Laptop Dell Latitude E6500

After my previous laptop being end-of-lease I got this one in May 2009.
Here is my setup experience of a Debian Squeeze.

Links

• Dell
• Official page
• Linux & E6500
  • Debian squeeze on E6400
  • Latitude E6x00 & Gentoo
• Debian Squeeze
  • ISO
  • Current squeeze kernel is 2.6.26-15 which is good as there was a fix for the touchpad integrated since 2.6.26-13:
    Register DualPoint model found in Dell Latitude E6500 (Closes: #507958)

Hardware

CPU

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz, 3M L2 Cache, 1066MHz)
cat /proc/cpuinfo

• vendor_id: GenuineIntel
• cpu family: 6
• model: 23
• model name: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz
• stepping: 10 (800 -> 2400?)
• cache size: 3072 KB
• flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon
• bogomips: 4787.96

Misc

• 2.0GB, DDR2-800 SDRAM, 2 DIMMS
• Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family)
  • HD Audio Controller, PCI bridge: 4 Ports PCI Express, SMBus Controller, ISA bridge: ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller, 6 USB controllers, 2 USB2 controllers, SATA RAID Controller
  • Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset (rev 07): Memory Controller Hub, Integrated Graphics Controller, Integrated Graphics Controller
• CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ba)
• FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04)
• SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 21)
• System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev ff)
• on USB: 0a5c:5800 Broadcom USH (Unified Security Hub)/ Contacted SmartCard
• Intel Corporation 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
• Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100
• 15.4in Wide Screen WXGA (1280x800) LED
• 8X DVD+/-RW
• 160GB Hard Drive, 5400RPM or 7200RPM with Free Fall Sensor ??
• Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD

Power

• 9-Cell Battery Li-ion type:KY265 11.1V 85Wh
• 2xAC adaptors: 19.5V 90W and 130W
• Docking station

Physical connectors

• left side
  • USB Powershare (allows charging USB devices when system is off)
  • USB/eSATA (for ext HD or E-Mod?)
  • VGA
  • Express slot
  • SD card reader
• back
  • power input
  • DisplayPort Dual Mode plug hole (generates DVI/HDMI signal with a simple line-level conversion dongle)
  • Ethernet plug hole
  • Room for modem plug, but no modem installed
• bottom
  • connector for docking station
  • SIM card slot, empty, hidden behind the battery
• right side
  • 2xUSB
  • smartcard reader
  • mic, headphone
  • 1394
  • wifi catcher button??
  • wifi switch
  • PCMCIA slot
  • DVD +/-RW

not on my setup

but can be found on other E6500 setups:

• no Bluetooth, no Baseband GSM, no Fingerprint reader

Drivers

As loaded by a USB-bootable Ubuntu:

• i915 (Intel Graphics)
• dcdbas (Dell Systems Management Base Driver)
• ricoh_mmc (Ricoh MMC Controller disabling driver)
• snd_hda_intel (Intel HDA driver)
• iwlagn, iwlcore, rfkill, led_class, mac80211, cfg80211
• wmi (ACPI-WMI Mapping Driver)
• intel_agp
• crc_t10dif
• e1000e (Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver)

Trying Debian squeeze install

Intent

Let's try the Squeeze daily build for AMD64 architectures by booting on USB Sid Debian Installer

• Sid Debian Installer
• At the moment the latest daily snapshot was of 2009-05-11
• how to preparing the USB stick, especially the flexible way, using syslinux:

default vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.gz

We can even try the graphical version by using:

default vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.gz video=vesa:ywrap,mtrr vga=788

This needs a regular daily build of Squeeze netinst CD ISO to be stored on the stick, I got the 2009-05-11_22:00 snapshot.

Booting on the USB

The ISO file can even be in a sub-directory but it may take a bit more time to be found
Apparently Wi-Fi interface could be used for the Netinst but it only supports WEP, no WPA, so I'll use the Ethernet option.
It expects DHCP by default, I'm not sure how you could use static IP
In case of problems you can find a console by pressing CTRL-ALT-F2/ENTER, and find back the graphical installer by pressing ALT-F5