Dell 1521
(Recently updated bottom of page)
If you want to install Ubuntu for this machine type we recommend you install the Hardy Heron, the 64Bit version is still a bit basic and lacks advanced features offered in the 32Bit version, however we still recommend you install the suggested packages where possible as suggested below just remember to change 64bit for 32bit packages as necessary.
Dell Inspiron 1521 laptop Specification
15.4" LCD Wide Screen
AMD 64bit x2
80 Gig Hard Disk
2048 Mb Ram
SBx00 Azalia Audio
CD/DVD Writer
1390 Wireless mini-pci
ExpressCard slot not Pcmcia
4 USB Port 2 on side 2 on the back
1 SD Card slot
1 VGA Port
1 S-Video Port
1 Ethernet RJ45
1 Modem Port RJ11
1 Miniature Port 1394
- LinuxMint Ver 4.0(Daryna) Installation & LiveCD
- This is LinuxMint's latest edition to the Linux scene, based on Ubuntu Ver 7.10(Gutsy Gibbon) makes for a much better visual experience than that of Ubuntu drab appearance. Sadly its performance on this laptop is limited, problems began with the Wireless card on the Dell Inspiron 1521 after this distribution was installed to the harddisk, restricted drivers are required to finalise the instalation and the wireless card will work however to obtain these drivers you need to be connected to internet via alternate means. The slot we thought was a Pcmcia card was not as it appears a standard Pcmcia wireless card does not fit. Also the sound drivers installed are not functional for this hardware, solutions so far provided are beyond the ability some accomplished Linux users. That said Ubuntu suffers exactly same problems with regard to Wireless and Audio operational problems. Regrettably the Dell Inspiron 1521cannot run Ubuntu or LinuxMint Eyecandy although restricted drivers are installed and the hardware should support the extended features both Ubuntu and LinuxMint are capable of, for some reason none of the extended features on offer are available. This means depite the hi end graphics this laptop supports no cool cubes or wobbly windows quite a shame really.
However if you want graphics try the following:
Check ATI Driver
In a terminal type:
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon X1200 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6473 (8.37.6)
Now Logout from your X11 Window session & Log back in
This should be sufficient to initialise the drivers needed.
In the Administration folder is an Icon called Screen & Graphics
Check both images agree with your own settings
In the Preferences folder is an Icon called Appearance
Regrettably the above installation was nothing more than a disappointment the graphics as LinuxMint is 32bit rather than 64bit was slow the installation of the graphics tweaks above seemed to improve things, but even from the start their was a discernible lag when opening menus and selecting applications. Perhaps due to the continual performance tweaks the lag has increased as a result the investment in time for this flavour of Linux has been withdrawn.
LinuxMint is not available in 64bit format at the time of writing this article, although this distribution has a lot to offer by way of preinstalled applications, codecs and looks, as most new PC Desktops and Notebooks seem to come with dual 64bit processesors it is somewhat surprising more distributions don't come in 64bit versions. As 16bit replaced 8bit and 32bit replaced and superseded 16bit then 64bit will eventually replace 32bit it is now no more costly to produce a 64bit than it is to produce a 32bit. Hence development will eventually falter in favour of 64bit version of the Operating Systems.
64 Bit Ubuntu(Gutsy Gibbon)
- Ubuntu 7.10(Gutsy Gibbon) 64bit Installation & LiveCD
- This latest edition Ubuntu Ver 7.10(Gutsy Gibbon) is still rather drab with tired old dirty brown images for wallpaper however what lies beneath is worth talking about if your vision of a good operating system is based on it's good looks then your judgment is clouded and lacks focus. Gutsy Gibbon does not look pretty but it can do, you can change the wallpaper to anything you want, you can alter how it works to suit your own needs and wants. This is very much the point with Linux if you don't like something you can change it.
Ok we have Gutsy Gibbon installed and it is functional just as with LinuxMint above it does not have the drivers needed to operate the wireless card installed, if you are connected to the internet via an ethernet cable the drivers will be downloaded for you. You need to select Restricted Drivers Manager either from the toolbar at the top of the screen if displayed or via System => Administration => Restricted Drivers Manager.
