Ubuntu 9.04 on Dell

I'd like to try Ubuntu on my Dell (in sig).

Generally, how much trouble is it to find drivers for said hardware?

 

Should all be supported. The only thing you'll have do is have the restricted drivers manager find the ati driver for you which is easy. Everything else should pretty much work out of the box. It's not like windows where you need to hunt a big pile of drivers down.

 

So, in theory... sound, wifi, lan and such should work out of the box?

(I'm new to Ubuntu. This is my first endeavor.)

Care to give an explanation on how to best obtain video driver for my ATI card?

 

At least for my dell (I'm running ubuntu 9,04 on an Inspiron 8600), everything worked right out of the box, so to say. I have the nvidia card in mine, and it was a simple process of enabling the restricted drivers that popped up in the system tray. So all in all, it was one of the easiest installs I've had, and shortly after installing the OS, I was up and running.

That said, I would imagine that if your driver doesn't work right out of the box, it would be a bit more difficult to hunt down the driver and install it manually. But I haven't yet had an issue with hardware drivers yet, and I've been dual-booting Ubuntu since version 5.04.

 

That's one nice thing about linux - whatever your favorite distribution. No need to fight with drivers. Used to have problems with wireless cards but not any more.

 

*cough*Broadcom*cough*

Honestly, the OP's hardware should work beautifully with Ubuntu. The only two devices left are the speakers (usually work, but not the most reliable) and your webcam (if your laptop has one).

 

Yup, go up to the main menu at the top.

System-->Administration-->Restricted Hardware Drivers

Once the app is up it should give you some options for installing drivers along with a recommendation. Once you select, it will download and install automatically.

The only other things you might have to fuss around with are doo dads like special function keys. Sometimes folks have trouble getting their webcams working. If you search around you can find fixes to these minor issues because someone, somewhere has installed ubuntu on your dell before.

Hope that helps.

 

I plan on Dual booting with XP.

When resizing the Windows partition to free space for Ubuntu(using the Ubuntu tool), what's the risk of damaging Windows, or losing any files within the Windows partition?

Or does the tool *know* which space on the Windows partition is actually free of any files, thus preventing any damage to Windows or data loss?

 

Before resizing an NTFS partition with data on it, you should defragment it so that the files are not scattered across the partition.

 

Broadcom sucks, but I've been able to get my laptop to work, both the NVidia card and the Broadcom card, with Ubuntu 7.10, 8.04 and 8.10.

 

I've always had linux on computers with artheros or intel wireless cards. I had a broadcom chip for a while and it was ... just bad ... under windows. It is "incompatible" with the school's network.

 

I have an Intel Wireless card, though my LAN card is Broadcom.

Also, would it be sufficient to use XP's built in defrag tool?

 

Maybe not even that, it's possible the free driver supports compositing(compiz) for him.

 

Where did that come from... ?

Well, I use JKDefrag.