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Saturday, March 31, 2007

Feisty Fawn Beta on the Dell Inspiron 1501

I installed the beta of Feisty Fawn last night, so far everything is coming up roses.

Installation:
You no longer need to add pci=nomsi to your boot param. Now you just insert the LiveCD and click install.

Wi-Fi:
Still doesn't work out of the box but my wi-fi guide works in Feisty, setup and installation are the same. The biggest addition and the reason I was so anxious to get Feisty running on my laptop is the new built-in WiFi manager. You can set your connection to roaming and it scan available connections letting you hop from one to another easily. Now Ubuntu works much better on the go.

Repositories:
The restricted and multiverse repos are enabled by default which saves just about everyone the hassle of doing it themselves.

ATI Proprietary Driver:
Feisty includes a Restricted Driver Manager
(go to System>Administration to find) with 3 clicks I had ATI's 8.34.8 fglrx driver installed, configured and 3D enabled. I wonder if they will support ATI newer versions of the driver?

Installing Codecs:
WOW! I tried to open a .avi and a menu popped up telling me I needed the proper codecs. Selected the codecs for my media and after it installed the file started playing. No more Automatix, no more copy and paste. Two clicks and I was watching Heroes.

Beryl:
Got an XGL session working, Beryl installed but not working together. On Beryl-Project's installation page you get a blank screen. Hopefully with some poking around it will work.

Card Reader:

It isn't working, worked in edgy. This is the only major setback right now.

Overall Feisty's Beta is great. Not recommended for people not comfortable with beta software though. Now Go Get It.
edited by pHreaksYcle

19 comments:

Jesus M. Rodriguez said...

I followed your guide to get 6.1 installed for Feisty Fawn Beta. I got wireless working but only with iwconfig and had to run dhclient seperately.

Have you gotten NEtworkManager to work with Feisty Fawn?

Unknown said...

You have a great clean page going with some awesome tutorials matt. Keep up the great work.

redDEAD said...

Jesus your post confuses me. 6.1 for feisty fawn beta? Did you install edgy then upgrade to Feisty? ndiswrapper works great just like it did in Edgy. It not the easiest thing to do but all you have to do is take it slow and follow my guide. I just used to get it working on my Dell 1501.

sethmo said...

I got the WIFI drivers install no problem, just used ndiswrapper-1.41 instead of 1.32 that the guide shows. Works with WPA right out of the box once installed :)

For the Ati restricted drivers, I go there and click the box for enable, I click on Enable Driver, but nothing happens, it still doesnt have a check in the "Enable" or "In Use" boxes.

And any luck on Beryl? Havent tried that one yet :)

redDEAD said...

yeah i used the ndiswrapper 1.41 too,wonder why your ati driver isn't installing. You can use the ati driver guide to do it manually. Beryl isn't working for me at all. Tried ten different ways.

sethmo said...

I reinstalled Feisty and the AMD drivers installed from the Restricted Drivers list, weird.

Definitely update us if you figure anything out about Beryl :)

redDEAD said...

Seth thats why it's called a beta lol

sethmo said...

Yah, I meant to say ATI drivers, but once they installed the max res I could use was 1024x768! Then I disabled the restricted driver and it wouldnt boot up so I just reinstalled once more haha.

bfrond said...

Have you managed to let the special keys working in Feisty? I mean brightness control, switching on/off the wifi, suspending...
The only ones working in my case are volume and muting...

I've a freshly installed Feisty 64

bfrond said...

Have you managed to let the special keys working in Feisty?
I mean brightness control, suspend, wifi on/off...
The only ones working in my case (freshly installed Feisty 64) are volume control and muting...

bfrond said...

Have you managed to let the special keys working in Feisty?
I mean brightness control, suspend, wifi on/off...
The only ones working in my case (freshly installed Feisty 64) are volume control and muting...

bfrond said...

Have you managed to let the special keys working in Feisty?
I mean brightness control, suspend, wifi on/off...
The only ones working in my case (freshly installed Feisty 64) are volume control and muting...

bfrond said...

sorry, I've posted my comment several times, didn't realise that it was already forwarded for your approval...

Red said...

I just installed Feisty this morning fresh and to get Beryl working I simply did:

sudo aptitude install beryl emerald-themes

done.

I'm loving Feisty so far. Two more weeks for release!

Unknown said...

Normally I don't use beta software but Feisty seems so good that I can't wait 2 weeks until it comes out!!!

Ogo said...

Hi,

Thanks for all the tips and your blog !

After the last update of tonight (i think the kernel was updated), my 1501 is able to read&write an SD Card with feisty beta. It was mounted automatically. I haven't done anything else so I bet it will work for everyone.

Best regards,

Ogo

Unknown said...

Does someone know where is the Restricted Driver Manager in kubuntu?

Unknown said...

Thanks for this great Blog. I was able to install everything in 1501.

But not the Brightness Control .. Would you know a fix ?

redDEAD said...

use feisty's non-beta release and bios 1.7