Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10) on Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop

articles ✒ inspiron6400edgy

Note: Using Edgy i386, not 64-bit

This is an unofficial guide to installing Ubuntu Dapper Edgy (aka 6.10) onto a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop. It is not endorsed by Dell, Microsoft, Ubuntu, Linux, or for that matter, anybody. Your mileage may vary - all advice is followed at your on risk.

See also:

Hardware Spec

Where no notes are given but the device works, no special procedure was required during installation.

Component Works?Notes
Intel Core2 T7200 Processor (2x2.0 GHz, 4MB cache) ✓ See Kernel (below)
15.4" TFT (1280 x 800) ✓ Will be at 1024x768 until fglrx (ATI) drivers installed.
Touchpad ✓
ATI X1300 Graphics ✓ See Graphics Drivers (below)
TV-out Untested
120 GB SATA 5200rpm ✓
Integrated 10/100 ethernet ✓
Integrated 56k modem Untested
8x DVD+/-RW ✓
Intel 3945 wireless ✓
9-cell battery ✓
Internal soundcard and speakers ✓
Card reader Untested

Basic installation of Ubuntu

The partitions at the time of shipping are roughly: [ diagnostics ][ c:\ ][ d:\ ][ recovery ]. On my laptop I removed all but the diagnostics and split the free space between Linux and Windows XP (which I reinstalled). I would strongly advise anyone buying this laptop to pay £10 extra for the driver and Windows reinstallation disks (reinstalling Windows saved uninstalling all the trial software this laptop came with).

Download and burn an installation CD (from ubuntu.com), then install Dapper from it as usual.

Kernel

Use linux-image-generic, which has support for SMP and the CPU's extension instructions (like SSE3).

Graphics drivers

As always, the fglrx (proprietary ATI) graphics drivers in the Ubuntu repositories are little old (8.28.8). Edgy uses X.org 7.1 but those ATI drivers don't fully support 7.1 (resulting in rubbish video playback on the X1300 and a load of other chips). I downloaded 8.30.3 from the ATI site and used method 2 on this ATI/linux wiki to install it. Before running the installer I recommend you uninstall all fglrx stuff using apt-get remove, add fglrx to the disabled modules (as explained in the guide) and reboot, otherwise the installation of the new drivers may simply not work.

I had some problems with the new boot splash screen not displaying properly, so I editted /boot/grub/menu.lst and removed the "splash" option from my kernel entries. Apart from that, everything seems to work fine with the latest drivers. Note that this requires a few console commands when you upgrade your kernel to redo the fglrx module - see the wiki for more details.

Frequency change

This CPU can change the frequency of its two cores independently. This allows you to prolong battery life or max-out performance as you wish. To be able to do change the frequency manually with through an icon on your toolbar (in gnome), you need to reconfigure them to make them suid root.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets

There was a bug in gnome-applets in Dapper meaning you couldn't change the frequency of the second core manually. This is now fixed.

lscpi output

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7149
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832
03:01.1 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
03:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

Conclusion

All in all, this laptop works very well on Linux - in some respects even better than on Windows, e.g. better frequency scaling support. Dual screen is a bit easier on Windows than on Linux, but that's really just because of Xorg IMO.

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