ubuntu 9.10 (64 bit) on Alienware m17x

[niite]

Well, I've just successfully gotten 9.10 going on my Alienware m17x notebook. Wanted to just give a summary.

Clean install vs upgrade from 9.04

Clean Install of 9.10

I attempted a clean install of 9.10 first, not so succsessful. I have two 500 GB drives, and I'm not running RAID at all with them. I have them in AHCI Native. The first drive has win7 running on it, and I have had ubuntu 9.04 running on the second drive. I wiped the second drive before attempting this clean install.

I dowloaded the iso for the 9.10(AMD64) desktop version. When I ran the install, it would not find my second hard drive. Nothing I did could get it to see it. (I had no such problem with the ubuntu 9.04 install). So I downloaded the alternate AMD64 install version for 9.10. After some fumbling with it at the partition portion of install (going manual vs automatic) I was able to get it to see and install to the second hard drive. After that, the install went uneventfully. A few problems once install was complete:

1. Grub did not provide an item to boot my vista drive.
2. No wireless - Broadcom AW1510 WLAN (this sucked, 9.04 install had given me this out of the box on install - and no propriety driver listed or available for it)
3. Just generic Video driver (and no propriety drivers available - although the ones available previously for 9.04 never worked any way - 180 and 173)
4. No proprietary drivers listed when i go to hardware drivers (the funny thing was, for the desktop live cd, it did give me options for these drivers using live).

So instead of fumbling around for a wireless driver, i wiped the drive, put 9.04 back on, and figure i'd get it set to go and upgarde it to 9.10. Much better luck this way.

Upgrading to 9.10 from 9.04

Very painless upgrade - for the most part. No grub problems like with the clean install. Also picked up proprietary drivers from the 9.04 no problem, so wireless worked. Had the following issues, and their resolution:

Graphics - dual Geforce GTX 260M . on my 9.04 installation, I had never succsessfully gotten video drivers from Nvidia to recoginize my graphics (I have two Geforce GTX 260M cards, as well as an integrated Geforce 9400 on the board). I had just been using the generic driver until 9.10 came out. I noticed that Nvidia had relased a new certified driver for linux to support my 260M cards - Nvidia driver version 190.42. So I downloaded the driver before my upgarde. you can find it here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d...64_190.42.html

After completing the upgrade to ubuntu 9.10 as expected my graphics driver went crazy, and did not function - got a blank screen that flickered. I went to command line and installed the new driver from Nvidia, and had no problems on bootup, graphics worked great - recognized both my 260M cards. (of note, I needed to disable both hybrid and integrated graphics in bios - or I get a black screen on bootup).

Audio - same problem as 9.04. Ubuntu doesn't seem to play well with my IDT 92HD73C1. In order to get this functioning I had to add the following to alsa-base.conf found at /etc/modeprobe.d/

options snd-hda-intel model=dell-m6 enable=1 index=0
options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=1
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

I don't seem to be getting the full capabilities of the sound card (6channel surround, etc), but I'm getting very decent audio (and much better then 9.04).

So that's what I got for now. playing around with it and things seem to be working fine.. love the compiz effect which I can finally use.

[Tomatosoup]

Ubuntu 9.04: Wireless via 300N-XR USB: okay, only no N-standard!
Ubuntu 9.10 RC: No wireless connection via 300N-XR: sucks ***!

Want to try the final Karmic Koala version. Let's hope it will do better!

[niite]

Yeah, no kidding.. but they give you the proprietary drivers on the live cd.. go to install and nada. lol, too funny.

[faydout]

Hi everyone... I was hoping someone much smarter than I am could throw me a bone on this. I've been using Ubuntu for the past month at work and love it so I decided this weekend to make the switch at home. I set up a flash drive to install the OS for me and broke out an old laptop to test with. It worked great and decided it was time to switch the alienware m17x after backing up my important files. I popped in the flash drive and it began the boot process, but after the ubuntu symbol appears for the first time the screen goes black and never does anything. I dont get an error message to diagnose anything from. I'm hoping someone here knows of any workarounds or things I need to do first. I'm thinking to take the new load from the other laptop, load it with ATI drivers and try a restore on the other laptop...

[datman]

Hey all, another M17x Ubuntu user here. Thought I would put my experiences here to help other M17x users up and running.

Graphics

I have dual Nvidia GTX260M, ATI installs will be different.

To get graphics working:

First disable integrated and hybrid graphics in the BIOS.

Now install prerequisites:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` binutils pkg-config build-essential xserver-xorg-dev

Now you can download the NVIDIA driver from here:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

Select the latest version of Linux AMD64/EM64T drivers, and then install like this:

chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.42-pkg2.run
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.42-pkg2

Reboot and your X should be working. Note that if you boot up while on battery, Integrated graphics will be automatically enabled in BIOS and then X will fail to start properly.

Sound

I followed niite's suggestion to get sound working, which worked OK, but I could only get sound from the headphone socket and not the internal speakers. To fix, I changed the line:

options snd-hda-intel model=dell-m6 enable=1 index=0

to

options snd-hda-intel model=laptop enable=1 index=0

also i updated ALSA to latest version, see here:

http://monespaceperso.org/blog-en/20...ic-koala-9-10/

Now sound works correctly from the speakers and mutes them when i plug in the headphones.

WiFi

And to get wifi working took the following steps:

1. Download and build the STA driver module:

System > Administration > Hardware Drivers should be able to download and install the modue for you, but it would not work for me.

