Dell Inspiron 5100

= Hardware = lspci -nn

The Inspiron 5100 also exists configured with an Nvidia card.

The default screen resolution is 1024x768 (XGA), but a 1400x1050 (SXGA+) screen can be installed. The inverter 07N2477 is compatible with a screen that calls for 07N2510.

Wireless Networking
The wireless card installed by default is a Broadcom BCM4309, not Intel Pro Wireless 2915 as shown in the above lspci -nn. The default wireless card should work with the b43 driver or ndiswrapper with its Windows driver. If by chance you have installed an ipw2915, use the ipw2200 driver.

Although there is no physical WiFi LED and no Fn-Key labeled as WiFi, radio power can be toggled on and off with Fn+F2. If wireless networking refuses to work and the result of iwconfig looks like the following, press Fn+F2: iwconfig Afterwards, iwconfig should return something more like: iwconfig

= Configuration =

Config Files
These files are almost guaranteed not to be the perfect configurations for the machine, but they have worked well so far:

Note on VIDEO_CARDS: Use radeon, not use fglrx (ATI's proprietary Radeon driver). fglrx does not support the Mobility Radeon 7500.

= Framebuffer = Uvesafb has been confirmed to work with this machine; follow just about any guide for the kernel uvesafb driver and v86d. Splashutils also works as provided.

= Power Management =

CPU Frequency Scaling
Scaling of processor frequency works with the package cpufreq-utils as long as the following kernel options are enabled:

It is your choice whether to install any or all of the four optional governors. To set the frequency, type where any valid frequency suffixed with the unit (MHz, GHz, etc.) can be substituted for 333MHz.

Suspend (Standby)
Use the suspend project from or unmask and emerge sys-power/suspend. It should work fine when run as:

If you are also using uvesafb and splashutils to provide a decorated tty console, you will not be able to resume from suspend. Rather, the fan will turn on but the screen will stay black, and nothing will appear to work. If this is the case, either turn off the framebuffer console decorations or patch the s2ram source to change to VT 2: look for chvt(1); in s2ram_main.c, and change it to chvt(2); then recompile and try it; it should work with this change.