Introduction
I've been using Slackware for a little over a year now, so right when I got my new, shiny Dell Vostro 1500 with a TrueLife screen and... Vista Home Basic, I installed Slackware 12.0.
Partitions
My box has a SATA hard drive, so typing fdisk /dev/sda should start the partitioner. Cfdisk didn't work for some reason.
I figured that I wouldn't be needing MediaDirect, and it'd be too much of a hassle to get it to work with Linux, so I removed it. It's enclosed in an extended partition, so I removed both sda4 and sda5. I also didn't want to keep Vista, so I removed the big partition with 231009276 blocks. If you want to keep Vista, I'd suggest using Knoppix and doing all the partitioning from there; it has ntfsresize, after all.
And then I created the partitions in seven steps. End of story.
Installation
The full installation took fifteen minutes. After reboot, getting X to work properly was a simple xorgsetup.
What Worked (Out of the Box)
- Processor
- Motherboard
- RAM
- TrueLife Display
- Hard Drive
- CD/DVD Burner
- USB
- Ethernet
- Suspend-to-Disk
What Didn't Work (Out of the Box)
Click for the fix.
- Sound
- Synaptics Touchpad
- Built-in Webcam
- Wireless (Dell 1395)
- Built-in Memory Card Reader
- Suspend-to-RAM
- Multimedia Buttons
Not Tested (Yet)
- Modem
- S-Video
- IR
- Microphone Jack
Fixes
Sound
Download the 2.6.24 kernel off packages.slackware.it and install it. You'll also need to reinstall lilo (I uselilo -c -v). Reboot, unmute everything, and turn it up all the way just to make sure. The KDE startup sound should work now, though your ears might have stopped working since then...Synaptics Touchpad
This one was a little more complicated. Download the synaptics touchpad driver off its website, compile, and install (./configure --prefix=/usr; make; sudo make install).
See the INSTALL file? Good. Modify your xorg.conf according to the INSTALLation instructions, and then load the psmouse and evdev modules (modprobe psmouse; modprobe evdev). Here is my xorg.conf.
If you're using Slackware 12.1, and this will eventually be incorporated in my next tutorial, you have to use git to "git" the touchpad driver (git clone http://web.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/synaptics/.git), and then edit the 54th line of /usr/include/xorg/miscstruct.h, changing it from#include <pixman.h>to#include <pixman-1/pixman.h>before doing the compilation process.Webcam
Download uvcvideo from its website; be sure to get the SVN, compile, and install (svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk; cd trunk; make; sudo make install). Now load the uvcvideo module (modprobe uvcvideo), and your webcam should work with everything that supports v4l2 (eg: Skype).Wireless
Download ndiswrapper off its website, compile, and install (./configure --prefix=/usr; make; sudo make install). I have version 1.52.
Download the R174291.exe driver package (89M) from Dell or just the files you need from from my site (1.2M). You must agree to the Dell Software License Agreement to download either — if I am not authorized to redistribute the driver, please contact me, and I will remove it promptly.
Then, unzip/untar it, navigate to the DRIVER_US directory, install the driver, and load it (ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf; ndiswrapper -m; ndiswrapper -ma; ndiswrapper -mi; rebootormodprobe ndiswrapper).Card Reader
Load the sdhci and mmc_block modules, and it should work (modprobe sdhci; modprobe mmc_block). The device is/dev/mmcblk*, where * is a wildcard.Suspend-to-RAM
I grabbed a script off a linux.com article. It kind of worked, but console was just a blue screen, and X was extremely dark on wake.
The solutions:- Use framebuffer to keep console from being blue — pun very much intended: modify /etc/lilo.conf to have vga=792; comment out all other vga lines, and do
lilo -c -v. - Switch to vt1 (ctrl-alt-f1) and back to vt7 (alt-f7) to get the screen to be normal. I'd recommend modifying the script so you don't have to do it manually each time. Download the modified version here.
- Use framebuffer to keep console from being blue — pun very much intended: modify /etc/lilo.conf to have vga=792; comment out all other vga lines, and do
Multimedia Buttons
Make a file called ~/.multimediakeys and put this in it:
keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute
keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume
keycode 162 = XF86AudioPlay
keycode 144 = XF86AudioPrev
keycode 153 = XF86AudioNext
keycode 164 = XF86AudioStop
Now add this to the bottom of ~/.xsession:
/usr/bin/xmodmap $HOME/.multimediakeys &
Restart X, and the volume control buttons should work automatically in KDE.
Last Updated: May 30, 2008
