Installing Slackware 10.0 on Dell Latitude 100L

Last updated: Saturday 01 October 2005

General Hardware Specifications of my Dell Latitude 100L:

Hardware Components	Status under Linux	Notes
Celeron, 2.4 GHz	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
14.1 XGA+ TFT Display	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Intel® 852GMV integrated UMA graphics chipset	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
128MB(DDR), SDRAM at 266Mhz, 2DIMMs Plus 512MB (DDR), SDRAM at 333Mhz	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
30 GB ATA 100 Hard Drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Integrated Network Card	Works	Must install Broadcom Linux Driver BCM4400.
Internal 56k Modem	Works	Must install Linuxant HSF modem driver.
24X CD-ROM Drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
PCMCIA LG LW2110N	Works	Must install NDISWRAPPER.
64 WHr Lithium-Ion Battery	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Intel AC97 (82801DB); Integrated Stereo Speakers	Works	Use snd-intel8x0 module.
ABNT2 - Keyboard	Works	Use a special keymap for X and console modes.

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.4.31 but I've tested with the original bareacpi.i kernel 2.4.26 and it works very well.

Basic Installation of Slackware 10.0 (bareacpi.i):

Why to use Slackware 10.0:
Slackware Linux is the most complete, stable and user friendly Linux Distribution (my opinion).
Obtaining Slackware 10.0:
In my case, I bought a Linux Magazine with the complete Slackware Linux distribution, but you can download from many mirrors. See Slackware Site for a complete list of official mirrors.
Installing:
Follow the recomended steps in Slackware Site (Install Help). You will be asked to choose a pre compiled kernel during the install process. Choose the bareacpi.i kernel from Slackware CD.
Post-Install modifications/tweaks:
In Brazil, Dell Latitude 100L comes with an ABNT2 keyboard. The standard keymap ABNT2 (for console and X) does not work well with the compact ABNT2 keyboard. I've made some modifications on the original keymap. In this page you can download the modified keymaps for console and X environments.

Setting up additional features for Slackware 10.0

Wireless:
I use an external PCMCIA LG LW2110N card. To get it working on linux I used NdisWrapper with RTL8180 NDIS driver for Windows 2k from Realtek site. Follow the steps from NdisWrapper site to compile and install. After install NdisWrapper, extract NDIS driver in a folder of your choice and install the driver with the following command: ndiswrapper -i NET8180.inf.
Modem:
Dell Latitude 100L comes with a Conexant 56K internal modem. Use Linuxant HSF modem driver to get it working under Linux. Get the HSF driver from Linuxant site.TIP:When compiling the driver you will get an error message about 'CONFIG_SERIAL_CORE' kernel option. Don't worry about this. You can find a patch for the driver in Linuxant. Apply the patch and it will work. (files: hsf-7.18.00.05-kernconfig.patch and sf-7.18.00.05-kernconfig.patch)
Keyboard (ABNT2):
To get the keyboard working correctly under Slackware, I modified some keymaps for X and console. You can get it from this page. See the configuration files section to get information about using these modified keymaps.

Configuration Files

Keyboard for console:
Copy the br-abnt2-laptop.map.gz file to /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty folder. Change your rc.keymap file (located in /etc/rc.d folder) to something like this. You will need to execute rc.keymap to load your new configuration.
Keyboard for X:
Copy (make a backup of your original file) br file to /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/pc folder. Change your keybord configurations using xorgcfg to somethink like that.

Restart your X environment and your keyboard will work correctly.

Contact Information

email: lago (at) computersorcerer.com
MSN: edulago (at) msn.com
ICQ: 14329731

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