Debian Unstable on a Dell Latitude XT

Short Version

A fairly normal installation works fine to the point of a fully functional ordinary laptop. The tablet features now work, though multiple fingers one the digitizer is still not functional.
My xorg.conf. Its not clean, and may not be the best one can do, but I figure others might find some useful tidbits.

Updates

Xrandr rotation partially working

Touch screen working pretty nicely with wacom driver

Hardware status

CPU: Core 2 Duo	Works 64 and 32 bit modes work fine
Ethernet	Works Use the "tg3" driver. May require a more recent kernel.
Wireless 802.11n Trumobile (BCM4328)	Works with ndiswrapper.
SD reader	working with 2.6.28
Video	Partial Various functionality with binary FGLRX, radeon and radeonhd drivers. See below for details.
Digitizer (touch screen)	Working (but requires patches and building) Kernels older than 2.6.27 will need a patch. Wacom driver works nicely with a little patching
Touchpad (ALPS)	Partial (please let me know if you have sucess with the synaptics/alps driver) It works just fine as a mouse, but its been behaving weirdly for me with the synaptic/alps driver.

Debian install

The wired network card did not work with the driver version in the stable installation disk. Use lenny or later.

Video

Updated 2008-08-25

Feature	FGLRX	ati/radeon	radeonhd
Rotation	no	yes, but slow	yes, but slow
XV	yes	no	no
3D	yes	no	no
Switch to console	flakey	yes	flakey
Dynamic monitor control	yes, requires thirdparty control panel	yes with xrandr	yes with xrandr
Switch to console	flakey	yes	flakey

The open source drivers don't yet support XV, but mplayer with -vo x11 -zoom seems fast enough for everything I've tried so far. Mythtv playback is close to ok. FGLRX had problems with myth last time I tried it.
The recent addition of r600 drm support might work, but I haven't yet figured out how. If you get it working, please email me.
All drivers work fine with suspend and hibernation.
For the most part it seems the radeonhd driver is trailing the older ati/radeon driver for support of this chip. There does seem to be a bit of collaboration between the two groups and flow of code back forth. Eventually they should merge. When I first got the tablet, the radeon driver did not work at all and so I used the radeonhd driver. Today, I check the status page and decided to try the radeon driver again. So far it seems fine.

Touchscreen

Made by N-Trig.

update

A new patch (0001-Added-quirks-for-the-N-Trig-digitizer.patch for 2.6.28 and ntrig_quirks.patch for 2.6.27.6) adds quirks support. With this patch the normal wacom driver works with the proper configurations. See my xorg.conf for my current settings. I also have these lines in my .Xsession:

xsetwacom set stylus Button2 "button 3"

xsetwacom set eraser Button1 "button 2"

xsetwacom set touch Button10 "button 1"
For rotation, I wrote a script (xrotate.zsh) that calls xrandr and xsetwacom tadjust the video settings and set the parameters for the digitizer as well. I make no promises of userfriendlyness, so send me comments or updates if you want it more friendly.
I use xbindkeys to map the rotate button on the screen to run xrotate.
Though sloppy I also reset the digitizer parameters after sleep/hibernate using wac_reset.sh. This was a sloppy hack and leaves the digitizer in the normal orientation. I should probably just add a "reset_digitizer" option to my rotate script.

Palm Detection

While some palm detection seems to be in place, its just not enough for note taking. Here's a script toggle_touch.sh to toggle the touch input. It doesn't really work perfectly, but seems good enough for taking notes with the pen, I am not getting spurious doodles in xournal.

old version

For kernels older than 2.6.27, try this patch: ntrig_hid.patch
linuxwacom-0.8.1-3.ntrig_hack.patch, a patch for the wacom X driver.

My wacom patch is definitely just a hack. And not actually play nice with a real wacom tablet. This is just a hack on a beta version of a developement driver.
Issues in wcmUSB.c that the patch addresses:

One branch actually only configures a couple variables if the device id is wacom. This may cause it to ignore touch events (need to double check).

The kernel is sending axis 2 and 3 and button 9 for touch events. I'm not actually sure wether the kernel or X driver should be responsible for fixing that. It might also provide a cleaner solution for the next problem.

Pen events seem to come with interlaced touch events causing misshandling of some events.
With these patches I have pressure sensitivity with the pen. Two buttons assigned to the stylus device and one to the eraser. A single point with no pressure for the finger, but at least it works.
In addition to my xorg.conf I have these lines in my xsession:

xsetwacom set stylus Button2 "button 3"

xsetwacom set eraser Button1 "button 2"

xsetwacom set touch Button10 "button 1"
Note: with the wacom driver you can change what the buttons send. You can also use sequences and key strokes as well as mouse buttons.

Side note: install the grab and drag plugin for firefox. It does wonders if you want to use a webbrowser with just your fingers.

Ethernet

The bcm5756ME works just fine with the tg3 driver in current kernels.

Wireless ethernet

The truemobile 1500/1505 is a bcm4328 pre-n card that does not currently work with the b43 driver. But ndisdriver works. Just get the driver from dell. In my case, dell had left the driver installer on the hard drive in c:\drivers.

update

I added an Atheros 5008 based card in the second slot. The ath9k driver does work, but I can't say I'm particularly impressed yet. And using both cards simultaneously sometimes causes a little interference. As the ath9k driver matures, I expect to move away from the broadcom and ndiswrapper.

Bluetooth

Worked out of the box.

SD card reader

Should work with the sdhci driver, but so far I haven't had any success.

Touchpad

Its an alps and the synaptic/alps driver recognizes it, if you specify alps mode, but it does not autodetect. For me its been behaving weirdly when the driver is enabled and I haven't looked into it yet.

Finger Print Reader

Works just fine with thinkfinger. I even have typing free login working in console mode.

Screen Keys

There are eight buttons/keys mounted on the screen. All send relatively normal codes through the keyboard interface. The codes are not included in the keymap I was using, so I've added these mappings:

setkeycodes e01f 72 e01b 75 e023 77 e01e 80 e058 120 e018 121 e01a 122 e017 123

description	keycode	mapping
up	e01f	72
left	e01b	75
right	e023	77
down	e01e	80
key	e058	120
rotate	e018	121
wrench	e01a	122
mail	e017	123

I use xbindkeys for the non-arrow keys.

ACPI/power

Battery

With the DLV screen and the 1.2GHz cpu, I've been getting poor battery life (about 2 hours).

cpu control

I'm still experimenting with cpufreq controls of the 2 cores. Also sysfs seems to offer some additional features which need looking into.

Suspend

Memory sleep mode seems to mostly work. The hidraw devices seem to dissapear. Swapping batteries in the suspended state does not work.

Hibernate

Not yet tested.

Hinge Rotation

Need to write a wmi hook for it to work, whatever that means. It definitely is trying to make a wmi call through acpi.

TuxMobil
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