CentOS 6 on a Dell Latitude 2100

So here at work I have a Dell Latitude 2100 from 2009.
Although to be fair it wasn't mine initially I sort of inherited it.
Anyway it's a half decent system, inxi dump below (some information removed):

System: Host: 2100 Kernel: 3.17.0-1.el6.elrepo.i686 i686 (32 bit)
Desktop: N/A Distro: CentOS release 6.5 (Final) 

Machine: System: Dell (portable) product: Latitude 2100
Mobo: Dell model: 0W785N Bios: Dell v: A06 date: 07/30/2010

CPU: Single core Intel Atom N270 (-HT-) cache: 512 KB
Clock Speeds: 1: 1334 MHz 2: 1067 MHz

Graphics: Card: Intel Mobile 945GSE Express Integrated Graphics Controller
Display Server: X.Org 1.16.0 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 5280x877@1.0hz
GLX Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M OpenGL Engine
GLX Version: 1.4 (2.1 NVIDIA-10.0.43 310.41.05f01)
 

Audio: Card Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller
driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound: ALSA v: k3.17.0-1.el6.elrepo.i686
 

Network: Card-1: Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5764M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
driver: tg3
IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full
Card-2: Broadcom BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller
driver: b43-pci-bridge
IF: wlan0 state: up
 

Drives: HDD Total Size: 250.1GB (3.9% used)
ID-1: /dev/sda model: WDC_WD2500BEVT size: 250.1GB

Anyway it took some doing, but the system is working as I want it to, the details of what I did below:

First I added some additional repositories so now I have the following repositories active:

* atomic

 * base
* centosplus

 * elrepo

 * elrepo-extras
* elrepo-kernel

 * epel

 * extras
* fasttrack

 * ius

 * remi

 * rpmforge

 * rpmforge-extras

 * rpmfusion-free-updates

 * rpmfusion-nonfree-updates

 * updates

 * webtatic

Of course after adding all the repos I did yum -y upgrade to ensure everything was as new and fresh as possible.

I did have to exclude gd from the CentALT repository by adding exclude=gd* to the end of the repo file.

I also installed the kernel-ml from the elrepo-kernel repository and modified grub in /etc/grub.conf to make sure it was the default boot kernel.

I mean there isn't anything wrong with the 2.6 kernel used by default, I just wanted a 3.x kernel

Then I made sure Network Manager was on by default, 

chkconfig NetworkManager on

service NetworkManager start

chkconfig network off  

chkconfig wpa_supplicant off

I soon discovered that my wifi wasn't working.

I confirmed this with dmesg.

A google search later led me to here. I just followed the directions and now wireless works flawlessly.

wget http://bues.ch/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-018.tar.bz2 http://bues.ch/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-018.tar.bz2.asc gpg --verify b43-fwcutter-018.tar.bz2.asc tar xjf b43-fwcutter-018.tar.bz2 cd b43-fwcutter-018 make sudo make install cd ..

export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware" wget http://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 tar xjf broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 sudo b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR" broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.o

modprobe -r b43 bcma

modprobe b43

I made sure everything stuff with a reboot and as expected it did.

The main downside of the 2100 is the 1024x600 resolution. In an effort to set some stuff up and get around this I decided to enable X11 forwarding.

This allowed me test what I did next on my macbook pro which actually worked quite well. 

Browsers and Plugins were next on the agenda, firefox is included by default, but I wanted Chrome.

Unfortunately Google decided that Chrome and CentOS 6 weren't gonna be friends anymore.

I can't run CentOS 7 as it is x86_64 only and this atom isn't.

Anyway after some searching around the Google I found chromium will do what I want so I set out to install it.

    

sudo -i

yum localinstall http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/itecs/public/chromium/rhel6/noarch/chromium-release-1.1-1.noarch.rpm

cd /etc/yum.repos.d wget http://people.centos.org/hughesjr/chromium/6/chromium-el6.repo

yum install chromium

I had already done an ssh -Y to my 2100 from my mac and set out to test that it worked with

/opt/chromium/chrome-wrapper %U

So next step was flash

rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux

yum -y install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper alsa-plugins-pulseaudio libcurl

In Firefox about:plugins showed it was installed, but unfortunately there was still no flash support in Chromium.

That's when I came across this, and found pepper flash was what I needed.  

mkdir /tmp/working/
cd /tmp/working/

wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_i386.rpm

rpm2cpio google-chrome-stable_current_i386.rpm | cpio -idv

mkdir /opt/chromium-browser/PepperFlash/

cp opt/google/chrome/PepperFlash/* /opt/chromium-browser/PepperFlash/

Restart chromium and flash works too!!

The next step was Adobe Reader (yes I hate myself, I know there are lots of PDF readers, but I wanted this one).

sudo -i

cd /tmp wget http://ardownload.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i486linux_enu.rpm 

yum localinstall AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i486linux_enu.rpm

yum install nspluginwrapper.i686 libcanberra-gtk2.i686 gtk2-engines.i686 PackageKit-gtk-module.i686

yum localinstall AdobeReader_enu nspluginwrapper.i686

Then run acroread to open it and accept the EULA.

If you want your browsers to see it you have to copy some files:

cp /opt/Adobe/Reader9/Browser/intellinux/nppdf.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ 

Next up working Java plugin

Downloaded the RPM and followed their install instructions

Become root by running su and entering the super-user password.
Uninstall any earlier installations of the Java packages.
rpm -e <package_name>
Change to the directory in which you want to install. Type:
cd <directory path name>
For example, to install the software in the /usr/java/ directory, Type:
cd /usr/java

Install the package.
rpm -ivh jre-7u7-linux-i586.rpm



To configure the Java Plugin follow these steps:
Exit Firefox browser if it is already running.
Create a symbolic link to the libnpjp2.so file in the browser plugins directory
Go to the plugins sub-directory under the Firefox installation directory
cd <Firefox installation directory>/plugins

Create plugins directory if it does not exist.
Create the symbolic link

ln -s <Java installation directory>/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so



Then because I don't already hate myself enough I installed real player
wget http://client-software.real.com/free/unix/RealPlayer11GOLD.rpm
rpm -ivh RealPlayer11GOLD.rpm
realplay

I also installed VLC because it met all the other media dependencies I wanted installed.
yum -y install vlc

There were only two other packages I needed installed at this point SecureCRT and OwnCloud client.
That was just a matter of downloading the rpms and manually installing them.
I use OwnCloud to share my SecureCRT between PCs and I love that SecureCRT lets me access all my remote hosts regardless of my OS. I mean sure any terminal will do for SSH connections, but the convenience of SecureCRT is something I appreciate.

In case you were wondering I was using a pearson site to test all my browser plugins. This was a site I stumbled upon in my college days and it surprisingly still exists.