James Whitt's Blog

So I finally have both Windows XP Pro and Gentoo Linux installed on my laptop and running correctly.  I’m currently using bios version A08 also.  The best part yet, X is working!!!  I’m pretty excited about that.  I documentated everything I did along the way and am trying to put my notes all together for an update to my original linux installation guide.

Some points to note for now are that I still had to patch the gentoo kernel source so that the cdrom worked currectly with DMA, I’m using Xorg CVS branch where I also had to apply patches to the source also, and I’m still using the ~x86 gcc version for pentium-m optimizations.  I found a lot of good information in the forums in my original thread that helped.  Expect to see a page added soon with the update to date installation instructions. 

Well, the need to use the Windows section of my laptop has increased to the point where I really needed to give it more hard drive room than I had planned in March.  Since I haven’t been using the laptop too much, I decided just to reinstall everything.  I had upgraded to the A08 bios right before I planned doing the Windows install.  Life is a lot nicer when you install Windows before Linux.  So I popped in my Windows XP Professional CD that I got from school last March, and wouldn’t you know it, the install GUI cannot even display with the new bios update.  With these really bad bios updates lately, I’m recommending people to stay away from the Inspiron 6000 until Dell can get their act together.  Now Windows and Linux cannot use graphical interfaces.

Update (09/09/2005):

Still have not been able to get the Windows XP Pro to install.  I even tried a Windows XP disk that is about a year older for my desktop and the same thing occurred, screen going black after the initial hardware search before the blue gui displays.  I have opened up two threads so far at the forums at dell here and here with no luck as of yet.

Finally got it to work.  I had to boot the computer up with the Gentoo boot disk and remove all the partitions on the hard drive.  Once I did that, the Windows XP Pro installed correct.  Anybody think Windows XP Pro is allergic to Linux? 

Well, I updated the bios from A05 to A07 on my Inspiron 6000 with some really bad results.  X has decided it’s not happy at all with the new bios.  I have even tried to use the experimental (dev) version of x along with the kernel 2.6.12 with no luck in it working yet.  This is just a warning to those.  I’m going to spend a few more hours trying to get it to work.  I might just downgrade the bios back to A05 since I wasn’t having any problems with that version.

I’ve had quite a few people ask me how I’m doing my system, since it has been a while since I published my configuration files and instructions on how to get it up. I really don’t have time to write a new updated instructions (graduating in less than week), but I have uploaded my latest xorg and conf files. Just to note that I am using Xorg version 6.8.2. I know I lot of people are using the cvs version, but I have found on all my computers when I try this that it eats up over 384 megs of RAM so I’ve decided not to go that direction.

I also change the source code of the linux code before I compile it also so that my cdrom uses the SATA drivers. In /usr/src/linux/include/linux/libata.h change:
#undef ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI /* define to enable ATAPI support */
to
#define ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI /* define to enable ATAPI support */

config-2.6.11-gentoo-r8
xorg-20050602.conf

I had started a thread a long time ago in the forums at Gentoo which now has quite a lot of information in it. I would highly recommend anyone trying to get the Inspiron 6000 working with linux to check it out. I’ve been so busy that I’ve probably missed some updates and new ways of doing things. The forum is here.

I found some free time and decided that the performance of the vesa drives for the intel i915 graphics card was driving me nuts. I installed the xorg from their cvs through a crafty way of tricking portage into believing it was just reinstalling xorg 6.8.2-r1. Once this was installed, I was able to use the i810 driver in xorg (which is what then loads the correct i915). Everything worked just fine for getting it to work that way. Performance is definitely a whole lot better. Of course, there was one problem, which was that DRI can not load the module correctly even though it’s there. That will have to be something to wait to fix another day as I have exams the next two days.