#! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

dev/censor · 2011-07-27 16:25:56

...and I've never seen it run this good. My laptop is the fastest and most responsive it's been in the six to seven years I've watched it go to hell. I wonder why I didn't nix the idea of a traditional desktop environment sooner. I guess that's what I get for running KDE since 2001 and KDEmod as soon as Chakra fell from betwixt Arch's knees.
But now. Now I see the beauty of nothingness. Minimalism at its finest. Fast, stable, responsive. All I could ask for in a DE and this weighs in at a fraction of one.
This being said, I am completely new to the Openbox environment. To make matters worse, I'm testing the waters with the worst built, and possibly one of the hardest laptops to use as far as hardware compatibility goes. I had to give up Arch only because of horrible support for the iwl3945 adapter and unknown issues with Xorg, kicking off no errors, and only giving me a black, dead screen with no backlight as a graphical environment.
But finally. I found a lightweight WM, packaged in a powerful lightweight distro.

...now if we could just go to a rolling release and use pacman =3
(edit: I just realized ArchBANG (or A! as I like to call it) is not just a joke I thought I was witty by saying to my linux abusing girlfriend. I might check it out on a physical machine one of these days, but I'm holding on to #! for now.)

Who in the community uses this extremely common and almost worthless laptop or its sister, the Inspiron 6400? What have you done to better run OB and #! on it? Is there a way to regain support for the media buttons on the front panel of the laptop?

./Dev

EDIT: Here's the working code to implement the mute, volume raise, and volume lower dedicated media controls. Just copy and paste this anywhere in the keyboard portion of your rc.xml and restart to initiate support.

~/.config/openbox/rc.xml

<!-- Keybindings for media buttons -->
    <keybind key="XF86AudioMute">
      <action name="Execute">
        <execute>amixer set Master toggle</execute>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="XF86AudioRaiseVolume">
      <action name="Execute">
        <execute>amixer set Master 3%+</execute>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="XF86AudioLowerVolume">
      <action name="Execute">
        <execute>amixer set Master 3%-</execute>
      </action>
    </keybind>

Last edited by dev/censor (2011-07-27 19:30:57)

anonymous · 2011-07-27 17:53:28

My dad has a Dell Inspiron E1505 however it has a Broadcom wireless and NVIDIA graphics. I tried an Ubuntu LiveCD once and it seemed to work fine.

dev/censor · 2011-07-27 18:00:14

Oh, the laptop works, there are just a lot of special functions that aren't implemented, especially in lightweight or modular distros. The E1505 also came in three models (I hate Dell for this crap), the Broadcom with NVIDIA, The Broadcom with ATI, and the (much worse) iwl3945 with NVIDIA (at least the GeForce 7 Go was somewhat of a saving grace...).
I just installed and booted #! from physical machine last night, so I'm still setting up conky, tint2, and my sysmenu. Any suggestions, Mr. Anonymoose?

./Dev

anonymous · 2011-07-27 18:17:00

I never tried the buttons but if they register with xev, you can setup keybinds for them. Also search the forums, there are several threads on keybinds/media buttons.

dev/censor · 2011-07-27 18:28:03

They do register, and I tried keybinds for the volume up and down to go in increments of 5%, but seemingly to no effect.

    <!-- Keybindings for Dell media buttons -->
    <keybind key="XF86AudioRaiseVolume">
      <action name="Execute">
        <execute>amixer -c 0 set PCM 5%+</execute>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="XF86AudioLowerVolume">
      <action name="Execute">
        <execute>amixer -c 0 set PCM 5%-</execute>
      </action>
    </keybind>

I noticed that it is effecting the PCM, but I want it to control Master volume. Is there a variable for that?

anonymous · 2011-07-27 18:29:10

Did you try using "Master" instead of "PCM"?

dev/censor · 2011-07-27 18:40:01

Yes, and master stood still.

I have googled amixer terminal commands and those two keybinds look like they should work with Master if I "set Master" but for some reason my laptop is stubborn.

Last edited by dev/censor (2011-07-27 18:51:36)

anonymous · 2011-07-27 18:55:41

Does the command work from the terminal? Did you check if your Master channel is already maxed?

Alternatively, try using this command:

amixer set Master 5+

dev/censor · 2011-07-27 19:01:38

the command works, but is moving in increments of 17% even with the given value of 5

dev/censor · 2011-07-27 19:15:18

So I must have farted in the wrong direction again, because now it's working just fine. I did, however, have to set the increment to +/- 3% because even then it's moving at 4-5% with each execution. But, 4-5% is just as good as 5% in my book, so now I'm off to trying to get global support keybinds with my media buttons. As I get them working correctly I'll post the code here, so anyone with an old Dell can copypasta it into their rc.xml
I'm trying so hard to switch from .conf to .xml and from nano/vi to gedit. I'm used to resorting to command line because I'm so bogged down with graphical bloat.

anonymous · 2011-07-27 19:41:08

You can still use nano/vi if you prefer them smile

dev/censor · 2011-07-27 19:55:20

oh, and I do for certain applications, but I'm enjoying the perks of a graphical environment that isn't running on 98% load.
Alright, so that's a bit of an exaggeration. I've haven't seen any cpu in anyone of my devices hit 98% since I made the switch to linux. Now, even with this old laptop, I rarely see either core hit 20% for more than 0.2-0.5 seconds.
I built this setup mainly as a terminal/workstation for my server, so I shouldn't see it jump much higher than that anyways.

CrunchBang Linux

SEARCH

#1 2011-07-27 16:25:56

#! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#2 2011-07-27 17:53:28

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#3 2011-07-27 18:00:14

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#4 2011-07-27 18:17:00

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#5 2011-07-27 18:28:03

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#6 2011-07-27 18:29:10

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#7 2011-07-27 18:40:01

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#8 2011-07-27 18:55:41

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#9 2011-07-27 19:01:38

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#10 2011-07-27 19:15:18

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#11 2011-07-27 19:41:08

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

#12 2011-07-27 19:55:20

Re: #! on a Dell Inspiron E1505

Board footer