I am considering buying a Dell Inspiron 17 5000 laptop with FHD screen.

I prefer the i7 version, but it comes with an AMD Radeon R5 M355 GPU. I understand support is limited. Can I run exclusively on the integrated Intel GPU? Will it provide Full HD? (1920 x 1080). The resolution is prime importance. Graphic performance (speed) is not relevant.

The i5 version comes with only the Intel GPU. I assume that one is supported anyway.

Any more compatibility issues? Wireless? Touchpad? Suspend?

I plan to run Debian on the laptop. Testing/Unstable might be acceptable if I have to.

jlinkels

I have similar graphics requirements (like up to 1920x1080, speed not a big thing).

I have An i3, & HD4000 graphics. I presume your Intel card is bigger/better. Movies sometimes lose lip sync on flash - that's the only complaint.

I have no idea if you can keep it to one card, but not defining the Radeon, or installing drivers might be a good way to go about it.

Dell usually means broadcom issues.

Without seeing the internals I'd say that if there is a true intel video then it should work stand alone.

The amd video is lower end laptop model.

The touch screen may have some issues.

No, the AMD is included in the high end models. AMD graphics > Intel (on Windows).

No, the AMD is included in the high end models. AMD graphics > Intel (on Windows).

From the way the Dell sight reads, the Intel graphics are totally disabled in the i7 model, so you'd be stuck with the AMD.

This is something to be aware of though. While the Latitude line usually uses Intel wifi, the Inspiron line, since price is the primary goal, often uses Broadcom. While most Broadcom chips can be made to work with Linux, it's not "plug and play" like Intel is.

I have issues with Dell, whose factory was local until recently.

Their build quality is poor, especially on their Inspiring & other cheapo lines. You get better from Latitudes & servers.

Their guarantee isn't worth much.
A friend of mine had a CD Drive sit down under windows. It was fairly clearly the drive, but tech support (from India) did not have replacing the hardware on their list of options and he was messed around for weeks ringing them, and them getting him to reinstall this, that, & the other. I can only presume that you would fare worse with Linux as the OS, because that would be blamed for any faults.

Doesn't seem too good to me. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gp...Radeon+R5+M335

Good is relative.

Haha, that must be a mistake in the test procedure. Or they used the wrong driver or whatsoever. I am far from a expert on video cards but I can't imagine a card performing on 10% or 5% of top(?) performance cards.

But even if the test figures are correct, I don't care as long as I can use the Intel GPU and blacklist the Radeon driver. I use this machine for work, a.k.a. business applications, not for gaming. As long as KDE runs (with desktop effects, silly me) I am fine.

jlinkels

Thanks for the warning. I have to restock WiFi USB sticks anyway so I order them right away.

Aaarrrruuumm, I prefer to use my computer as a computer, not like a smartphone. I hope the touchscreen drivers are broken beyond any fix

jlinkels

Any update on how it worked out for you? I'm using a Dell 5000 right now and Ubuntu has it's little annoying quirks.

Instead of using a usb wifi, you can replace the wireless NIC with a intel one, just another option. You can probably get the broadcom to work, just a PITA.

I have not installed Linux yet. Until now I only have used the laptop to migrate a bunch of Outlook very large accounts to IMAP for one of my customers. Since I have the laptop as spare there was no immediate need for installing Linux.

However I tried once to boot from a Linux live stick to see what would happen.

Now mind you, I only inserted a Debian Live stick and tried to boot. It did not boot, but after that, Windows would not boot either. Only that stupid rotating animation forever.

Long story short, I had to reset Windows to the initial state (= fully clean while keeping the home directory) so it would boot again. Never any error message whatsoever. So I never knew what happened.

That is the status for this moment. When I have nothing better to do I might try again.

jlinkels