# dell vostro 3500 i5-520m GF310 Intel HM57 Express

## Mroofka

Hi

I'm going to buy new laptop and I'm curious if this model will be supported by linux:

dell vostro 3500

i5-520m

NV GF310M

intel hm57 express

integrated audio

Thanks in advance

Pozdrawiam

Mroofka

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## DaggyStyle

 *Mroofka wrote:*   

> Hi
> 
> I'm going to buy new laptop and I'm curious if this model will be supported by linux:
> 
> dell vostro 3500
> ...

 we have no idea because we don't know the lspci.

take either the gentoo livedvd or any other linux live cd and try it.

if all works then it should be.

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## Mroofka

I can't do that. If I could I wouldn't asked for help.

I hope that somebody have any experience with this hardware. 

the second choice is 

Lenovo T500

intel  P870

ATI Mobility Radeon 3650

Pozdrawiam

Mroofka

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## Gusar

Does the laptop use Optimus? If yes, you're limited to the Intel integrated graphics. If it's not Optimus, then it should work at least when it comes to graphics. Though without lspci output, we can't know whether other stuff (like wireless) will work well.

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## andriss

Hello all,

 I have similar (not to say the same) laptop, and plan to move from ubuntu to gentoo, here is my lspci output:

```

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 18)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 18)

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 06)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 06)

00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 06)

00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 06)

00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 06)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a6)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 06)

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 06)

00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 06)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [GeForce 310M] (rev a2)

01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)

12:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

13:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)

```

so what do you reckon about support in gentoo for these things?

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## Januszzz

 *Quote:*   

> so what do you reckon about support in gentoo for these things?

 

Gentoo will work. At least on Ubuntu kernel   :Very Happy: 

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## andriss

 *Januszzz wrote:*   

>  *Quote:*   so what do you reckon about support in gentoo for these things? 
> 
> Gentoo will work. At least on Ubuntu kernel  

 

kinda got it working with gentoo kernel too, not wifi yet but will do i hope  :Smile:  tnx for replay tho

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## andriss

hell yeah, after painfull couple of days got my wifi working  :Smile:  if someone else comes across this wifi card (Broadcom BCM4727) just emerge net-wireless/broadcom-sta (got this from: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Lenovo_Ideapad_V460 different laptop, same wifi card). Also just to know - dont compile anything from Broacom in kernel. emerge wont succeed unless proper kernel build is done.

cheers everyone

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## cach0rr0

 *Mroofka wrote:*   

> I can't do that. If I could I wouldn't asked for help.
> 
> I hope that somebody have any experience with this hardware. 
> 
> 

 

here you go - http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/DELL/Vostro+3500

Shows you what drivers you will need for devices hooked into the PCI bus (which, really, these are the important ones for an operational system - this doesnt cover things connected via USB, e.g. webcams, most of which use USB_VIDEO_CLASS or 'uvcvideo' module)

requires broadcom-sta for wifi, as someone else pointed out. This requires jumping through a handful of hoops when you go to configure your kernel, so heads up

 *Mroofka wrote:*   

> 
> 
> the second choice is 
> 
> Lenovo T500
> ...

 

http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/Lenovo/ThinkPad+T500

Personally, I'd opt for the Thinkpad. IMHO the Thinkpad T series are still the best on the market, and they tend to do really really well with Linux. 

Thinkpad T series > any Dell

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## andriss

well Dell is pretty neat and it wasn't much of my choice rather I got it from my work and must use it. So far I am partly satisfied with gentoo as an OS system, off-course lot of things did not work out-of-box and as it is my first gentoo install (with little help of my friends), I got it wrong couple of times.

 as for my knowledge (with gentoo it is only 3 weeks) big problem is about error messages and figuring out what is wrong, most of the time I got the point, but there is places where error message leads to nowhere and real "fix" of problem is just around a corner but different direction.

 Things that are still not ok: my webcam not recognized (ok I can live with that), monitor dim/back-light/ brightness is not changeable (not with fn+arrow keys nor any other way), led buttons not really doing a thing. Gnome do recognize that I press some sound related button by showing flash image of sound adjustment (in the middle of screen), but there is no use of any of volume up/down or mute buttons. Not even talking about media buttons. And most frustrating, also not really related to particular laptop, thing is my usb to serial interface converter not working with minicom. This is frustrating because I need it for my work and if I am not able to fix this in any way, will be forced to switch back to ubuntu (this is sad news for me)

 But still I am looking forward into fixing these things and will post if I got something in reasonable future.

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## The Doctor

I would be careful with Dell. I have a Dell laptop and Ubuntu will not boot and Sabayon never had any sound.

These are just from the live CDs, but anything that gives an Ubuntu CD trouble might be difficult to get running.

I would Google any laptop you are thinking of and "gentoo" or  "linux" and see if there are wikis or blogs with uses successfully using that hardware.

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## andriss

 *penguin swordmaster wrote:*   

> I would be careful with Dell. I have a Dell laptop and Ubuntu will not boot and Sabayon never had any sound.
> 
> 

 

Oh I'm not worried about Ubuntu not to work, I did successfully used 10.04 and 10.10 on this laptop with only media buttons not working. What worries me is rolling back to that binnary driven OS used by persons that never use cli for anything and tend to make themselfes as linux users. I hope I can do better than that

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## The Doctor

I was just stating that just because Dell has some linux support, it is not a good idea to assume that it automatically will.

