Karmic 9.10 Dell Ubuntu and BIOS

Why not cover all the bases in one post, I figured….

The first thing I noticed is that my Dell laptop (Latitude D531) was more difficult to see.  It looked as if the laptop thought it was on battery and had dimmed the display, but worse.  Last night I tried to live with it, hoping a reboot would cure the issue (have I been using Windows too long?).  Tonight it appeared even more dim (kinda like some of my coworkers).

I recently went from Xubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 but did a fresh install to take advantage of the 64 bit version (you can’t upgrade from 32 to 64 bit).  I wondered if the distro had sprung a leak or something.

Time for detective work.

I checked every setting I could find but nothing affected the brightness.  I had been thinking of checking to see if there were any BIOS updates anyway so I went to Dell and found it was past time (A05 to A08).  Hoping this would be my cure, I downloaded the file.

Naturally the file exists only for Windows users (.EXE).  Although WINE might run it, this was a bit too important for testing purposes.  Screw up a BIOS upgrade and you can potentially brick the box.

I remember when I first got the laptop, I located some utility or process that Dell unofficially offered that would upgrade the BIOS without running Windows.  A bit of searching turned up one method, which involved downloading a file and compiling it, which would add the BIOS upgrade to the startup.  This failed immediately, with the choice never even appearing.

These utilities were largely set up to produce a boot floppy.  Go ahead – ask me where my laptop floppy drive is. How the *$&# should I know?  I haven’t seen it since I unpacked it two years or so ago.

The next step was downloading a RPM version and converting it (using alien -d).  That also failed, with all sorts of interesting errors I didn’t understand and was not in any mood to research.

DOGGUS INTERRUPTUS

It was at precisely this point that my wife came down the steps.  It seems she had her forty five minutes of sleep and was headed down to say hello.  She fed Satan (the cat) and on her way out front for a smoke, told Marshall (the dog) not to go in the kitchen.

As soon as the door shut, Marshall ran right into the kitchen (to eat Satan’s food).

I yelled, the house vibrated, and Marshall left the kitchen.  He headed straight for the bathroom, whereupon he started drinking from the toilet (which my wife leaves up, not me).

I yelled again, the house vibrated again, the neighbors groaned, and the dog left the bathroom.

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE LAPTOP

I continued, even more agitated than when I started.

All had failed thus far, so I went back to searching.  There was a community-supported method, which started to resemble a bad Polish joke: first follow the directions HERE.  Click.  Go back to the other page and follow the directions.  Click.

Finally I discovered another Dell utility that not only installed, but told me where to get the correct BIOS header (ambiguous directions) and how to run it.  So run it I did (by rebooting).

POOF

What should appear but the Dell BIOS screen.   It sat there.

After a while, I started to wonder if it was doing anything more than sitting there, mocking me.  There were no progress bars or any indication it was doing anything at all (other than the snickering I knew it was doing at my expense).

When I put the laptop down to get Marshall some water, it seemed to spontaneously reboot.  I chose to take this as a sign that the BIOS had been upgraded.  I still haven’t confirmed it and might not do it for another year, for fear of discovering it hasn’t.

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Unfortunately the BIOS upgrade did not fix the dimness of the display.  I got into the BIOS before the (alleged) update and discovered that the default for AC display brightness was almost all the way down, as opposed to all the way up, where it should have been.

I did not alter that setting but something sure did.

KARMIC KINKAJOU

After about a week of running 9.10, I have to say I like it.  Aside from the aforementioned Software Center, the boot and shutdown times have shortened noticeably.

It’s difficult to make scientific observations because I went from 32 to 64 bit.  I can heartily recommend 64 bit Ubuntu to anyone with a processor that will run it.  The difference is night and day.  The computer sped up like mad.  I don’t see this much improvement from hardware upgrades, no less free operating system upgrades.

I have read a few articles about people getting burned by 9.10 but I honestly haven’t had any issues.  The only weirdness I noticed was some audio stuttering on a work box and that when I shut down an audio player, the display disappears a bit before the sound stops.   Not what I’d call show stoppers.

Until next time.