Debian Linux on a Dell E1705 Laptop

General Hardware Specifications of my E1705:

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.16.

• Debian can be downloaded at www.debian.org
• I use Debian because it lets you do your own thing - no baby steps. I'm sure you can apply a lot of these procedures to your distrobution of choice.
• Installation on this laptop is not for newbies. A lot of stuff does not work out of the box! However, I would estimate that in 6 months to a year it will because this laptop has mostly Intel related hardware in it.
• When you install Debian, it does not have support for SATA right away. Your devices will be /dev/hda, etc. After you get it installed, you must download the 2.6.16 kernel (or newer). When you boot off of it, your hard drive will change to /dev/sda. Here is a copy of my 2.6.16 config file. Please have a boot cd-rom ready! You will need to edit /etc/fstab and change the old devices to the new. You will also need to change the root/boot devices in lilo or grub.
• When you boot up for the first time, your cd-rom will not work. Use libata.atapi_enabled=1 in your append section of the /etc/lilo.conf to get IDE emulation working. The cd-rom device will be /dev/sr0.
• In order to get video working, please download the 915resolution utility. Every bootup, you need to run these commands at every bootup. I placed this file in my /etc/rc.boot directory. If the directory does not exist, make it. Make sure to chmod +x the file. Lastly, you must download the freedesktop.org i810 and i915 drivers. Here is my xorg.conf.

Upon arrival of Xorg 7.0, a major slowdown was noticed in video. I went to www.x.org and got the following message from Lukas Hejtmanek in regards to /proc/mtrr:

it must be like this:

cat /proc/mtrr
reg00: base=0x00000000 ( 0MB), size= 512MB: write-back, count=1
reg01: base=0x20000000 ( 512MB), size= 256MB: write-back, count=1
reg02: base=0x2f000000 ( 752MB), size= 16MB: uncachable, count=1
reg03: base=0xd0000000 (3328MB), size= 256MB: write-combining, count=1

the reg03 is important one.

You can add it by hand:
lspci -v
find VGA compatible controller record ther whould be Memory at (location)
(32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]

(instead of location there will be particular address (in my case d0000000)).

Once you have the location, you can do:
echo "base=0xlocation size=0x10000000 type=write-combining" >| /proc/mtrr

in my particular case it is:
echo "base=0xd0000000 size=0x10000000 type=write-combining" >| /proc/mtrr

I just recently installed Ubuntu Dapper - which has support for this video card! You must still use 915resolution in /etc/rc.local and the mtrr stuff mentioned above, but you do not need the freedesktop drivers!

I understand that this document is very primative. It is not meant to be a complete HOWTO, but a reference point for people who are stuck at certain points. If you have any questions, please contact me.