linux on a xps m1330

woop

hey, had ubuntu 8.10 on the home desktop for a while now
the graphics card failed on my lappy so I ended up using it quite a bit, now I cant stand vista so Im thinking of installing mint on my laptop
but

I have a question can it be run on a laptop long term successfully, Ive heard a lot about increased hard drive wear due to increased writing cycles or something. That smart moon tools would have to be used to prevent this. this is not my main concern as there is a work around(kinda) mmy concern is

The fact that my laptop has the dodgy now infamous nvidia 8400 card(overheating) means I have another aspect to consider. I read somewhere that linux deals with cooling different to windows, not certain as it was a while ago but that windows has in built monitors whereas linux is in bios?? I cant really remember to be honest but is this a concern, would linux be unsuitable for my laptop? It seems most things are compatible

any info or experience would be greatly appreciated

Sherifu

From experience. It's fine. Mint is one of my boot options along with flavours of windows. Before that I had kept Ubuntu on a partition.

I've had the motherboard replaced once thanks to nvidia's incompetence. It had more to do with playing Splinter Cell than using Linux. I keep an eye on the temps and they're fine most of the time. The odd time flash plays up and I may have to kill the browser... As for the writing cycles bug I found out about that fairly early on thankfully and patched it. It's fixed now afaik.

HTH

Blowfish

Sherifu wrote: »

From experience. It's fine.

Indeedy, same experience here. I've had various flavours of Linux running for 4 years on an XPS M170 with no issues.

One large advantage you'll have with Linux is that Nvidia have a habit of dropping support for their mobile chips under Windows pretty quickly. My xps has a 6800 Ultra. After about a year of owning it, Nvidia stopped supporting it in their newer Windows drivers, but were still (and still are even now) supporting it under Linux. Poor driver support (oddly enough) was one of the reasons I wiped Windows off of it in the end.

Dartz

I have 9.04 Xubuntu on a 1530.

Have no problems with it whatseover since I installed 8.04 on it when I got the thing in May 2008. Except for the mediadirect button raping my partition table once.... until I disabled it.

No overheating problems, and Nvidia's own drivers keep an eye on your GPU core temperature. I've never seen mine get too far above 75, even running some pretty intensive 3D stuff

woop

Sherifu wrote: »

From experience. It's fine. Mint is one of my boot options along with flavours of windows. Before that I had kept Ubuntu on a partition.

I've had the motherboard replaced once thanks to nvidia's incompetence. It had more to do with playing Splinter Cell than using Linux. I keep an eye on the temps and they're fine most of the time. The odd time flash plays up and I may have to kill the browser... As for the writing cycles bug I found out about that fairly early on thankfully and patched it. It's fixed now afaik.

HTH

have a link confirming the fix?


cool thanks for the replies everyone
mint here I come

Sherifu

woop wrote: »

have a link confirming the fix?


cool thanks for the replies everyone
mint here I come

Effort to find it...

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695

woop

hey everyone, all up and running now after initial problems with the size of the partition mint was installed on being the bare minimum and not allowing anything to be saved involved a bit of messing around

initially the mint partition was tiny, as is the swap now but I havent dipped into it yet. So it needed to be moved around, my original thoughts was to just use gparted but after reading up on it vista reacts badly to it and well I didnt want to risk it, so I shrunk vista down 10 gb through windows. (Couldnt get anymore than this and well got sick trying, although defragged, disabled the windows swap/pagefiling so I went ahead with 10gb but Ill end up giving mint more when I want or maybe putting music etc. on a seperate partition), After this I booted up using a live cd and used gparted to expand mints partition which resulted in me sitting here listing to last.fm through mint lol

soo... as for my concerns in my original post in relation to gpu temp, I installed lm-sensors
Im using lm-sensors now and on the {sensors} cmd, I am seeing

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +39.5°C (crit = +99.0°C)

this,I take it its my gpu, if so Im one very happy man as I never seen it below 55 on vista. Having gone through the lm-sensors installation and recognising my different hardware, there seemed to be more than just one..... why am I seeing just one? for example to make myself clearer, why am I not seeing cpu temp/fan speed?

should these work with conky? I havent restarted yet but if not I dont want to type sensors everytime
whats the best way of going about this?http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5436679
I have conky from mint install but Ive only got ram usage, cpu usage and a non-working networking bit

I hope someone doing the same thing or in the same predicament will have some help someday from this, I love discovering THAT thread which has the fix
reading over it, it also may be difficult to read

@blowfish tell me about it the nvidia update for my card on vista will crash it everytime

Dartz

You should be able to get a similar value from Nvidia -X-server settings.... it includes a thermal monitor... I'd trust that one more than the LM-sensors... I've gotten some cooky ones that I know are wrong.

I got 110celsius from my HDD once..... when I'd just turned it on.

niallb

Be wary of considering that a fix.
The dye on the nvidia board is still faulty.
As far as I know, all the fix does is leave your fans on to keep the temperature down.
It should make the motherboard last a bit longer - hopefully until it's out of warranty as far as Dell and Nvidia are concerned :-)

Check out this page for details on running linux on one.
He loves it (Mint 4.0)
Linux Outlaws - XPS m1330
The podcast is worth a listen too. Both presenters have the same laptop as you.
One bought in the UK (died 6 weeks ago - mobo replaced free of charge),
one in Germany (died 2 weeks ago - charged for repair visit).

