Slackware Linux on the Dell Dimension XPS T700r

0. Summary

Works well.

Slackware 12.0 is much easier to install Windows 98SE and is noticeably faster.

1. System Profile

My XPS T700r has the following hardware:

Item Description Status
CPU Intel Pentium III Coppermine 700MHz L2=256 kB Works
Memory 384 megs Works
Hard drive & controller Maxtor 52049U4 20GB PATA drive & Intel 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE Works
Optical drive CD/RW
Optical drive DVD/RW (added later)
SONY CD-RW CRX140E
TSSTcorpCD/DVDW (Samsung) SH-W162C
The controller is Intel 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE
The Sony works.
The Samsung seems to work with everything except DVD-RAM.
Display & Video Chip 15" Dell M780 CRT & nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro] (rev 15) X works in 1024x768 mode accelerated.
Sound Aureal Semiconductor Vortex 2 Works fine (kernel 2.6.21.5)
Ethernet Networking ADMtek NC100 Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet 10/100 Works fine
USB Intel 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB Works

2. Installation

This information is provided as-is. Proceed at your own risk.

2.1 Downloading Slackware 12

You can buy the DVD, or you can download it. If you download, it can easily require 12 hours, so plan to do it overnight. There are various utilities on the Web for burning ISOs under Windows. Under Linux you use growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/hdd=isofile.

2.2 Linux + Windows 98SE

I find that it is useful to keep Windows 98SE around, if only to play DVDs. If you already have Windows using the entire hard drive, you can use FIPS (at your own risk) to shrink the partition to make space for Linux.

2.3 Linux alone

There's nothing preventing you from downloading the Slackware 12 DVD mentioned above along with the additional needed files and then completely replacing Windows. You may have trouble playing DVDs under Linux, however.

The only thing that you'll need to get first is the DVD ISO if you don't have it.

2.3.1 Before abandoning Windows

If you plan on using Linux exclusively, be sure that before you do, you copy all of the Windows TrueType fonts to a disk for use with Linux. They're in c:\windows\fonts. Webpages in Firefox look much better when using Windows fonts.

2.4 Fine adjustments

The following is my personal checklist for installing Slackware on this machine. You may want to do things differently.


Install Slackware 12 (boot the DVD and run 'setup').
 If you install everything except TCL, Emacs,
 and KDE-Intl, it requires 4.04 gigs.
Add -h to the poweroff command in /etc/rc.d/rc.6
    to ensure a quiet hard drive powerdown.
Add "hdparm -c1 /dev/sr0" to enable 32-bit mode.
Create /etc/hosts.deny as ALL : ALL
Create user account.
Create mount directories for storage: mkdir /dvd /usb
Set acceptable speaker volume with alsamixer.
Store this volume setting w/ "alsactl store"
Add aliases to /etc/profile...
 alias d1="pushd; mount /dvd; cd /dvd; ls -l --color "
 alias d0="popd; umount /dvd"
 alias u1="pushed; mount /usb; cd /usb; ls -l --color"
 alias u0="popd; umount /usb"
 alias w1="iwconfig ath0 essid ...."
 alias w0="rmmod ath_pci"
 alias ll="ls -l --color"
 alias ..="cd .."
 alias D="cd /nt/Users/Me/Desktop; ls --color"
 alias lx="cd /usr/src/linux"
 alias mk="make"

3. Drivers

3.1. Video

3.1.1. X Windows

In Slackware 12, you can start up X Windows without modifying xorg.conf. Be sure, during installation, to tell LILO to boot up in VESA mode. The resolution I set up was 1024x768x16bpp using VESA.

I created a custom xorg.conf that uses the accelerated Nvidia driver, which is below.

3.1.2. Framebuffer

You can start up in VESA 1024x768 mode.

The vesafb driver works fine.

3.2. Sound

The audio chip works fine with command-line player mpg123.

I haven't tested sound recording, but the following command ought to record 10 seconds of WAV data:

arecord -d 10 foo.wav

3.3. ACPI

Seems to work, I haven't configured or tested it yet.

3.4. USB

Two ports total. They work.

3.5. External flash drive

These work fine.

I once ran some tests to determine the speed of my various CompactFlash cards, which was fairly revealing. Link.

3.6 Networking

3.6.1 Ethernet

The Network Everywhere chip works out of the box. (The same can't be said for Windows.)

