Dell Inspiron E1505
Created by: Bill Giannikos,Last modification on Thu 20 of Mar, 2008 [02:32 UTC]by Anonymous
This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which drivers you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required drivers have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.
Introduction
This is a guide to running Linux with the Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop. The Inspiron E1505 is an entry level laptop from Dell but does have decent specifications. Unfortunately at the moment Linux support is not good because of the lack of open source radeon drivers.Editing This Page
View our Editing GuidelinesSpecifications
| Name | Dell Inspiron E1505 | |
| Processor | Intel Core Duo T2050 1.60GHz | |
| Screen | 15.4" WXGA | |
| RAM | 1GB | |
| HDD | 160GB | |
| Optical Drive | DVD+-RW | |
| Graphics | ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 | |
| Network | 10/100 Ethernet, Intel 3945 802.11g Wireless | |
| Other | 4 x USB2.0, 1 x Firewire | |
Linux Compatibility
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
| Processor | Yes | |
| Screen | Yes | |
| Optical Drive | Yes | |
| Graphics | Yes | |
| Sound | Yes | Use the snd-hda-intel driver |
| Ethernet | Yes | |
| Wireless | Yes | Use ipw3945 driver |
| Bluetooth | Not Tested | |
| 56K Modem | Not Tested | |
| USB | Yes | |
| Firewire | Not Tested | |
| SD Card Reader | Not Tested | |
| ExpressCard | Not Tested | |
Notes
The ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 in the Inspiron E1505 is not yet supported by the open source radeon driver so you will need to used the proprietary ATI driver. These driver will need to be installed to get the display working properly.Certain models of the Dell Inspiron E1505 use the ATI Mobility Radeon x1400. There shouldn't be any difference to this compared to the X1300.
Other models of the Dell Inspiron E1505 include the Intel Media Accelerator 950. You can read our guide for information on dealing with this graphics chip.
Certain models of the Dell Inspiron E1505 come with the Dell Wireless 1390 wireless controller rather than the Intel 3945. Linux users with kernel versions 2.6.22.x or less should use ndiswrapper with the driver provided by Dell via their website. Although newer kernels (e.g. 2.6.24.x) now contain a built in driver for this wireless card, development is still work in progress.
Related Resources
Preparing your laptop for LinuxConfiguring the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 & 950
Configuring an ATI graphics chip
Configuring the ipw3945 driver for the Intel 3945ABG wireless controller
Configuring the ndiswrapper driver for wireless controllers without native Linux drivers
Increasing battery life
Summary
The main difficulty in getting the Dell Inspiron E1505 working with Linux is the display controller. However future Linux distributions should fix this issue.Have you installed Linux on this laptop? If so how about leaving a comment about your success in the comments section below.
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