I decided to install Ubuntu onto my laptop – a Dell Latitude D620. In order to fairly evaluate the install process, I decided to perform a Windows install at the same time. I used a stock WinXP SP2 CD from MSDN – I purposely refrained from using the OEM Dell CD, as I wanted to see what did and did not work out of the box without any special drivers or what not.

Since I am partial to KDE, I grabbed an official Kubuntu CD – version 6.06 LTD (aka Dapper Drake).

Using a GTParted live disk, I repartitioned the 60GB serial ATA drive like so:

[ NTFS: 20 GB ] [ Swap: 1 GB] [ EXT3: 20 GB ] [ FAT32: 19GB ]

I installed Windows on the NTFS drive, Kubuntu on the EXT3 drive, and used the FAT32 drive as shared storage between the two operating systems (mounted as /home in Linux, and set as the “\My Documents” root in Windows)

Important note! If you are using a Dell, there is a very good possibility that you will not be able to just resize your existing Windows partition. You’ll need to wipe it out, and start over. Sorry, just the way it is.

The installation of both OSes was pretty straight forward – mostly just clicking “Next” a lot. In order to fairly compare the two, I used mostly stock settings.

Here’s a quick run-down of what did and did not work out of the box for the two operating systems.

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Processor

Intel Core Duo

Windows: Worked out of the box.

Linux: Worked, but only single core. Easy enough to fix – just perform:

apt-get search kernel | grep smp

and then apt-get install the proper kernel.

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Display

NVIDIA chipset

Windows: Worked out of box.

Linux: Mostly works. I needed to install the binary NVIDIA drivers to get dual screen working, and it still is a bit goofy at times.

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Sound

Windows: Needed to download drivers from Dell.com

Linux: Worked out of box.

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NIC

Windows: Needed to download drivers from Dell.com (kinda stupid)

Linux: Worked out of box.

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Wireless NIC

Broadcom DW1390

Windows: Worked out of box.

Linux: Worked, after vigorous tweaking.

First off, Ubuntu comes out-of-the-box configured not to work with this card. So, I needed to undo that.

echo ‘blacklist bcm43xx’ | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
sudo rmmod bcm43xx
sudo rmmod ndiswrapper
sudo apt-get remove ndiswrapper-utils
sudo rm -r /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils

Next, I had to hunt down an older version of the driver, as the latest one on the Dell site was causing DMESG to display an error message about the driver being 64-bit (even though it isn’t). I found the older driver here. I had to boot into Windows, download that file, run the EXE, and have it extract to the shared partition. I then booted back into Linux, and ran the following:

sudo ndiswrapper -i /media/sda4/drivers/bcmwl5.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -m
sed -e ’s/RadioState|1/RadioState|0/’ /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5/*.conf
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

After that, I was able to get everything working. I did have a weird issue with gksudo not being installed, which was causing wifi-radar to fail. A quick apt-get fixed that.

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Other Hardware-related Issues

I was pleasantly surprised to see that everything else worked fine, in both operating systems. The trackpad worked like a trackpad, closing the laptop put it into sleep, and the battery usage was about the same.

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We got a new dog. His name is Jack. He is a 6 year old Yellow Lab, weighing in at 75 pounds of playfulness. We got him this Sunday from the Animal Defense League, a no-kill shelter here in San Antonio.