Notes on Linux on a Dell Inspiron 17 5000 (2014, model no. 5748)
18 thoughts on “Notes on Linux on a Dell Inspiron 17 5000 (2014, model no. 5748)”
Hi Andy
Found your notes very helpful as I’m in process of doing the same thing. Think you’ll find the Intel card is 7260 not 7620. I had a minor
heart attack thinking I’d ordered the wrong card only to find there is no 7620 – D’OH!
Not meant as a criticism, I found the notes very useful. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Thanks for letting me know Pete, typo now corrected! Let me know how you get on. I find the signal levels at 5 GHz quite far down in comparison to my old Toshiba which comes factory fitted for 5 GHz so I suspect the Dell’s antennas aren’t a good match at the frequency… it does work though.
After installing 14.04 I faced the dreaded mouse stutter. As you mentioned, the 5748 doesn’t seem to use a Synaptics touchpad so the proto=imps fix doesn’t work. Simply using “synclient TouchpadOff=0” does work perfectly, hope that saves someone some effort!
Just a warning, after posting my comment, I found that the mouse was stuttering again and never found a solution. Maybe it was just mine. Decided to sell it and find a laptop dedicated to Linux..obviously putting Linux on it and finding things don’t work doesn’t qualify for a Dell return..
However, I’m ok with a stuttering trackpad, in fact, with Linux and cheap laptops I pretty much expect it. Many Windows based cheap laptops have horrible trackpads that stutter or are unreliable even under Windows. I recently bought 4 cheap HP laptops for a middle school robotics club I run and 3 of the four had crappy track pads. I normally use a regular mouse plugged into the laptop anyways.
My distro of choice is SuSe and the wireless works fine, right out of the box. It took a bit of wrestling with the EFI and secure boot but I was able to deal with that and get SuSe installed and booting. However, no trackpad at all. I will continue to work on it.
Overall though. I am impressed for the money. Overall the machine is a bit higher quality than I though it would be. It is a basic, cheap plastic laptop but has a better look and feel to it than other cheap, plastic laptops I have tried.
I ditched SuSe 13.1 and installed Ubuntu 14.04. Everything works great! The touchpad is nice and smooth and works fine.
Good comments guys, thanks. For the record, the touchpad works fine for me, all I’m missing is the multi-touch capability. I still hate the hideous lack of ‘real’ buttons and the way the touchpad rocks to the side when I have to right-click but I’m warming to it. Difficult to find a laptop with real buttons for the touchpad these days unless you go up to the real high-end business class.
I’ve also found using having a tilt on the keyboard improves it massively, I’m using one of these mini-risers when I’m at a table/desk and it’s so small it neatly slips into the laptop bag:
Thanks for this. I am going to buy one of this for my 76-year-old mother and install Mint on it. I’d like to get the wireless working, but she rarely uses it and could live without it. But wired Internet access works, I hope.
As for the trackpad, again, I’d like to get it working if possible, just because, but my mom much prefers a mouse. Any problems with a wired mouse? What about wireless?
Hi Dan. Wired network interface works fine (it’s a shame it’s only a 10/100 port but your mother probably won’t notice!) and USB mouse is fine too, you won’t have any problems there.
I’m guessing the default in Mint 17 is suspend-to-RAM and that works fine for me straight out of the box. Because of this I haven’t had any reason to try suspend-to-disk, also bear in mind that suspend-to-disk is a bad idea for solid-state hard drives which is what I have in mine…
Hi! I have an Inspiron 15 series 5000, and it is almost the same hadware. Touchpad is Synaptics, an I think it is the same on the whole Inspiron group.
Anyway, I am thinking about try Linux on my machine too, but since I always get half-functionality on newer notebooks with Linux, I am doing a bit of research first.
Hope you get yours fixed soon (and post more about it)…
i am running (i assume an identical) 5748, and i did notice on linuxmint17.3 (linux live) that mint did not connect to the wifi, however, after i went into driver manager, it found a proprietary driver match and now the stock wifi does in fact work on mint.
Hi Andy
Found your notes very helpful as I’m in process of doing the same thing. Think you’ll find the Intel card is 7260 not 7620. I had a minor
heart attack thinking I’d ordered the wrong card only to find there is no 7620 – D’OH!
