For a couple of months now my Dell Inspiron 8600c has been my workhorse of choice. I still miss the trusty old Medion MD6200, but the 8600c is really mucho cooler (litterly!). Ubuntu has been running flawlessly on this laptop too. Some specs:
| Component | Brand | Model | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel | Pentium M processor 2.00GHz | stepping 6 |
| Chipset | Intel | Intel 855PM | Intel specs |
| RAM | 1 GB PC 2700 DDR-SDRAM, 333 MHz | 1×1024MB, 1 spare SoDIMM bay | |
| Hard Disk | IBM / Hitachi | 60 GB ATA/100 UDMA5 5400rpm HTS548060M9AT00 | |
| Display | WUXGA+ TFT Active-Matrix (1920×1200) | 15.4” widescreen aspect | |
| Graphics | nVidia | Geforce FX5200Go 64MB | |
| Ethernet | Broadcom | BCM4401 | 10/100 MBit/s RJ45 |
| Wireless LAN | Broadcom | Broadcom BCM4309 802.11a/b/g | |
| DVD Drive | NEC | NEC DVD+/-RW ND-6500A | DVD+R/DVD+RW/CD-R |
| Bluetooth | Internal PCI module | ||
| Modem | Intel | 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC’97 Modem Controller | |
| IEEE-1394 | Texas Instruments | PCI4510 | Firewire port, 400 MBit/s |
| PCMCIA | Texas Instruments | PCI4510 | 1 cardbus slot, type II |
| USB | Intel | 82801DB (ICH4) | EHCI/UHCI 2 ports |
| Audio | Intel | 82801DB (ICH4) AC’97 Audio Controller |
Xorg configuration file
Download the xorg.conf file for 1920×1200 output
Installing Ubuntu
I just started with the Warty live CD and upgraded to Hoary afterwards. Installation was straight forward, everything was detected. The only problem with the Warty CD is that is misdetected the NVidia graphics hardware as a “Trident” card, eeks! This is fixed in the Hoary installs which install the open source nv drivers, but only at resolution 1600×1200. Get the above xorg.conf for the 1920×1200 config.
Other stuff
I will try and post regular entries with specific details on setting up wireless networking, etc. In the meantime check out Google for tons of pages on the 8600c and Linux.
Update: Check out the post on Broadcom wireless troubles and a possible fix