Dell have had to extend the warranty on that model because of the issue.
Type your serial number into their website to see where you stand.
There's a few mentions of it on their forum.
If it's still under warranty, you could always stick windows back onto it and wait for it to bluescreen. Have a cup of tea.
Give Dell a call and hope they suggest a free motherboard replacement!

woop

I had the graphics/motherboard replaced about 4 weeks ago and it was replaced on the extended warranty which you talked about.........hoping itll last longer with mint as thinking simple low temp-less likely to melt :~ right? it hasnt went over 48 degrees where it was a constant >60 on windows and lasted a year and a half-just out of standard warranty

even if its not a full fix its still good as the touchpad is soo much cooler, was always hot to touch with windows as a result hand would sweat and the sweat has ate the palmrest material..........lovely, so a nicer experience all round


@dartz.........cant see anything other than percent used in system monitor

@niallb cheers I seen that before but lost the link, Ill be listening to it soon

mint just works really well with the xps, compatiabitly wise am pleasently suprised

EDIT: just read about the media direct/self destruct button, thatll have to be sorted too I guess. I had heard about this before but completely forgot, I even seen the partition.........Could I just delete it? same issue
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=794923
this problem seems to depend on what media direct version you have, all threads Ive read have involved a total reformat of the disc and to be rid of the media direct which I dont want to do. I think and Im not certain on this, that deleting the partition alone doesnt work as theres "hidden code" which links to vista somehow............very vague I know lol
thread which may help, cant get my head around it at the minute
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=234216

ahh vista I hate thee

SaberuMay 2nd, 2008, 08:16 PM
I registered especially to reply to this thread because I think it's unfair that no one has offered a simple solution to this problem.

Having just accidentally pressed this evil button after checking what the button did to screw the booting up and a few minutes of thinking I realised I could fix it by resetting the MBR to the windows partition.

I did that using an MBR tool and it took me all of 2 seconds. So here is a good alternative solution if you don't feel like going through all the hassle of reinstalling just to disable the button.

I think the tool I used was called Magic Boot, very intuitive.

You guys just got owned by a Windows user :lolflag:

Ok I seen that post somewhere, it seems to make sense. It will prevent the media direct button working in linux right? but will it prevent the media direct button working when laptop is powered off?

Dartz

I pushed the media button.

Buggered the partition table, but she still booted. All you have to do is push it a second time, and it resets everything. No matter what happens.


It's not under system information.....

run "gksu nvidia-settings" in terminal. That'll bring up whaT I'm talking about. You can also finagle with your displays and set up multiple displays in here so much easier.

Sherifu

Or if you don't need the media button get rid of the partition.

woop

Sherifu wrote: »

Or if you don't need the media button get rid of the partition.

yeh Id love to do that but supposedly you cant succesfully delete only the media direct partition, you have to format the whole!! drive and I dont want to do that
why, Im not certain but I mentioned it in my last post

cheers for that dartz, have yet to check it though
also when you say resets everything what exactly do you mean? like you dont loose data or you just dont loose the table?

Sherifu

woop wrote: »

yeh Id love to do that but supposedly you cant succesfully delete only the media direct partition, you have to format the whole!! drive and I dont want to do that
why, Im not certain but I mentioned it in my last post

Well I deleted it pretty successfully but if they say it can't be done...

woop

Sherifu wrote: »

Well I deleted it pretty successfully but if they say it can't be done...

really now...........thats good, Im not debating that it cant be deleted but Ive read that it doesnt fix the problem

but if you can press youre media direct button when the laptop is turned off and booted in linux with nothing happened thats good news:)

Did you use gparted to delete the partition?

Sherifu

Yep used gparted.

When I tried pressing the button after nothing happened afair. Didn't really have a use for MediaDirect.

woop

Sherifu wrote: »

Yep used gparted.

When I tried pressing the button after nothing happened afair. Didn't really have a use for MediaDirect.

have you changed distro now? could you try it

same as, never really used it but as Ive heard read that deleting the partition only doesnt fully resolve the problem hmm... some more searching I think

Sherifu

Sure, i'll try it later on.

woop

Sherifu wrote: »

Sure, i'll try it later on.

cheers man very much appreciated
really chancing my arm here aswel,when its off aswel?:D

ok was having a go at torcs there and was using the nvidia thermal monitor which shows idle around 60 degrees, saw 85 with torcs :O

woop

Sure, i'll try it later on.

any luck trying it?

Sherifu

Pushed it when off - nothing happened.
Pushed it in linux mint - it opened rythmbox

woop

Sherifu wrote: »

Pushed it when off - nothing happened.
Pushed it in linux mint - it opened rythmbox

ok Ill try this when I set up a back up,
just to check which media direct version you got? and how do you check actually lol

thanks a million btw
if this works;)

Sherifu

I'm afraid i'm not sure which version I had. I don't have the disks here to check at the moment. My best guess is it was this version on the dell site;

CyberLink Dell MediaDirect M08

Release Date: 29/10/2007
Version: A00
Download Type: Application
File Format: Rel-Notes-Text
File Size: 61 MB