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Linux: Ubuntu 6.06 on Dell Latitude D610

I just installed Ubuntu 6.06 on my Dell Latitude D610. I love it! You start with a live CD. Hence, you can "try before you buy". Then, when you're ready, you double-click the "Install" icon; you don't even have to burn another CD.

Compared to Ubuntu 5.10, a lot of polish has been added. Since I came from a Fedora background, I was impressed to see that Ubuntu has caught up with all the polish that Fedora has (graphical installer, graphical boot, etc.). Furthermore, despite the fact that I installed it the day after it came out, the Wiki had already been updated with instructions on how to get deal with proprietary formats such as MP3s, Windows video, Flash, etc.

As far as hardware goes, everything pretty much just worked--even hibernate and suspend! To support the builtin wireless, I had to use NDIS. Here are my abbreviated instructions:
Add the ndiswrapper-utils package.
Download the driver from ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R102320.EXE.
mkdir driver
cd driver
unzip ../R102320.EXE
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
ndiswrapper -l
ndiswrapper -m
Reboot.  I'm not sure if this is necessary.
Setup the network settings as usual.
If the card doesn't work, make sure you didn't hit some function key that turns off the wireless in the BIOS.
All in all, I'm stoked. :)

Comments

jjinux said…
Oops, I was wrong about ndiswrapper. It seems that things are done differently in 6.06. It's not working. It *looks* like it's working, but it acts as if it can't see the AP. This is going to take me a little while to fix, but it looks like other people have had success.
12:07 AM
Anonymous said…
I can't install 6.06, it hangs when the kernel reaches 100%
7:31 PM
jjinux said…
I got wireless working. I decided to stick with ndiswrapper instead of the reverse-engineered Broadcom driver.

See here for complete instructions. Here are my abbreviated instructions:

echo 'blacklist bcm43xx' |
sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
rmmod bcm43xx
rmmod ndiswrapper
Installed ndiswrapper-utils.
Used driver from here.
mkdir driver
cd driver
unzip ../R102320.EXE
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
ndiswrapper -l
ndiswrapper -m
modprobe ndiswrapper
Setup the network settings as usual.
If the card doesn't work, make sure you didn't hit some function key that turns off the wireless in the BIOS.
4:28 AM
Christophe Poucet said…
Hello,

I have the same setup as you. Ubuntu LTS 6.06 on a Dell Laptop D610. I am curious which graphics card you got with your laptop. I personally have the ATI one and I'm having some issues with the driver (right now I'm using dropin .so replacement as suggested somewhere in the forums, but I get a bug everytime I launch open-office).

Cheers
12:22 AM
jjinux said…
Sorry, I don't remember, and I don't have this laptop anymore because I changed jobs. I didn't explicitly say I upgraded my video card driver, so that means I was still using the standard X driver.
10:56 AM
Timmy said…
Er, Ubuntu doesn't come from a Fedora background at all--it's actually based off of Debian.
2:17 PM
jjinux said…
Sorry, when I said, "Coming from a Fedora background", I meant that *I* was coming from a Fedora background ;)

Ubuntu is based on Debian, of course ;)
2:42 PM
jjinux said…
I updated the text to make it more clear.
2:44 PM
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