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EDIT[2008]: at this point this tutorial is mostly obsolete. You should download and install Ubuntu version 7.10 (or newer) and then you won't have any of the issues I had to solve earlier. If you have this particular (or similar) Dell model, there's no reason why you would go with Ubuntu 6.x.

Conifuguration:

Intel® Core™ Duo T2250 (1.73GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533 MHz FSB) works (smp see below)
17 inch Wide Screen XGA+ Display works
1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz works
Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 works (915 resolution see below)
80GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive works
Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem not tested (yet) - should work
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) works
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945a/g works
53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery works, power monitor works (in gnome)
USB works (see below)
Card reader not tested (EDIT: not working, not needed so far)
6 in 1 reader note tested
Audio /mic works
Audio hotkeys work
Laptop special keys work (see below)

Initial considerations

I chose this laptop specifically for linux, as I read on some forums that most of the stuff works. It is the basic Dell Inspiron E1705 model, the only modification I made to the original configuration was to chose the intel 3945 wireless, as I heard that this is better supported than the Dell Wireless in the base model. This turned out to be a good idea, as it works fine with linux.

A lot of people were saying that linux on this laptop should work "out of the box", and it did eventually, but since I am a beginner to linux, some steps were not so obvious, and it took some time figuring out. The steps needed were found on separate forums, so maybe it's useful to include them all here. In the end, everything works fine, there are no unresolved issues, so I can recommend putting linux on this laptop to everyone.

Installation

First I tried debian, and the base system installed without problems, but there were too many things that didn't work, the video card, the wireless adapter, the sound card, etc. so I gave up, and tried Ubuntu instead.

Downloaded Ubuntu 6.10 CD image for desktop/laptop PCs. Booted the cd, but the installation in graphic mode wouldn't start, not even in safe mode. "Failed to start the X server (your graphical interface)." After viewing all the logs, it says: "The X server is now disabled. Restart GDM when it is configured correctly.".

Here I pressed CTRL-ALT-F1 to open a console.
There I enter: "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg"
A lot of questions about video card and stuff, as far as I remember, I left the defaults in most places, and it seemed to detect everything ok. After that "startx", then the gnome graphical interface started, and I clicked the install.
From then on, everything went smoothly, I used the whole hdd for linux, and let ubuntu do everything automatically. Installation took about 30 minutes, and recognized most stuff automatically, including the wireless 3945 and the touchpad with scrollbars.

Additional

• to get the resolution to normal:
  download the 915resolution package, I searched google for the exact package name, then: dpkg -i 915resolution_0.5-1ubuntu6_i386.deb No config file edits, or additional steps needed.

• to get smp:
  install linux-686-smp with aptitude.

• turn off anoying speaker beeps:
  in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist add a line "blacklist pcspkr"
  EDIT: it seems there is a less brutal way to do this in gnome, through system/preferences/sounds

• in the end: install security updates, and that's all

• EDIT: after installing some patches the lcd brightness keys stopped working in gnome. The solution found on a forum was to put "alias video off" in /etc/modprobe.d/local (I had to create it, as it didn't exist)

• EDIT: after updating some libraries, my kodak digital camera stopped being recognized. On plugging it in, I received the error "An error occurred in the io-library (’Could not claim the USB device’): Could not claim interface 0 (Operation not permitted). Make sure no other program or kernel module (such as sdc2xx, stv680, spca50x) is using the device and you have read/write access to the device." The solution found here:
  1)Find out the camera vendor_id:product_id.
  Typing lsubs, a list of devices is displayed, remember the one that looks like a digital camera. For me this was: Bus 005 Device 006: ID 040a:05a9 Kodak Co., where vendorid is 040a and productid is 05a9.
  2)Open /etc/udev/rules.d/45-libgphoto2.rules in a text editor such as gedit, and add the following line before the last one (before LABEL="libgphoto2_rules_end"):
  SYSFS{idVendor}=="VENDORID", SYSFS{idProduct}=="PRODUCTID", MODE="0660", GROUP="plugdev"
  for VENDORID and PRODUCTID put the values found above, and save the file. It worked for me, if it fails to work, undo the changes, and search for something else.

last updated 1 year ago #