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A month ago I ordered one of the new Ubuntu Dell on the Dell France website : the Inspiron 6400. The base price was around 450 euros, and I took almost all the upgrades, for a final price of around 750 euros. The specs are : a Intel dual proc, 2Gb of RAM, 160Gb HD, 15′4 inch screen, i965 video chipset, DVD+RW burner, 9-cell battery, and a 4-year-warranty. That’s it for the laptop itself. I will now focus on Dell’s integration of Ubuntu (more specifically feisty), something that intrigued me.

First the content of the package :

• The laptop and its charger. (with no Windows sticker)
• the Ubuntu CD
• the “Drivers and utilities” CD, full of drivers and utilities… for Windows.
• Some warranty papers
• A single paper with the Ubuntu technical support phone numbers for UK, France and Germany.
• A 200 pages manual detailing the basic operation of the computer (setting up network, copy a DVD) … on Windows.

Ok right, they are just starting this new business with Ubuntu, they have not yet fully updated everything… Still, it’s kind of weird to receive a manual for the wrong product

I boot the computer, Feisty took around one minute to load (with a switch to text view because something was being generated, fonts IIRC), I had a first-time wizard to process, then first bad surprise : I’m in 1024×768 in a 1200×800 widescreen, and I can’t change it, I’m limited to 4/3 resolutions. I can say that having a 4/3 desktop scretched on a widescreen is not really pleasant, for those who didn’t tried this. But that was the only bad surprise. Hardware compatibility is otherwise perfect, even the modem has his driver! (Haven’t tried it though). And for the first time, I was able to suspend successfully on Linux. Even the music control buttons on the front of the laptop were working with Rythmbox!

Concerning the Ubuntu interface, there was no custom Dell changes. No dell utilities, no trial-trashware icons, no new wallpapers. A plain vanilla Ubuntu. I only noticed two partitions with lots of files in Nautilus, one amongst them was a gigabyte feisty704.img file. So they also made a rescue partition! Nice. Haven’t tried to launch it yet.

One of the thing I was curious about was : were Dell using their own repositories? The answer is : no. So quickly after updating the system, I was given the choice to update to gutsy. Ok let’s see what will change. The result is : I got my 1200×800 using the new display manager and choosing the intel driver instead of the i910 one. But I lost the use of the music control buttons on the front of the laptop, probably some xorg stuff to tweak. Otherwise, same perfect compatibility.

So on the overall, I’m pretty happy: For the first time, I have a fully compatible computer (well almost, but I’ll forget the front music buttons), and there was some nice work from Dell, with their rescue partition, and the compatibility. Now I’d hope they would make a better packaging!

EDIT: The front music buttons are now working! Maybe just rebooting was sufficient.