now) I'm also going to file a bug report with RedHat to see if they'll fix this in the release version
Current to-do:
- Make X not crash on shutdown
Good Resources:
- General:
- X200 Specific:
  - Barney Maccabe's page - He's running Debian on his, and getting lots of stuff to work
  - FreeBSD on the x200 - Tony Chang has some good stuff working with FreeBSD. It's not Linux, but similarly hard to configure.
  - Dell Latitude C400 - This is Linux on another Dell ultraportable, which is configured similarly to the X200. This model has been out for a little bit longer, and Manuel Chakravarty has set up RedHat on it.

Last updated: 26 July 2002
Brian Salomaki
brian@salomaki.com
http://brian.salomaki.com