Not meant as a criticism, I found the notes very useful. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Regards
Pete
Thanks for letting me know Pete, typo now corrected! Let me know how you get on. I find the signal levels at 5 GHz quite far down in comparison to my old Toshiba which comes factory fitted for 5 GHz so I suspect the Dell’s antennas aren’t a good match at the frequency… it does work though.
Hi Andy,
After installing 14.04 I faced the dreaded mouse stutter. As you mentioned, the 5748 doesn’t seem to use a Synaptics touchpad so the proto=imps fix doesn’t work. Simply using “synclient TouchpadOff=0” does work perfectly, hope that saves someone some effort!
Regards,
Brent
Thanks for this! I am looking for a cheap laptop to run Linux on and was specifically looking at this laptop!
Hi David,
Just a warning, after posting my comment, I found that the mouse was stuttering again and never found a solution. Maybe it was just mine. Decided to sell it and find a laptop dedicated to Linux..obviously putting Linux on it and finding things don’t work doesn’t qualify for a Dell return..
Too late! Fed Ex just delivered it!
However, I’m ok with a stuttering trackpad, in fact, with Linux and cheap laptops I pretty much expect it. Many Windows based cheap laptops have horrible trackpads that stutter or are unreliable even under Windows. I recently bought 4 cheap HP laptops for a middle school robotics club I run and 3 of the four had crappy track pads. I normally use a regular mouse plugged into the laptop anyways.
My distro of choice is SuSe and the wireless works fine, right out of the box. It took a bit of wrestling with the EFI and secure boot but I was able to deal with that and get SuSe installed and booting. However, no trackpad at all. I will continue to work on it.
Overall though. I am impressed for the money. Overall the machine is a bit higher quality than I though it would be. It is a basic, cheap plastic laptop but has a better look and feel to it than other cheap, plastic laptops I have tried.
I ditched SuSe 13.1 and installed Ubuntu 14.04. Everything works great! The touchpad is nice and smooth and works fine.
Good comments guys, thanks. For the record, the touchpad works fine for me, all I’m missing is the multi-touch capability. I still hate the hideous lack of ‘real’ buttons and the way the touchpad rocks to the side when I have to right-click but I’m warming to it. Difficult to find a laptop with real buttons for the touchpad these days unless you go up to the real high-end business class.
I’ve also found using having a tilt on the keyboard improves it massively, I’m using one of these mini-risers when I’m at a table/desk and it’s so small it neatly slips into the laptop bag:
http://www.laboratory424.com/project/mini-riser
Thanks for this. I am going to buy one of this for my 76-year-old mother and install Mint on it. I’d like to get the wireless working, but she rarely uses it and could live without it. But wired Internet access works, I hope.
As for the trackpad, again, I’d like to get it working if possible, just because, but my mom much prefers a mouse. Any problems with a wired mouse? What about wireless?
Hi Dan. Wired network interface works fine (it’s a shame it’s only a 10/100 port but your mother probably won’t notice!) and USB mouse is fine too, you won’t have any problems there.
I just installed Mint Cinnamon 17.5 on the Inspiron 7547 (15″) and the touchpad is not responsive. FWIW…
Hi,
Do suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk work on Mint?
Thanks,
Eric
I’m guessing the default in Mint 17 is suspend-to-RAM and that works fine for me straight out of the box. Because of this I haven’t had any reason to try suspend-to-disk, also bear in mind that suspend-to-disk is a bad idea for solid-state hard drives which is what I have in mine…
Thanks,
Good news with the suspend working! One more thing, do you know if there is a problem playing protected video content (flash DRM)?
I’m planning to install Mint on my Dell.
Hi! I have an Inspiron 15 series 5000, and it is almost the same hadware. Touchpad is Synaptics, an I think it is the same on the whole Inspiron group.
Anyway, I am thinking about try Linux on my machine too, but since I always get half-functionality on newer notebooks with Linux, I am doing a bit of research first.
Hope you get yours fixed soon (and post more about it)…
Good Luck!
I was able to make the wireless card work by installing the latest kernel (4.2.0), which I had to copy over by Flash drive.
I’m using an Inspiron 17 5000.
i am running (i assume an identical) 5748, and i did notice on linuxmint17.3 (linux live) that mint did not connect to the wifi, however, after i went into driver manager, it found a proprietary driver match and now the stock wifi does in fact work on mint.