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Installing Ubuntu Dapper on DELL Inspiron 9400

Last updated: Apr 10th, 2006

General Hardware Specifications of DELL Inspiron 9400:

Hardware Components

Status under Linux

Notes

INTEL Centrino T2400 Dual Core 1,83 GHz

Works

SMP Kernel needs to be installed.

17'' WUXGA Display

Works


ATI Mobility Raedon X1400

no accelleration, only VESA

At the moment, there is no driver for this card. VESA works with 1024x780 :-/

2 GB, SDRAM, 2DIMMs

Works


100 GB SATA Hard Drive

Works


100 Mbit LAN: Broadcom

Works

Works out-of-the-box. Kernel PCI Broadcom driver used.

Internal V.92 Modem: Conexant HDA D110 MDV

???

Not tested.

Internal 8X DVD +/- RW

Works


Internal WLAN: Intel Pro WLAN 3945 Internal Wireless for Duo Processors

Works

You have to download the driver from INTEL and compile your own kernel. (Didn't try WPA. WEP works fine.)

Internal Bluetooth module

Works

out-of-the-box.

80 Whr / 9 Cell Lithium-Ion Battery

Works


Internal sound: INTEL High definition AUDIO

Works (partially)

No special procedure required if using Kernel 2.6.15.X

It stopped working with Kernel 2.6.16.2, but I think that will be fixed soon.

Memory-Card-Slot (Memory Stick, MMC, xD): Ricoh

???

Not tested.

IEEE 1394: OHCI

seems to work

dmesg says everything is ok, but I couldn't test the hardware.

Touchpad

Works (partially)

I didn't get the horizontal scrolling bar working. But I also didn't try to fix it.

ACPI

Works (partially)

CPU-Frequency-Scaling works fine, but the „conservative“ governor seems to make problems.

USB

Works


This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.16.2

INSTALLATION

  1. The installation works out-of-the box, but gdm will give an error after booting.

  2. LAN and Bluetooth work instantly.

  1. The ATI drivers aren't ready yet. So you have to use the vesa driver by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf :/

  1. Download original driver from INTEL. Read and follow the installation instructions as described here in short:

  2. Download ieee80211 from www.sourceforge.net

  3. Build your own kernel WITHOUT ieee80211 support. Boot it.

  4. In the ieee80211-subdirectory do make && make install. („y“ to „delete old modules“)

  5. Now copy the INTEL Firmware to /lib/firmware (the INSTALL-Document by INTEL wants to use hotplug. Don't use the document here.)

  6. type „make“ in the driver and daemon subdirectories. Copy the daemon to /sbin.

  7. Go into the driver subdir and type „./load“ . If everything works, you copy the .ko-Module to /lib/modules/KERNEL-VERSION and do a „depmod -a“.

  8. Wonderful. We're done.

Unresolved issues