I couldn’t resist the Dell Mini. Many confused looks from the ThinkPad corner. “What? Dells are cheap pieces of crap!”. Regardless, I’ve always had good experiences with Dell hardware (even if I do miss find myself missing a nub). So as soon as they became available on the Thursday 4th, I ordered. My new toy arrived on Thursday 11th.
Almost a week in, how is it going? Well, lets start with the things I can moan about:
- No mobile broadband for me. I had hoped to pop in a standard card and my Three SIM, but even though the board is marked “WWAN” and the pads are there, the Mini PCI-E connector and aerial wires are missing.
- Broadcom Wifi. Eww. It needed some proprietary blob, so only Hardy seemed to support it out of the box. Not quite true, stock Hardy has a bug so I needed to apt-get upgrade and reboot. I have a more permanent solution. I replaced it with an Intel card from ebay. £7, including postage. Much much better, and it even joins my local network 5s quicker
- No sound. Had to edit /etc/modrobe.d/* to add options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=dell, then it did. Not sure why auto mode doesn’t work.
- Battery doesnt have anyway to see the current charge status when not logged in (no charging LED, no LED strip on battery with a “press here for status” button).
Otherwise, I’m really happy. I’m writing this blog post on it, and as you can (hopefully!) tell, the keyboard isn’t causing me too much pain. In fact, i’m adapting quite well and am currently sat in the dark not paying any attention to the keys im pecking away at. The sound quality good, the webcam is good, GNOME is nippy enough. Compiz is more than usable, and for once i’m not reaching to turn it off. As usual for my Dells, i’m pleased with the screen.
Ubuntu Hardy is your best bet to get the wifi work. Intrepid is also working just fine. Mandriva (GUADEC USB key) and Fedora 10 also boot, but won’t have wifi. Ubuntu Feisty and Fedora 9 wouldn’t boot. Atom doesn’t do x86_64, so have your 32bit media to hand.
It doesn’t come with a case, but I got a 9″ portable dvd player sleeve from Amazon which is perfect.
So far i’m pleased with my purchase. Low low low budget camera phone amateur Dell pron here.
Tags: Dell Mini
Thanks for posting this. Just ordered one last week and although they estimate it won’t even ship until the 30th I’m anxious to find out what kind of problems there will be for getting Linux running on it.
Was wondering if I could harass you with a couple questions,
- Did you install Ubuntu Hardy yourself or the version Dell is shipping it with?
- Does suspend/resume work ok?
Anxiously awaiting delivery over here.
Cheers.
Hello,
Your thoughts were interesting and helpful.
Would you know what external monitor resolution it supports? I’d like to use it with a Dell 24″ monitor (1920×1200) but no-one at Dell seems to know.
Thanks in advance,
Fred.
The wifi will likely work on Mandriva with bcm43xx (if you’re lucky) or ndiswrapper (otherwise). Setting up either on Mandriva is pretty easy. With 2009 we’re moving to b43 (same as Ubuntu is using, probably), which is the successor to bcm43xx, and again ndiswrapper is available if that doesn’t work. For bcm43xx see http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware – that’s a good link, actually, as it explains the steps for all major distros for the driver they currently use (bcm43xx or b43). For ndiswrapper you just load up the network config tool, tell it you want to configure a wireless device using a Windows driver, and then feed it the Windows driver. The ones called bcmwl5.inf usually work.
We didn’t switch from bcm43xx to b43 with 2008 Spring because at the time b43 was shit (I have a Broadcom adapter myself so I test all the drivers regularly). Currently, though, b43 is actually pretty good, so we’re going with that for 2009.
For the ALSA issue – report it to the ALSA folks. Include the PCI ID and also the output of cat /proc/asound/card?/codec#? – I believe that’s useful to completely uniquely identify an Intel HDA device (various slightly different Intel HDA implementations from different manufacturers all have the same PCI ID).
Hey John, would you mind giving me some details of your intel purchase? I have been trying to give my old old laptop better wireless than my crappy realtek pcmcia. I understand I have an internal ’slot’ for wifi. Would you give me links and details of your happy purchase?
Was this one of the Minis that didn’t already come with Ubuntu on it? If so, I wonder if the hardware in the Linux ones is any more friendly?
Your ‘Dell Mini’ link is broken, it points to http://www.del..co.uk which does not exist.
