General Hardware Specifications of DELL XPS M1330:
|
Hardware Components |
Status under Linux |
Notes |
| Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0 GHz 4MB L2 Cache 800MHz FSB | Works | No special procedure required during installation. |
| 13.3 UltraSharp(TM) WXGA (1280×800) CCFL TrueLife(TM) | Works | Can be detective automatically during install. |
| NVIDIA GeForceTM Go 8400M GS with 128MB dedicated DDR3 graphics memory | Works | System will remind you to install restricted driver(automatically) |
| 2GB (2×1024) 667MHz dual channel DDR2 SDRAM | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| 160GB (5400 RPM) SATA Hard drive | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| No Floppy Drive | N/A | N/A |
| Integrated Network Card | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| No Modem | N/A | N/A |
| 8X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW Drive) | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini card | Works | Can search the available wireless signals automatically after installed |
| 56Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell) | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| High Definition Audio 2.0 | Works | No special procedure required. |
| Bluetooth | Support but didn’t test | I don’t know how to get connection with my cell phone. |
| Internal Digital Card Reader | Works (Only tested SD cards) | No special procedure required. |
This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.22
Basic Installation of Ubuntu:
- Why to use Ubuntu 7.10 beta
I’ve tried several Linux distributions on this laptop before, such as Ubuntu 7.04, Ubuntu 7.10 Trible 4 and Sabayon 3.3b. I found they all couldn’t boot my laptop (I even couldn’t boot into the multiuser mode). Gentoo 2007.0 could boot normally but couldn’t start X (maybe there wasn’t driver of graphics card on the boot disc), but I had no experience of compiling a whole system from the very beginning. So I didn’t tried. OpenSUSE 10.2 could start X, but I’m not sure how to setup the wireless internet (I’m using WEP), so I gave up at last.
When I tried Ubuntu 7.10 beta, it got everything done, included sound card, wireless internet, internal digital card reader, and even the media buttons were already setup to control the volume and the start/stop in Totem. After I installed the restricted driver of graphics card, the CompizFusion worked well. The wireless internet also worked after I inputed the password. Before that, the widget had found out all of the available wireless signals. It could support a newbies of Linux to installed everything correctly on this laptop.
- Obtaining Ubuntu 7.10 beta (DVD image)
Download it here: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/gutsybeta
- Installing
The installing of Ubuntu 7.10 beta is pretty simple. On DELL XPS M1330, you have to wait for 3 or 4 minutes for it was booted totally. Then double click the Install icon on the desktop and follow the instructions. Enjoy!
- Post-Install modifications/tweaks
Nothing. The LiveDVD supports lots of hardware. I just backup some important information in the Windows VISTA partition and rebuild the whole disk for Ubuntu.
Setting up additional features for Ubuntu 7.10 beta
I dare to say the Ubuntu 7.10 beta supports this laptop well. I really didn’t do any additional setup except update the system following the update-manager and get a everyday-use laptop.
More Specific Information
This is the first time for me to really use Ubuntu. I’m not sure about the previous version, but in these days the update-manager reminded me to update some parts of the system once per day. It says the formal version of Ubuntu 7.10 will be released on Oct 29 – Nov 2. I think the update information will be quite much in these days.
Contact Information
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