So manually download the STA 64 bit driver from here:

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

then build and install it like this:

cd <path_where_you_downloaded>
sudo cp hybrid-portsrc-x86_64-v5.10.91.9.3.tar.gz /usr/local/src
# you might need to change the version above if it does not match your download
cd /usr/local/src
sudo mkdir hybrid_wl
cd hybrid_wl
sudo tar xzf <path>/hybrid-portsrc-x86_64-v5.10.91.9.3.tar.gz
sudo make

You should now have a wl.ko file successfully built. You should now copy it to your kernel modules lib folder (substitute your kernel version)

sudo cp wl.ko /lib/modules/<kernel-version>/kernel/net/wireless

2. Disable other conflicting modules

Now you have to remove any conflicting modules. To see if any are loaded, type:

lsmod | grep "b43\|ssb\|wl"

If any of these are installed, remove them:
sudo rmmod b43
sudo rmmod ssb
sudo rmmod wl

To blacklist these drivers and prevent them from loading in the future:
sudo echo "blacklist ssb" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
sudo echo "blacklist b43" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Even though they are blacklisted, ssb will still be loaded in the initramfs. This will prevent wl.ko from loading after booting. To fix this, type:

sudo update-initramfs -u

3. Enable the new module at boot

and finally to start the wl module automatically at boot:

sudo echo "wl" >> /etc/modules

Now reboot and set up your wireless password etc in NetworkManager. If you upgrade your kernel in future, you will have to rebuild the module and copy it into the new kernel's lib directory.

[[Neurotic]]

Thanks for all the hard work to those that came before me, it made my life a lot easer when setting up my m17x.

Some extra notes on installing on the m17x.

If you want to install on Raid1, the following guide helped me out a lot. There are a couple of small pieces missing from the walkthrough, but if you read through the post first, there are some responses from me that should fill in all the details.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1360445

For the nvidia drivers, its worth noting that there is a nvidia PPA that keeps all the drivers up to date. You can find it here: https://launchpad.net/~nvidia-vdpau/+archive/ppa

From there, run

sudo nvidia-xconfig

, and you are good to go.

I'm currently running the 195.30 drivers as I was getting the occasional black screen on boot. This seems to be a little better now, however I do get the occasional freeze / black screen when booting up, which I can't even seem to ctrl+alt+f1 to a tty terminal to. Sometimes I get a freeze after the login screen, sometimes this happens before I login, and sometimes after, it is very random. (Anyone else getting this?). I get no problems booting win7.

For sound - all I had to do was upgrade alsa up to 1.0.22 using this guide, http://monespaceperso.org/blog-en/20...ic-koala-9-10/. I didn't have to set any special parameters, or anything. Sound now works like a charm.

[datman]

Good to see another Linux equipped M17x

Has anyone had any luck getting a second monitor to work via HDMI yet? I have played around a bit with no luck so far.

[[Neurotic]]

datman - I do right now with HDMI and a second monitor. I just plug it in, and use the Nvidia config tool to hook up the 2nd monitor. Works like a charm.

The other bug I have had recently, is that if the power cable comes out from the laptop, I get a freeze in Ubuntu. Anyone else get that?

[Aikimox]

So glad that I found this thread!
I'm trying to switch entirely to Ubuntu 9.10 on my M17X and the only remaining obstacle is the SLI support for GTX280M cards.
I did so many re-installs lately and completely out ideas what can be done to fix it.
With the 195.30 drivers I am able to turn the SLI on but the 3D rendering is awefull, even Compiz doesn't run smooth. The cards never hit their max clocks (power level 1 at best). Phoronix lightsmark score is 240FPS on average with SLI on. So far the best option is to switch the SLI Off and play games/run Compiz with a single card...
Will appreciate your help on that one.

P.S> tried installing the 185 driver from the Hardware Drivers; updating the repos and installing the 190 and 195 from there as well; manually installing (185,190,195) on a fresh install; tried running nvidia-xconfig --sli=auto/AFR/SFR/On - all with the same result - choppy compiz and unplayable games with SLI and bearable playing with a single card.

Thanks in advance.

[datman]

datman - I do right now with HDMI and a second monitor. I just plug it in, and use the Nvidia config tool to hook up the 2nd monitor. Works like a charm.

OK so I had a bit more of a play around with it.... Using the nvidia-settings applet I was able to get the second monitor working via HDMI. However I have the following issues still:

* No second monitor at all if SLI is enabled (this was my problem before)
* If I enable Xinerama, I get one big desktop and I can move windows from one to another (as expected), but Compiz doesn't work, i.e. no compositor so no transparency or desktop effects.
* If I disable Xinerama, I get two separate desktops, Compiz works, and I can move the mouse from one desktop to another, but I cannot move a window from one desktop to the other.

Ideally I would like to get both monitors working with one desktop (Xinerama), Compiz and SLI. Doesn't seem like this is possible at the moment.

The other bug I have had recently, is that if the power cable comes out from the laptop, I get a freeze in Ubuntu. Anyone else get that?

I don't always get that problem, just gave it a try and it was ok. - edit: Second time I tried it I got a freezeup too looks like ubuntu is useless without AC.

One other issue is sometimes the screen brightness buttons work but sometimes they don't so I have to use the Gnome brightness applet instead.

I think nvidia needs to do some more work on their drivers.