In order to download some of the drivers and necessary applications, we suggest selecting all available Ubuntu Repositories where displayed and to do so before update your system. Only Third Party should be blank, if however you have an option to select third party software I suggest you do so, it should not be required for any normal driver or application downloads however if deselected it could have a profound effect on any previously installed software. This will be sufficient to install the necessary drivers for the wireless Local Area Network, enable the wireless driver in Restricted Drivers Manager with the above repositories available download will be initiated immediately.
However if you want graphics try the following:
Check ATI Driver
In a terminal type:
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon X1200 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6473 (8.37.6)
Now Logout from your X11 Window session & Log back in
This should be sufficient to initialise the drivers needed, you will also find in System => Preferences a new menu item called Advanced Desktop Effects Settings also known as Compiz Config Settings Manager this is the settings area you need to adjust to get a Desktop Cube to function and other fun Eye Candy. In this default configuration we suggest especially on the Dell Inspiron 1521 that you do not enable the Water Effect option as this massively reduces the speed of the Desktop and its effects, this may be attributed to the fact that the current ATI drivers available or that of xserver-xgl may not be fully optimised as yet.
You will also need to change the default settings of two Desktop Workspaces and increase the value to four it you don't you will get this effect, select three workspaces instead of two and you will get a cubed Triangle.
How do you go about obtaining this Eye Candy, you use a combination of keystrokes on the Dell Inspiron 1521 you need press a sequence of keys
<Ctrl> <Alt> <Left-Mouse_Button> <Move-Finger-Across_Touchpad>
You may also be experiencing a blank screen during bootup sequence and these are the commands that you need to fix it.
Configuration file /etc/usplash.conf
# Usplash configuration file
xres=1280
yres=1024
As you can see yres is set to 1024 which is larger than the 800 the screen is capable of, substitute 1024 with 800 and save this file then run sudo update-initramfs -u -k `uname -r`
Installing a Flash Player on a 64bit Operating System
There are many howto's and claims as to what works with regard to Macromedia Flash Player on 64bit systems, we know we have tried a few of them, however here is a solution we know works on at least two different 64bit Dell's one an Athlon Dual 64 the other Dual Intel 64 this method was the only one which was successful on each occasion we tried it.
Download the file located at the bottom of this page and save this to your home workspace or Desktop uncompress the file in the same location you downloaded it to, either using Archive or tar to uncompress the file.
Open a terminal and change directory to the folder you saved the file to, if the file will not uncompress using the command below it will be because you have saved the file to the wrong place.
WARNING! this fix is only intended for 64bit Operating System DO NOT INSTALL on a 32bit OS it is not required
This script will install all the files necessary to run Flash Player on a 64bit Firefox Browser.
W64Codecs Howto
Having the above Flash Plugin working on 64bit Firefox is great, if that is you have no wish to run video from the web, we can't guarantee all videos will work using the method below but then it is very difficult to keep up so you can forgive the developers, can't we. Unless you wish to continue with Totem as the default plugin for Firefox we suggest you change it there are many plugin's you can convert to but mplayer in our opinion seem to work with most everything but the choice is yours.
Note the above actually removes the links to the plugin libraries not the files themselves, so deleting them will only effect Firefox no other browser or system. You can check this is true using "ls -al" on the command line.
This will load the basic player MPlayer and the Firefox plugin also we will still need to install the Codecs to allow films to be played generated from more conspicuous sources.
Lets install the restricted libraries available from the Ubuntu repositories, if you haven't yet done so please visit the Synaptic Package Manager, typing your own password rather than a root password should allow you access. Ensure all the Ubuntu Repositories are activated.
Now this is pretty much the best we can do with the Ubuntu repositories if we need the window 32/64 codecs we need to go elsewhere
With this very important task completed we can now go about installing the code but first we need to activate the repository which we enable in Synaptic Package Manager this you will find in the Third Party Settings enable all repositories in this section.
An added benefit of installing the above libraries and applications is that the BBC Iplayer at http://bbc.co.uk/iplayer works.
