Bulbous, Not Tapered

Fedora 8 works quite well on the D620 right out of the box, and with a few tweaks can be just about fully supported. This guide summarizes what I’ve done to get things working to my satisfaction. It is not a step by step howto, but does attempt to link to more detailed resources when they are available. The table below shows at a glance what is and isn’t working well on my system. Most items worked immediately after install without manual intervention, italic items were made fully functional after some manual configuration, bold items have significant unsolved issues associated with them.

• Dual-core Processor: Both cores are detected on the 2.17GHz Intel Core Duo processor, the 32bit i686 smp kernel is installed and just works. Dynamic CPU frequency scaling works well and if you wish to monitor/change the scaling behavior there’s a gnome panel applet to do so. I haven’t tried the 64 bit build, but most reports I’ve read indicate that it works well.
• USB: Works, no config needed.
• PCMCIA Slot: Works, no config needed.
• Touchpad/Track Stick: Works, no config needed. Install gsynaptics from Extras if you want to customize the trackpad behavior.
• Suspend to Ram: How this works will depend on the options you ordered your laptop with and the video drivers you’re using. My understanding is that it will work fine out of the box with Intel graphics or if you’re using the open source NV drivers with your NVidia card, however both of these options have fairly poor 3D performance. With some tweaking, suspend can also be made to work when using the proprietary drivers that will allow you to have strong 3D performance with one of the Quadro cards offered in the D620. Classohm.org has detailed instructions (for the D800/F7, but they apply here as well). Since the NVidia cards offered in the D620 are PCI-E and not AGP, you can skip the AGP tweaks and just create the scripts in /etc/pm/config.d/. I’ve tested suspend with kernel 2.6.23.9-85/smp.
• Hibernate to Disk: Untested, please report if this works out of the box or if you have a link with instructions on any required tweaking.
• Ethernet: Works, no config needed.
• Wireless Networking: I didn’t have to jump through any hoops, other than to enable the network manager applet in order to avoid using iwconfig from the terminal all the time. Dawid Lorenz reports trouble that he solved by switching from the built in iwl3945 to the freshrpm’s ipw3945, which have worked well for me on previous versions of Fedora. Note that the awful Broadcom 4310 required ndis-wrapper to be supported in past versions of Fedora, I’m not certain what state it’s in today.
• Bluetooth: Works, no config needed.
• 2D Video: Works, no config needed.
• 3D Acceleration: The NVidia Quadro 110M works well after installing nvidia-x11-drv from freshrpms, bumping glxgears performance from ~900fps to ~2300fps. Don’t forget to install kernel-devel for your kernel version and reboot. Note that installing the proprietary drivers will bork suspend/resume until you fix it using the instructions above.
• External Monitor: If all you want is to switch to the external output instead of the internal LCD, you can do so easily right out of the box. Use the screen resolution control panel to set your resolution, and Fn-F8 to toggle between the displays. If you choose to install the NVidia driver, it includes a simple dialog for setting up multimonitor support using TwinView. TwinView isn’t perfect, windows maximize dumbly (across both displays) and if the resolutions of the two monitors are mismatched there’s an area where it’s possible to move the mouse and place windows that doesn’t show up in any monitor. All in all, it’s a bit lame but does get the job done in a pinch.
• CD/DVD Burning: Works out of the box. At one time this tweak substantially improved burn speed and system responsiveness while burning, I haven’t tested to determine if it’s still needed. Post a comment if you’ve done testing.
• Sound Playback: Works, no config needed.
• Sound Recording: Works, no config needed. If you’re not getting recorded sound, check the Volume Control app to make sure that capture is enabled and the recording level isn’t way down.
• Volume Keys: Now work out of the box. You can mess with the key bindings in System –> Preferences –> Keyboard shortcuts but they control volume without any tweaking now.
• Radio On/Off Switch: Works fine, and has a noticeable effect on battery life. You may need to “up” the interface with the connection manager of your choice if you enable the radio while the system is running.
• ACPI Power Management: All the power management features work (fan speed autoadjusts, cpu frequency scaling works, there’s a gnome applet to easily control it).
• Fingerprint Reader: Untested.
• Modem: Untested.

Output of lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72M [Quadro NVS 110M/GeForce Go 7300] (rev a1)
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ601/6912/711E0 CardBus/SmartCardBus Controller (rev 40)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5752 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)[/text]