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Dell OptiPlex 755 - openSUSE 11.1
Posted February 24th, 2009 by drem
OptiPlex are desktop computers for "small-medium buiseness" as said on the Dell website. Their configuration varies. The tested configuration was a 755 with a Intel Dual-Core processor and an ATI X1300 video card.
This is a small review of how linux works on it with a few tips (like how making the screen rotate with an ATI card - useful if you have a rotative display prefer to read "vertically")
Installation went well using the x64 DVD.
Using the Live USB install image (built by unetbootin), there were some small problems; you have to manually make the updates 2 times and you need to edit the GRUB (for a nice looking boot).
Graphic card
Before making an update, make sure to add the ATI repository (you can do that from YaST). After the update, it is recommended to open a terminal and execute:
> sudo sax2 -r
(enter the root password when asked - this will configure your screen)
Enabling screen rotation.
Some Dell OptiPlex desktops come with a rotative display. We will use the ATI card xrandr capability to rotate the screen.
First, open a terminal and type
> sudo aticonfig --set-pcs-str="DDX,EnableRandr12,TRUE"
then
> xrandr -q -d :0
this shoul print something like:
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 1024, maximum 1280 x 1280 DFP1 connected 1280x1024+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 376mm x 301mm 1280x1024 60.0*+ 75.0 70.0 60.0* 1280x960 60.0 1152x864 75.0 70.0 60.0 1280x768 59.9 1280x720 60.0 1024x768 75.0 72.0 70.1 60.0 800x600 72.2 75.0 70.0 60.3 56.2 720x480 60.0 640x480 75.0 72.8 75.0 60.0 640x400 75.1 59.9 512x384 60.0 74.9 400x300 60.7 320x240 75.6 60.0 320x200 75.5 60.1 CRT1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) TV disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) COMPONENT_VIDEO disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)note the second line which begins with "DFP1". this is the "screen" we want to rotate (in this example it is written the rotation it supports).
Now, the rotation can be done by using the following command:
> xrandr --output DFP1 --rotate left -d :0
of course, to rotate back, you need
> xrandr --output DFP1 --rotate left -d :0
With these lines you can make 2 scripts, change their permissions in "executable" and make 2 icons.
IMPORTANT!!! The rotation doesn't work with composite effects like Compiz. IT BREAKS THE X SERVER.
Other aspects
Everything seems to work well and all the hardware detected (like network card, card reader etc.)
Suspend-to-RAM works well out-of-the box.
Suspend-to-disk "works", but the mouse is inactive after resume (even with the X server restarted). Altough, this is the kind of bug that can be usualy fixed / worked around.
Dell OptiPlex seems to be a good linux machine. If you encounter problems on configuring linux on it and this short overview isn't enough, please leave a comment.
