Dell Inspiron 15R

Author(s)

H4ppyClown
Sidicas

Introduction

Dell Inspiron 15R Purchased February 2011. Experience below is based on Debian 6.0.

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Specifications

Name	Dell Inspiron 15R
Processor	Intel® Pentium® Processor P6100 (3M Cache, 2.00 GHz)
Screen	15.6in High Definition (1366×768) WLED
RAM	3072MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [1×1024 + 1×2048]
HDD	320GB (5,400rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
Optical Drive	DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD)
Graphics	Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator HD
Network	Standard Dell Wireless 1501 802.11 g/n

Linux Compatibility

Device	Compatibility	Comments
Processor	Yes	Installed i386 architecture. Have not tested IA64 architecture but in theory is compatible
Screen	Yes	Xorg booted into 1366×768 resolution with no tweaking of config required
HDD	Yes
Optical Drive	Yes
Graphics	Yes	Could not enable 3D functions (e.g. Compiz) but then its not a 3D accelerating chip.
Sound	Yes	ALSA gives different sliders for headphones & onboard speakers, which is useful.
Ethernet	Yes
Wireless	Yes	Needed to install package “firmware-brcm80211” to enable wireless.
Bluetooth	Not Tested	Looks like its enabled but no other device to test with.
USB	Yes	3 USD ports available
Card Reader	Not Tested
ExpressCard Slot	Not Tested
Camera	Yes	Onboard Webcam works fine
HDMI	Not Tested
VGA	Not Tested

Multimedia Keys

Testing using Debian Wheezy and KDE 4.8.4

Key	Compatibility	Comments
Screen Toggle	No	Key is incorrectly interpreted as “p”
Wifi Toggle	Yes
Touchpad Disable	Yes	Requires special work, see below
Brightness Down	Yes
Brightness Up	Yes
Previous Track	Yes
Play / Stop	Yes
Next Track	Yes
Volume Down	Yes
Volume Up	Yes
Volume Mute	Yes
Config	Yes	Generates a Meta-X keyboard press
Equalizer	No	Generates no X or ACPI events. e02a & e02c doesn't make it through to X. “Unknown key”
Bookmark Page	No	Generates no X or ACPI events. e024 doesn't make it through to X. “Unknown key”

Touchpad Disable

FN+F3
The touchpad can be disabled easily with xinput or kde-config-touchpad.
The touchpad LED /sys/class/leds/dell-laptop::touchpad/brightness needs to be set to “1” when the touchpad is disabled and this is not done by default.

The touchpad LED can be fixed as follows:

1. Make a copy of /etc/acpi/asus-touchpad.sh and call it /etc/acpi/dell-touchpad.sh
2. Edit the file and replace this line:

  ledf=/sys/class/leds/asus::touchpad/brightness

with this line:

  ledf=/sys/class/leds/dell-laptop::touchpad/brightness

3. Executing sudo /etc/acpi/dell-touchpad.sh will now enable/disable the touchpad and toggle the LED correctly.

To avoid being prompted for a password:

1. Make /etc/acpi/dell-touchpad.sh read-only:

  sudo chmod -w /etc/acpi/dell-touchpad.sh

2. Edit sudoers to allow sudoers to execute without password prompt.

  myusername ALL = (root) NOPASSWD: /etc/acpi/dell-touchpad.sh

Finally, bind the exectuion of /etc/acpi/dell-touchpad.sh to the XF86TouchpadToggle keyboard event using xbindkeys.
~/.xbindkeysrc

  #Disable Touchpad
  "sudo /etc/acpi/dell-touchpad.sh"
  m:0x0 + c:199
  XF86TouchpadToggle

Then make sure you add xbindkeys to ~/.xinitrc to make sure xbindkeys starts with your desktop environment.

Notes

Was a pain-free install of Debian. No issues. Use a fixed ethernet connection to install so you can grab updates & enable wireless via “apt-get install firmware-brcm80211”. I haven't tested connecting an external monitor via VGA or HDMI so not sure how Xorg will respond to this.

Summary

Discussion

oocf, 2013/01/29 04:22

For the WIFI i have to install: firmware-iwlwifi because my card was a Intel and it work, but only in a Kernel 3 o superior.

dell_inspiron_15r.txt · Last modified: 2017/09/14 16:02 by 103.255.4.80

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