Debian 8.2 on the Dell Inspiron 5558

Now that the Dell Inspiron 5558 is in place and several Linux distributions have been successfully installed, I've been able to update it and oscillate between this system and my older Gateway 2000 17" PA6A and my Lenovo 3000 Y410 older systems.

They are all working fine, but there is a decidedly large difference in responsiveness and performance advantage on this current generation Dell laptop.  The only thing slowing it down are network or server resources, so usually it is quite fast and responsive.

With 8 GB of system memory, Dual core Intel Core i7-5500U with 4096 K cache,
1000.2GB disk (with 1.3% used), the system has plenty of capacity and excess bandwidth for Debian 8.2 and other current generation software.

A query of resource utilization yields:

inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: debian Kernel: 3.16.0-4-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 4.8.4) Desktop: Xfce 4.12.2 (Gtk 2.24.25)
           Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 8
Machine:   System: Dell product: Inspiron 5558 v: 01
           Mobo: Dell model: 086DKN v: A00 Bios: Dell v: A04 date: 08/06/2015
CPU:       Dual core Intel Core i7-5500U (-HT-MCP-) cache: 4096 KB
           flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 9576
           clock speeds: max: 3000 MHz 1: 2400 MHz 2: 2515 MHz 3: 2410 MHz 4: 2400 MHz
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel Broadwell-U Integrated Graphics bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Card-2: NVIDIA Device 1299 bus-ID: 08:00.0
           Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1366x768@60.00hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 5500 (Broadwell GT2)
           GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.3.2 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card-1 Intel Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Card-2 Intel Broadwell-U Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:03.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k3.16.0-4-amd64
Network:   Card-1: Intel Wireless 3160 bus-ID: 06:00.0
           IF: N/A state: N/A mac: N/A
           Card-2: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller
           driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: e000 bus-ID: 07:00.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac:
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 1000.2GB (1.3% used) ID-1: /dev/sda model: ST1000LM024_HN size: 1000.2GB temp: 30C
Partition: ID-1: / size: 99G used: 4.3G (5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda4
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 8.49GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda2
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 51.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 155 Uptime: 33 min Memory: 712.4/7914.3MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 4.9.2
           Client: Shell (bash 4.3.301) inxi: 2.2.28

Dell Inspiron 15 - 5558 with GPT, UEFI, filling with Linux distributions

I picked up this system a few months ago, and it came with Windows 10, which was (and as far as I know) still is, in a state of testing prior to its eventual release.

I gave Windows 10 a chance.  I was going to do multiple booting with Windows 10 and other systems.  It has some interesting new application features, including stand-alone Web-based instances of several common Web-based applications, such as Mail, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon Kindle, and probably many others too.

This Dell Inspiron 15, Model 5558, has quite a bit of memory - 8 GB, the disk is a ST1000LM024_HN size: 1000.2GB - that's 1 Tera byte or 1000 GB.  So this system has plenty of space, plenty of memory, and plenty of processor capability.

Windows 10 ran "OK", but that was about it.  The system ought to run well.  The problem is that it didn't, not in every respect.  The networking must have been a work in progress, or perhaps a "rework".  It had trouble remaining "up"; connections would regularly drop and reconnect.


So after a trial of several weeks, where I was booting from USB often, just to get a system that would keep the network "upright" (MX-15), I finally canned Windows 10 and sought to find some Linux systems that would work.

I had some unexpected difficulties.  It took me a lot longer than I initially intended to get a good file system configuration and a boot loader that would work properly with it.  I could have - and I did for a while, go to an old fashioned IDE disk configuration, with up to four primary partitions and a few extended partitions, but that is a misuse of this hardware.  I then went to a "GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a standard for the layout of the partition table on a physical hard disk, using globally unique identifiers (GUID). Although it forms a part of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) standard (Unified EFI Forum proposed replacement for the PC BIOS), it is also used on some BIOS systems because of the limitations of master boot record (MBR) partition tables, which use 32 bits for storing logical block addresses (LBA) and size information on a traditionally 512 byte disk sector." (quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table ).

I now have several Linux-based systems installed: Fedora 23 (Xfce), MX-15 (Xfce), Debian 8.2 (Xfce), Linux Mint 17.3 (Xfce), antiX 15, and openSUSE Leap 42.1 (Xfce).  All of them are 64-bit implementations, all of them are now bootable from the UEFI boot loader, which is implemented on Fedora 23 and openSUSE Leap from the GRUB-EFI implementation.  I used Fedora 23 to get the multiple systems accessible, and I also have multiple USB sticks that I can alternatively use to access not only this, but other systems as well.

After over a month of fiddling around, I now have things in a pretty usable form and all of them readily outperform Windows 10, plus most of them have similar capabilities.  I really don't need Windows any more.  I use Google Docs and Libre Office for the occasional office application and I have no other home needs for anything else.