I have a dell latitude d630, I'm a bit rushed for time so I will post specs tomorrow. What I'm wondering is whether or not I will be able to install linux on this and it will work? My concerns would be with the drivers, particularly display drivers. Dell use their own, modified Intel drivers for the GMA 965 (I think that is the adapter I have), and I'm unsure whether these will work on linux. Same goes really for all of the other drivers (wireless adaptor, chipset, ethernet etc etc)

 

I wonder if someone could shed some light on this please?

Cheers.

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Linux pretty much runs on anything nowadays, and as Dell even has a line of Ubuntu laptops, (Or has had, it's hard to find) it's pretty likely that Linux will work on it.

The best test for this may be to try a live CD, or wubi if you don't feel like preparing the media. Failing that, check the device IDs against an HCL.

You shouldn't need/want Dell's drivers, as pretty much everything you'll need should be available in the repositories of most distributions.

 

I've been running Debian on my C610 for a while now, and haven't had any major issues.

 

Regarding hardware IDs:

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You can get the hardware IDs by issuing the following command, from either from a live CD/USB or a 'real' install.

lspci -nn

Here's what mine looks like, and the IDs are the pair of hex digits in square brackets toward the end. (8086:3575 in the first line)

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 82830 830 Chipset Host Bridge [8086:3575] (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82830 830 Chipset AGP Bridge [8086:3576] (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB Controller #1 [8086:2482] (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev 41)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) [8086:248c] (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801CAM IDE U100 Controller [8086:248a] (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller [8086:2485] (rev 01)
00:1f.6 Modem [0703]: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem Controller [8086:2486] (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY [1002:4c59]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] [10b7:9200] (rev 78)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge [0607]: Texas Instruments PCI1420 PC card Cardbus Controller [104c:ac51]
02:01.1 CardBus bridge [0607]: Texas Instruments PCI1420 PC card Cardbus Controller [104c:ac51]
03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88W8361 [TopDog] 802.11n Wireless [11ab:2a02] (rev 03)

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If you do run into any issues, you'll know where to find me. (or one of a handful of others) :D

Why I said dell drivers specifically was because when trying to fix this recurring problem with the Intel GMA965 driver, I downloaded ones off the Intel website but was promptly told to go download them off of Dell's site.

 

So.. I plan on installing Ubuntu onto a USB drive (which I should probably do anyway, regardless), and then running it on my laptop just to verify everything works, before wiping everything on the HDD and doing a clean install. Does that sound about right?

 

Cheers.

Sounds like a good way to go.

I'm typing this off of my laptop running ubuntu off my USB stick, so it works! :D

 

Are there any good software repos? I'm looking for system care things that will work on windows machines, i.e. this bootable usb will defrag windows hard drives, if you get my meaning. And just good software repos anyway.

Thanks :)

ubuntu >>>>>>>> XP

I have an old dell with linux, works fine :D

I'm typing this off of my laptop running ubuntu off my USB stick, so it works! :D

 

Are there any good software repos? I'm looking for system care things that will work on windows machines, i.e. this bootable usb will defrag windows hard drives, if you get my meaning. And just good software repos anyway.

Thanks :)

ubuntu >>>>>>>> XP

With over 20k packages in the repos, I don't think that you'll actually be needing any more than one extra: The WINE repo. Although now that Ubuntu runs a more up-to-date version of WINE by default, it's not really necessary anymore. In fact, I just checked, and I don't even use that anymore. (I did on every version of Ubuntu since 8.04 from what I remember)

 

Also, don't be so surprised about Ubuntu running. I run it on a 13-year-old laptop, it boots up in under a minute.

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