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.

Wal-Mart 4GB Flash Drive Cheap

So you may have clicked on the link and seen this drive is still $30. However I found the exact same one in stores for $19.88. And it's 2GB cousing was only $12.88. Considering my largest drive is a several years old 512MB, also Sandisk. I decided 4GB at this price, not bad at all. So the moral of the story is always check to see if things are on sale and if they are, buy them.

Update: I did notice however Wal-Mart has a Kingston 4GB DataTraveler 100 USB 2.0 Flash Drive for $19.88. However, from personal experience of having owned a 1GB Data Traveler several years ago I can't really recommend this product, although it is cheap.