Ubuntu on a Dell B120 Laptop

In Spring 2006 I bought a Dell B120 laptop because it was only $500. I'm quite happy with the machine in and of itself, but it's given me many a headache as I've transitioned away from Windows towards Linux. I elected to install Ubuntu on my laptop. Having installed Ubuntu on my desktop without any problems, I was hoping I would have similar success with my laptop. This wasn't the case. There are a few major issues that I have had to solve. Unfortunately, I didn't document my fixes as I went along. This page is my attempt to remember where I found help and what I ultimately did to solve these problems. Hopefully it will be helpful for the few other people who are running Ubuntu on a B120. Please feel free to email me any suggestions if you too have experience with Ubuntu on a B120 or if you have any questions.

Wireless

Getting my wireless to work properly was the most difficult problem to fix. But, it works well now. The problem is that the wireless card is based on a Broadcom chip. Unfortunately, Broadcom does not offer support to Ubuntu users. So, you have to do some leg work to get things going. Essentially, you need to install and run something call ndiswrapper. There are two ways to go about this. The easiest way is to follow the instructions on this thread: Braoadcom wireless setup script. This will do everything for you, but it's like taking your car to the mechanic; you have no idea what was done and you trust that it works. Option two would be to follow this thread: Broadcom wireless setup HowTo. The only problem is that this thread doesn't tell you how to obtain the Broadcom drivers. There are many sources. The best thing to do is to get the needed files from your Windows partition (assuming you have one). If you have Windows on your machine you'll find the following two files in the /Windows/System32/Drivers/ directory: bcmwl5.sys and bcmwl5.inf. Make copies of both of them. Put the copies on your Ubuntu desktop. Tip: Make sure your wireless radio is enabled. You can toggle between enabled and disabled status with Fn-F2 (pressing the F2 key while holding down the Fn button).

Screen Resolution

The B120 has a wide screen whose best resolution is 1280x800 (with a refresh rate of 60 hz). Unfortunately, when you install Ubuntu, you won't get this resolution as an option. The fix is fairly simple. One of the main things that you will do to fix this problem is modify the xorg.conf file. This file saves configuration settings for the different components of your hardware such as your monitor/screen, keyboard, mouse, etc. Normally, when installing Ubuntu, proper configuration of hardware components is done automatically. This isn't the case for widescreen resolution. There is an excellent step-by-step guide on the Ubuntu Forums Web site that will walk you through the process that will fix your resolution problem. This is the process I followed and it worked like a charm. The guide says that it's for the Hoary version of Ubuntu, but it should work the same for Dapper.

Microphone

See update below

I spent months trying to get my microphone to work so that I could use Skype, a program that is essential for my work. After hours of fruitless effort, I found what appears to be a simple fix. The solution was noted by Capriccio on the following forum page: Mic will not record. Essentially what you need to do is edit this file: /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base. Follow these steps:

  1. Backup the alsa-base file with this command: "sudo cp /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base_bak".
  2. Open the file with gedit with this command: "sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base".
  3. Add the following line to the end of the file: "options snd-hda-intel model=ref". Then save the file. (Note, you have to close gedit to return to your active terminal session.)
  4. Reboot the computer.
  5. After rebooting, you'll need to tinker with your volumes. Double click on your main volume control (the icon that looks like a speaker next to the date). First, make sure all your controls are displayed. To do so, click on preferences under the Volume Control window's edit menu. Make sure all entries in this list are checked.
  6. Next, make sure your Input Source is "Mic".
  7. Verify that your capture volume is not muted and is increased to the maximum value. You can now close the volume control.
  8. Open Sound Recorder (which can be found in the Applications menu under Sound and Video) and test out your mic.
If this procedure doesn't fix your recording difficulties, then you may consider compiling the latest version of ALSA. Prior to implementing the above fix, I upgraded to the latest version of ALSA (1.0.11). Therefore, I'm not positive that the fix will work if you are running an older version of ALSA, but I think it will. Recompiling ALSA takes a bit of time and is tricky if you are a newbie to Ubuntu (like I am), so hopefully the above fix will work with whatever version of ALSA you have.

Update: The fix described above was done while running the Dapper Dan version of Ubuntu. I recently upgraded to Edgy Eft. Subsequently, my microphone no longer works. I haven't found the time to solve the problem yet. When I do, I'll update this page.

Muting external speakers when headphones plugged in

One of the strangest quirks about using Ubuntu on my laptop is that my external speakers would not mute when I plugged in my headphones. Many people have this problem, I found out. I never solved the problem with Breezy, but once I upgraded to Dapper Dan, the problem disappeared. Low and behold, I just discovered that the problem reappeared after upgrading to Edgy Eft. But I found a very simple solution. I edited the following file: /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base. The last line of the file originally said "options snd-hda-intel model=ref". I changed this to "options snd-hda-intel model=STAC9200." After rebooting, the problem was solved. The speakers now mute when headphones are plugged in. Apparently, specifying the model of the Intel sound card makes a big difference. Hope this works for you.
Daren Nicholson

Last Modified: 2007 Jan 23 1