If you have you Dell working, thats good. I would just be very careful about buying one that you have not researched. My comment about Ubuntu and Sabayon was just to illustrated that some of their hardware is less supported by linux.

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## cach0rr0

 *andriss wrote:*   

> well Dell is pretty neat and it wasn't much of my choice rather I got it from my work and must use it. 
> 
> Things that are still not ok: my webcam not recognized (ok I can live with that), 

 

actually we can probably get that working. 

probably just need to change up the kernel a bit - did you use genkernel, or did you do a manual kernel configuration? 

```

$ zgrep USB_VIDEO_CLASS /proc/config.gz 

CONFIG_USB_VIDEO_CLASS=m

CONFIG_USB_VIDEO_CLASS_INPUT_EVDEV=y

```

Most laptop webcams use the 'uvcvideo' driver. so it'll be a simple matter of making sure you have that driver built (preferably as a module, not a built-in), and making sure your normal user is in the 'video' group:

```

meat@hplaptop ~ $ ls -alh /dev/video0 

crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 0 Feb 28 10:45 /dev/video0

meat@hplaptop ~ $ id

uid=1000(meat) gid=1000(meat) groups=1000(meat),10(wheel),18(audio),19(cdrom),27(video),80(cdrw),100(users),102(wireshark),105(plugdev)

```

If you're not comfortable configuring your kernel, see if an emerge linux-uvc followed by a modprobe uvcvideo doesn't make a /dev/video0 device show up. If it does, all you need to do is, as mentioned above, add your user to the 'video' group, logout, log back in, and you should be sorted (though, you will need some app to capture the webcam output - skype can do this, as can cheese)

 *andriss wrote:*   

> 
> 
> monitor dim/back-light/ brightness is not changeable (not with fn+arrow keys nor any other way), led buttons not really doing a thing. Gnome do recognize that I press some sound related button by showing flash image of sound adjustment (in the middle of screen), but there is no use of any of volume up/down or mute buttons. Not even talking about media buttons. And most frustrating, also not really related to particular laptop, thing is my usb to serial interface converter not working with minicom. This is frustrating because I need it for my work and if I am not able to fix this in any way, will be forced to switch back to ubuntu (this is sad news for me)
> 
>  But still I am looking forward into fixing these things and will post if I got something in reasonable future.

 

you'd be surprised how many of these things can be solved by reconfiguring your kernel

for this, 'lspci' and 'lsusb' will be your best friend.

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## warrenc5

you absolutely have to understand you will not be able to use the hybrid graphics feature

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/p/19359720/19801541.aspx

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## Gusar

 *warrenc5 wrote:*   

> you absolutely have to understand you will not be able to use the hybrid graphics feature
> 
> http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/p/19359720/19801541.aspx

 

You will: http://www.martin-juhl.dk/2011/05/optimus-on-linux-problem-solved/. Yeah, it's quite the hack. But it's better than nothing.

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## phosowicz

 *andriss wrote:*   

> well Dell is pretty neat and it wasn't much of my choice rather I got it from my work and must use it. So far I am partly satisfied with gentoo as an OS system, off-course lot of things did not work out-of-box and as it is my first gentoo install (with little help of my friends), I got it wrong couple of times.
> 
>  as for my knowledge (with gentoo it is only 3 weeks) big problem is about error messages and figuring out what is wrong, most of the time I got the point, but there is places where error message leads to nowhere and real "fix" of problem is just around a corner but different direction.
> 
>  Things that are still not ok: my webcam not recognized (ok I can live with that), monitor dim/back-light/ brightness is not changeable (not with fn+arrow keys nor any other way), led buttons not really doing a thing. Gnome do recognize that I press some sound related button by showing flash image of sound adjustment (in the middle of screen), but there is no use of any of volume up/down or mute buttons. Not even talking about media buttons. And most frustrating, also not really related to particular laptop, thing is my usb to serial interface converter not working with minicom. This is frustrating because I need it for my work and if I am not able to fix this in any way, will be forced to switch back to ubuntu (this is sad news for me)
> ...

 

From this what you wrote above I see you managed to install Gentoo at all. I cannot do even that. Would you please say how you have done that. For me the first Gentoo CD doesn't boot at all. My notebook is Dell Vostro 3750 with 4 real cores. Thanks in advance for your help. CPU is Intel i7.

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## andriss

 *phosowicz wrote:*   

> 
> 
> From this what you wrote above I see you managed to install Gentoo at all. I cannot do even that. Would you please say how you have done that. For me the first Gentoo CD doesn't boot at all. My notebook is Dell Vostro 3750 with 4 real cores. Thanks in advance for your help. CPU is Intel i7.

 

Sorry for late replay, if it is still an open question, about that install - basically I used handbook guide: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/faq.xml#stage12 also I got my first kernel config from my friend (hi has ibm thinkpad 61t or smth, with duocore processor and many ibm related things compiled in kernel), config was changed over time to adjust it to my needs, but basic stuff worked without any changes. Things that is important, as I learned from my experience, is disks to be visible, video to be supported (at any level for starters), and network to be working. lspci is real help here. Afterwards you can tweak and configure your system as needed.

for summary, I did installed system three times up to some point, and only last one was really usable. And still my multimedia buttons are not working properly and neither is my back-light/monitor dim is. as for rest, my wifi is working, usb to serial (RS323) adapter is working in some 80% of times I try to use it, web-cam is kinda working - some glitches using it with skype tho.

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