Debian GNU/Linux on Dell Vostro 1440

Last updated: 2012-06-22

General Hardware Specifications of Dell Vostro 1440

Hardware Components	Status under Linux	Notes
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 380 @ 2.53GHz	Works	No special procedure required during installation. 64 bit
14.0″ Display, 1366 x 768 pixels, anti glare	Works	No special procedure required during installation. There’s pretty big difference between the lowest brightness level and next.
Intel integrated GPU	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
AMD Radeon HD 6400M Series GPU	Works	Works with binary driver (fglrx).
4 GB RAM	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Hard Drive 500 GB Seagate	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Integrated Network Card RTL8111/8168B	Not tested	not tested
DVD drive	Not tested	not tested
Wireless card (Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n)	Works	Works with non-free firmware.
Battery	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Sound card	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Card reader	Works	Tested with SD card. No special procedure required.
Webcam	Works	No special procedure required during installation

This laptop is operating under kernel version 3.2.0-2-amd64 (from Debian repository).

Laptop is sold with Ubuntu, so it should be well supported by Linux – wifi, sound, and graphics worked there indeed, but I prefer Debian with LXDE, so I installed Debian with debootstrap, using live system on pendrive. First there was Squeeze installed as base, and moment later I installed all packages from previous system, which was mix of stable, testing, unstable and backports. And it worked well, but finally I decided to upgrade to unstable and then made this note..

Unresolved issues

Special keys for volume up, down and mute don’t work. It may be the issue of LXDE, haven’t tried any other window manager.
Didn’t manage to control fan in reliable way – runs almost all the time on low speed. If I turn fan off with i8kmon, it turns on after random period of time and tempereture.

Configuration Files

Added to /etc/modules

coretemp
lm75
i8k

To prevent increasing of Load_Cycle_Count value (S.M.A.R.T) in /etc/hdparm.conf I added

/dev/sda {
        apm = 254
        apm_battery = 254
}

More Specific Information

cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 3
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 37
model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU       M 380  @ 2.53GHz
stepping        : 5
microcode       : 0x3
cpu MHz         : 931.000
cache size      : 3072 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 4
core id         : 2
cpu cores       : 2
apicid          : 5
initial apicid  : 5
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 11
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush
dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs
bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2
ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm arat dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
ept vpid
bogomips        : 5053.75
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 05)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Seymour [Radeon HD 6400M Series]
12:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
13:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02)
ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)
ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)

The end

If you have any questions or comments regarding this hardware, feel free to send them using one of the contact methods.