Life & hacking

Two weeks ago I bought my first real Linux notebook after my old HP nx6110 already was fully linux-compatible but still had Windows XP preinstalled.

So after booting up my new Dell Inspirion 6400 the Ubuntu installation wizard popped up asking me for username, password and timezone and I found a standard Ubuntu GNOME Desktop. As many others have already complained about, Dell did not install 915resolution and thus the display was 1024×768 instead of 1280×800 which was of course quite easy to fix. Until now, they still ship Ubuntu 7.04 but I hope they will update to the new version soon because it’s a bit like shipping Windows XP without SP2 while security updates are of course installed.

The next step was to update to Gutsy which is of course as “update-manager -d” and worked without any problems. I also enjoyed the new codec-loading featurs of totem a lot.

What works:

• Suspend-to-Disk
• Suspend-to-RAM
• All multimedia key except the rather useless “Media Direct” key which should launch the laptop directly into (Windows) Media Player
• WLAN

What not works:

• After Suspend-to-Disk NetworkManager hangs
• After Suspend-to-Ram sometimes the keyboard does not respond (sleep and wake-up again usually fixes it) and in rare cases the display is not switched on.

In general quality and battery capacity seem very good and speed is ok as well as the low price. I hope Dell will improve Linux-integration for the next models to get a good out-of-the-box Linux feeling.