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Installing Ubuntu 5.04 on Dell Latitude D410

Last updated: 2005-06-07

General Hardware Specifications of Dell Latitude D410:

Hardware Components	Status under Linux	Notes
Pentium-M Processor, 1.6 GHz	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
14.1 SXGA+ TFT Display	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Intel i915 Integrated	Works	Fully autodetected, including DRI (some VGA out issues, see below)
1024MB, DDR2, 1DIMM	Works	No special procedure required during installation
60 GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Integrated Network Card	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Internal 56k Modem	Doesn't Work	In progress
Modular USB DVD Drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Internal miniPCI Intel IPW2200 802.11b/g	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Lithium-Ion Battery	Works	No special procedure required during installation
SigmaTel (snd-intel8x0) Sound Card	Works	No special procedure required during installation

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.10

Basic Installation of Ubuntu 5.04:

Why to use Ubuntu 5.04
I tried installing Debian 3.1 initially, but could not proceed - the disk controller, video, networking and sound were all unsupported by Debian 3.1's 2.6.8 or 2.4.27 kernels. Similarly, Fedora 3 was unable to find the hard disk.
Obtaining Ubuntu 5.04
Visit Ubuntu's webpage
Installing
No special action is required, installation is mostly automated (other than some initial steps, and user account creation)
Post-Install modifications/tweaks
- Suspend-to-RAM requires removal of a comment in /etc/default/acpi-support, such that "ACPI_SLEEP=true"
- VGA out does not function correctly on i810 and subsequent Intel graphics solutions. the package "i810switch" provides some output functionality, but with a massively degraded image quality. "i855-crt" provides improved image quality, but does not support i915, without use of a patch I wrote for the purpose here. To use the patch, open a root terminal, and run:
  - apt-get build-dep i855-crt
  - apt-get source i855-crt
  - apt-get install fakeroot
  - cd i855-crt-0.4
  - patch -p0 < /path/to/patch.diff
  - dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc
  - dpkg -i ../i855-crt_0.4ubuntu1_i386.deb
  Subsequently, run "/usr/sbin/i855crt swcursor on 1024x768@70" as root.

Setting up additional features for Ubuntu 5.04

Getting Suspend-to-Disk to operate correctly
During installation, assign a swap file of at least the size of the RAM - Suspend-to-Disk will function fine subsequently

More Specific Information. Specific stuff such as:

df -hl

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3              22G  1.5G   21G   7% /
tmpfs                 503M     0  503M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda2              89M   11M   73M  13% /boot
/dev                   22G  1.5G   21G   7% /.dev
none                  5.0M  2.8M  2.3M  55% /dev

lspci

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. Mobile Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. Mobile Graphics Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corp. Mobile Graphics Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d3)
0000:00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1e.3 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
0000:01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 01)
0000:02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments: Unknown device 8036
0000:02:01.5 Communication controller: Texas Instruments: Unknown device 8038
0000:02:03.0 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)

Contact Information (Optional)

directhex@apebox.org