OpenSUSE LEAP 15.5 on Dell Optiplex 3010 (Refurbished)

Introduction

I got this cheap refurbished desktop for my students to learn Linux on. But then I changed jobs to be a drug counselor so I took it home with me and turned it into a media center. I tried a Debian-based Kodi/entertainment system distribution but it didn't work out, and I couldn't figure out why. So I went back to the distribution I know the best: OpenSUSE. As always, click an image to view the original.

This article will help you with how to install OpenSUSE LEAP 15.4 on this laptop. But the usual riot act: I am not responsible for anything that happens as a result of you following these instructions. This article is just me telling the story of what worked for me.

HARDWARE COMPONENTS	STATUS UNDER LINUX	NOTES
Intel i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30 GHz	Works
System Memory: 8GB	Works	No upgrade possible at this time
Intel Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller	Works	This is the name from /sbin/lspci so take with a grain of salt
Toshiba 512GB HDD 3.5"	Works	See below for upgrade notes
Intel HD Audio 6 Series/C200	Works
Intel onboard USB 6 Series/C2000 (multiple ports)	Works	All USB 2.0 most likely
Intel 6 Series/C200 SATA	Works	Only has 2 ports, so buyer beware!
GLOTRENDS M.2 PCIe 4.0/3.0 Adapter Without Bracket	Works	Good cheap expansion
Kioxia BG4 NVMe SSD Controller (512GB)	Works	From my Dell Inspiron that I upgraded
Realtek Ethernet RTL8111/8168/8411	Works

Installation

At first, when I got this, I was going to leave Windows 10 on it "forever". But after careful consideration, I decided against it. So when I first got this computer I had made a dd image of the drive; I'll save this but I'll be using only Linux.

So before I installed the GLOTRENDS PCIe adapter for my laptop's old M.2, I installed normally to the internal hard drive. After, however, I tried to use the NVMe drive by itself.

That did not work because this system is so old that it doesn't support booting from PCIe. So my solution was to put the EFI and just the /boot directory (in a partition) on the native HDD and then everything else on the NVME M.2 SSD. And that worked very well.

After this, I remembered I had a 120GB SSD SATA 2.5" drive, so I then upgraded the native HDD to this, further increasing performance. With this setup, however, the 120GB SSD had the EFI partition, root partition, and swap partition, while the NVME drive was entirely for /home.

Network Setup

So using this as a home entertainment center means you may want to make things easier in terms of managing the device. Here are my recommendations.

First, set your router to hold a DHCP reservation for this machine. That way the IP address usually doesn't change.

Second, set OpenSSH up on the device and open port 22. I haven't bothered yet to set up a tighter defense for the network, but such a configuration would allow port 22 only within the LAN.

Devices

Here is the output of lspci.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd
        Gen Core processor DRAM Controller (rev 09)

        00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen
        Core processor PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)

        00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Xeon
        E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)

        00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6
        Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)

        00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series
        Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)

        00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series
        Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

        00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series
        Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b4)

        00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series
        Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev b4)

        00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series
        Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)

        00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation H61 Express Chipset LPC
        Controller (rev 04)

        00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series
        Chipset Family 6 port Desktop SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)

        00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset
        Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)

        01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: KIOXIA Corporation NVMe
        SSD Controller BG4

        03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
        RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev
        06)

Performance

Obviously the internal hard drive is going to be slower than the NVME, but here's the information anyways from hdparm -tT:

Factory HDD:

Timing cached reads: 12068 MB in 1.99 seconds = 6050.38 MB/sec

Timing buffered disk reads: 556 MB in 3.00 seconds = 185.15 MB/secNVME drive:

Timing cached reads: 12632 MB in 1.99 seconds = 6333.34 MB/sec

Timing buffered disk reads: 4298 MB in 3.00 seconds = 1432.48 MB/sec

120GB SATA SSD:

Timing cached reads: 15570 MB in 1.99 seconds = 7812.10 MB/sec

Timing buffered disk reads: 812 MB in 3.00 seconds = 270.28 MB/sec

Sound

This computer has an internal speaker, I think. However, it also supports sound over HDMI, which is good because I'm lazy.

Package-update-indicator

OpenSUSE LEAP 15.4's package-update-indicator app is a pain in the rear. On this machine, I went into Yast and configured the updates to happen on a daily basis and disabled delta rpms. I also removed execute permissions from the program itself.

TMPFS /tmp

On previous versions, you would have to add a line to make the /tmp directory tmpfs. But with OpenSUSE Linux 15.4, you can specify the /tmp during installation. I would recommend making /tmp a tmpfs entry during installation, especially with a solid state drive, to save write cycles, as well as to make /tmp more "temporary."

Installing Software

Installing software on OpenSUSE LEAP 15.4 is a good experience and very easy. I installed Kodi from Packman.

Sensors

I added the XFCE sensors plugin and enabled all the options (sensors) inside of it to see how many sensors the computer manifests over SMBus/I2C/serial. There are 11 sensors, unlike my last laptop. (Although maybe the last laptop had 22 because 11 were duplicated between I2C and ACPI.)

Other Info