One very small remaining thing to do is to edit a file located in your home directory for MPlayer application the purpose of this is to enable video files to play from certain websites such as http://channelchooser.com and http://emusic.tv
You will need to edit this file and alter certain entries, this config file does not exist anywhere else other than the home directories which needs to be altered for each user on the system.
vo=x11 (Video Out=x11)
ao=alsa (Audio Out=alsa)
dload-dir=/home/change_this (Directory=home_directory)
nopauseonhide=1 (This prevents the player pausing when video is hidden from view)
You do not need to add the explanations please continue with specified format in file.
We hope this tutorial was of some use to your feedback would be much appreciated, we have no fix for the sound problems associated with running Linux (Ubuntu - Gutsy Gibbon 7.10) on Dell Inspiron 1521 but would appreciate your input should you have the answer to complete this section.
Azalia Audio SB600 (snd-hda-intel) (works also for Asus P5W DH motherboards)
This was hard really hard to get the audio to work using the Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon) 7.10 64_x86 Operating System and although it works the quality is very unsatisfactory along with control options available are diminished.
The following Inspiron 1521 Sound Fix was derived from the following location http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-181186.html it differs only in that the alsa drivers being retrieved from the destination source are different and a small syntax correction.
Our advice to you is once you have committed a change to a file or an entry check it
You need to blacklist the "snd-hda-intel" kernel module from being loaded automatically by appending it to /etc/hotplug/blacklist
From a clean boot, make sure the universe repository is enabled, then:
What is it that's happening then, lets go through the commands a line at a time.
- We install all the necessary tools required to build a new alsa driver "build-essential" is compilation of compiling tools "gcc-3.4" is a specific compiler presumably required to build the alsa-driver, "linux-headers-$(uname -r)", heres a strange package - well it is a package name with an installed command "$(uname -r)". Try this open a terminal window and at the prompt type "uname -r" on it's own no quotes and watch what is returned -
2.6.22-14-generic-. If you get this then what is happening is that the dollar sign "$" appends the data returned from the command to the package name a substitution based on the actual kernel you are using. The "module-assistant" is a very important part of the building tools. If an error message is returned referring to a CD being missing edit your "/etc/apt/sources.list" and Remark out the first "deb cd" line using a "#". - Second line downloads the alsa-driver from a given address this command must be run without sudo command and from your own home directory rather than a root or file system directory. It also uses debian pakage installer command line version to install alsa package however the package still requires to be rebuilt.
- Rebuilding the alsa-driver is what the third line accomplishes it does this using a debian command line re-configuring and alsa-source is the driver it needs do it to.
Choose "Yes" for both Plug n' play support and debugging symbols, then deselect "all" cards and select only "hda-intel". Then:
At this point you'll need to remove "snd-hda-intel" from /etc/hotplug/blacklist , and reboot.
The Dell 1521 does not have the CMOS option to change the bios option from AC97 to HD (High Definition) However on some ASUS Motherboards such as Asus P5W DH the sound can be set in the bios to HD or AC97. For the driver to work it must be set to HD.
The above Sound Procedure may work to correct your sound difficulties for Linux.
Hardy Heron 8.04
Hardy Heron, Version 8.04 32bit works rather well we found, with no difficulties installing or running this Operating System, the audio and graphic problems that where apparent on previous version have diminished on this version, by that we mean, no major operational difficulties. But that said the audio is not that great, when two or more applications try to utilise the same audio controller at the same time audio can be distorted. This is not ideal as from time to time you may want to run more than one audio device like perhaps Skype and Mplayer on an Internet browser. Yes you can shut it off to free the device but then you may need to restart the application.
Hardy Heron is much better than it's predecessor's just not for everything you will still need to use the alternative Internet connection to download and install the restricted drivers, but once that is done the your Dell Laptop functions reasonably well.
Documented problems associated with the above installation procedure (Mainly affecting graphics) effecting Fiesty Fawn, Gutsy Gibbon and Hardy Heron
- Avoid running special rain drop effects (seems to corrected with the updated drivers)
- Do not resize any window or Terminal window graphics slows to a crawl (also seems to be corrected)
- Do not run any RPG games unless you deactivate visual effects (We guess you need decide what is better RPG or special effects)
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| nspluginwrapper-install-0-1.8.5-3.tar.gz | 2.07 KB |
| mplayerplug-in.conf | 306 bytes |