Before you connect to a network, don't forget to create /etc/hosts.deny in which you should have the line:

ALL: ALL

3.7 Internal optical drives

I added a DVD writer, since the original CD/RW is near failing. I haven't tried writing with it.

3.8 PATA drive

It works. The utility hdparm indicates (hdparm -I /dev/hda) that it's using udma2.

In general it is a good idea to include "/usr/sbin/hdparm -Y /dev/sda" near the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.6 to ensure that your drive shuts down quietly.

4. Performance

4.1. Video playback

You will need to download xvid, xine-lib & xine-ui and compile/install them. The version of Xine that's included with Slackware 12 is broken.

After that, MPEG and Xvid videos play. However h.264 do not.

If you need support for h.264, get mplayer.

4.2. Hard drive

The program hdparm says that buffered reads happen at 27 MB/sec, which seems to be typical for an older drive. Cached reads happen at 150 MB/sec.

You should add -h to the poweroff command in /etc/rc.d/rc.6 to ensure a quiet hard drive powerdown.

4.3. Processor

The Intel Pentium III 700E is sufficient for most purposes. It rates at 1397 bogomips.

The BYTE magazine Dhrystone benchmark, is available here. The processor gets an index of 52.8.

4.4. Memory Bandwidth

To ascertain memory performance, I wrote a utility called "bandwidth", which is here. The results for this machine are as follows. CPU throttling was not enabled.

CPU MHz = 1862.132
L2 cache sequential read 916.162 MB/sec
L2 cache sequential write 760.44 MB/sec
Main memory sequential read 684.784 MB/sec
Main memory sequential write 132.104 MB/sec
Framebuffer resolution: 1024x768, 16bpp
Framebuffer memory sequential read 7.25156 MB/sec
Framebuffer memory sequential write 156.972 MB/sec
Library: memset 163.68 MB/sec
Library: memcpy 159.783 MB/sec
Library: bzero 167.772 MB/sec

4.5. Internal DVD writer

I've done only minimal CD reading.

4.6 KDE

I got tired of the fact that KDE crashes periodically so I switched to Xfce. It is much better.

For a possible future alternative, check out my project FramebufferUI or my subsequent Frugal Windowing Environment.

5. Applications

If you're installing Slackware, you're probably already technically adept. Still, you may not know about all your options. Here is a table of equivalent applications between Vista & Slackware 12. (I'm not very familiar with KDE so I mostly leave its apps out.)

Type	Vista	Slackware graphical	Slackware framebuffer	Slackware command-line
Word processing	MS Office, Open Office	Open Office, Koffice	-	teTeX
Web browser	Firefox, IE	Firefox, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Konqueror	?	Lynx, links
Email reader	Thunderbird, OutlookExpress	Thunderbird	-	Pine?
DVD writer	Windows, Nero	K3B	-	growisofs
Audio player	WMP, Winamp, Real	Xine	fbxine	aplay, amp, mpg123, mpg321
Video player	WinDVD, Zoom player, Quicktime, WMP, Winamp, Real	Xine	fbxine -	aplay, amp, mpg123, mpg321
Video editor	Windows Movie Maker, VirtualDub	AviDeMux	-	N/A
Photo editor	Windows Photo Gallery, Photoshop, GIMP	GIMP, xv	?	N/A
CD ripper w/net capability	Windows Media Player, FreeRip, iTunes	-	?
DVD backup utility	FairUse, DVDShrink, DVD Decryptor	Same programs, run using Wine	-	?
Simple document editor	Wordpad	?	?	?
Text editor	Notepad	XVim	?	Vim, Emacs
Keyboard macro utility	AutoHotkey	?	N/A	N/A

6. Kernel

coming soon ...

7. Xorg.conf

Section "Module"
    Load "dbe" # Double buffer extension
    Load "type1"
    Load "freetype"
    Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/local/"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc/"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/OTF/"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF/"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1/"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/CID/"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Speedo/"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic/"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Keyboard1"
    Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Mouse1"
    Driver "mouse"
    Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
    Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "My Monitor"
    HorizSync 30 - 85.0
    VertRefresh 50-160
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Driver"
    Driver "nv"
    VideoRam 32768
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "DellScreen"
    Device "Driver"
    Monitor "My Monitor"
    DefaultDepth 24
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth 24
        Modes "1024x768"
    EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "Simple Layout"
    Screen "DellScreen"
    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

8. Mailing list

Link.