@dgoodwin: I couldn’t wait for the Linux one and figured my parents could do with a valid Windows XP licence. So I can’t comment on what you get with the Linux preinstalled versions. Suspend/resume seems to work fine, not tried hibernate yet (its something i’ve grown to fear).
@Fred: The largest monitor I have around to try is a 17″. I can try that if you’d like, but I imagine it works just fine. Sorry…
@Adam: Looking up b43 for the exact version of 43xx in this model filled me with dread, and I couldn’t get the cutter to work with drivers that are available for this laptop
I would have given ndiswrapper a go but noticed Ubuntu had something that just worked, and that ebay had £7 freedom cards 
As for the alsa issue, thanks for the hint. I’ll make sure to poke them.
@diegoe: I knew from previous experience that the card I had in front of me was a Mini PCI-E, and they can be pretty much swapped around at will. So off to ebay, where I got a 3945ABG. Some of the older larger mini PCI cards had BIOS locks though, so be careful if its more than.. say.. 1 1/2 years. I hit this when trying to convert a friends Compaq
@James Henstridge: This one is a Windows model, i’m hoping they are just trying to use up their Broadcom cards in the Windows hardware
@me: Fixed, thanks
Thanks for your first impressions on the Mini 9. Since the netbook is a new category for Dell, feedback like this is invaluable. Also consider adding your impressions on Dell’s customer reviews site
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ratings_reviews?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
and contributing your recommendations on IdeaStorm
http://www.dellideastorm.com/
Could you give more details about your sound fix? I just got mine today and am without sound in Ubuntu.
@Jordon Mears: Sure thing. The files in /etc/modprobe.d/ let you set options for kernel modules. So I created a new file in there called sound, though you can call it whatever tickles your fancy. It contains one line:
options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=dell
I saved said file and then rebooted. I had sound.
hmmm. for the sound, I created the file as suggested and has the line which you mentioned. Rebooted and still no sound. are there any other things which i missed?
Odd.
Thanks alot for this post though. I thought i was the only one with the problem
ahh sorted. sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base and add the line in the end
options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=dell
How did you install Ubuntu?
I have tried using the mini.iso for Interpid and it seems to stick at about 6% of the Ubuntu Desktop part (i.e. base is installed). I can see that there is still network activity though so I think it is sucking down the packages but the only text that is showing is ‘Please wait…’ for about an hour.
Would an Intrepid Desktop CD squashed onto a USB disk be better/quicker?
(I use the mini.iso’s so I can use approx on my server and cache the packages for my other boxes. This is my first Intrepid install though).
@David Whyte: I used a hardy live cd installed on a usb disk, then upgraded to intrepid with update-manager. Can’t comment on other methods.
Thanks. I got it working from a boot.iso on a USB stick. I am having issues with GRUB (I think I did the partition wrong so I need to boot up from the USB everytime [working this on the ubuntu-au mailing list]) but everything else is pretty much working.
I don’t seem to be able to use suspend/resume at the moment, which is annoying, but the battery life is so good, I simply leave the laptop on with the lid down during the walk from the bus to work etc.
Cheers,
Whytey
Hi John,
So, my grub issues are fixed.
Now, I still can only boot to a login prompt if I Esc the grub menu, select recovery and then hit resume when given a second menu. If I let the normal boot happen, I see the initial progress bar that scrolls from left to right and then that disappears, This is the same as before I fixed my boot from USB issues. I get nothing. Did you need to setup any grub options? Can you suggest any that I should try?
Cheers,
Whytey
Ignore my last post, the recent updates to Intrepid seem to have fixed the problem
[...] cracker). It appears some XP-model Mini owners have had some success installing Fedora 9 (here and here – both bloggers are named John/Jon; conspiracy? You decide…). The main issues unsuprisingly [...]
Maximum external monitor resolution should be 2048×1536
According to:
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/index.htm
nice review mate, i have put together a blog of my experience thus far..
http://dellmini9.blogspot.com
Did you ever get that Inetl 3945ABG card to work? I ordered a brand new one from CDW, and it seems to make my system very unstable.
Is there a trick to it? I saw the comment about BIOS locks. Is there anyway around that?
Thanks.
My 3945ABG from ebay works just fine.
I didn’t encounter any BIOS locks?
Drat. Maybe I’ve just got a bad card. Was your 3945ABG pulled from a Dell machine, or was it a new direct from Intel card?
I’ve got one coming from Ebay that claims to have been pulled directly from a Dell machine. I’ll see if that makes a difference.