Dell Latitude E5500

First tested on 11.2-RELEASE; retested on 14.0-STABLE as of 20241116. Known to fail with 15-CURRENT as of 20241121 (panic in broadcom init)

Hardware

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8700 @ 2.53GHz (2527.05-MHz 686-class CPU)
Memory: 4GB
Wireless: Intel WiFi Link 5100 (iwn(4)).

Support overview

Component		Status	Details
Graphics	Graphical sessions		Works better with the Intel driver.
Graphics	Backlight
Input devices	Touchpad		Model: GlidePoint. Neither two-finger nor side scrolling work. I'm yet to figure out how to configure it.
Media keys	Brightness
Media keys	Volume keys		Everything works although the mute button does not unmute (at least when using x11-wm/dwm).
Network	Ethernet
Network	Wi-Fi		No need to load any firmware manually. It works better when using `SYNCDHCP` instead of `DHCP` in `ifconfig_wlan0` in /etc/rc.conf.
Other	Battery
	Bluetooth	$/!\$
	SD-card reader	$/!\$
	Smart-card reader	$/!\$
	Suspend & resume		When using zzz(8) I am able to restore my X window sessions although I have to switch to other TTY consoles back and forth. It looks like it works much better if I use the media key with a moon on it (Fn+F1). This way everything just works flawlessly.
Ports	FireWire	$/!\$
	USB
	VGA
Sound	Headphone jack
Sound	Speakers
2018-07-12T13:11:46+0000

Legend
: OK
: Somewhat OK: requires additional tweaking or works worse than expected
: $/!\$ Status unknown, untested
: Does not work

Tweaks

Console

Add kld_list="i915kms" to /etc/rc.conf in order to increase font size in the console (this kernel module is loaded automatically anyway when you start the X server).

kms is short for kernel mode-switching, it lets the kernel do the modeswitching instead of it being done in userspace - this means that it applies to both console, Xorg, Wayland and any programs that set custom resolutions.

Installation

Problem: the machine does not boot from a USB stick. Tested with 10.4-RELEASE and 11.2-RELEASE.

In the bootloader escape to the loader prompt and enter:

set hw.vga.textmode=1

Xorg

Touchpad

Two-finger scrolling does not work out of the box.

I've tried adding the following mouse configuration into /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-mouse.conf but to no avail:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Mouse0"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "CorePointer"
        Option      "Protocol" "auto"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"
        Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
        Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
EndSection

References

Files

Todo: upload files from https://hackerspace.pl/~mpts/tmp/e5500/

CategoryLaptop

Laptops/Dell_Latitude_E5500 (last edited 2024-11-22T01:48:52+0000 by MarkLinimon)