Hi.

I'm considering buying one of these laptops when I start in a new job in 2 months.
I actually expect most of the basic stuff to work out of the box or with some fiddling, but I'm unsure about the video card.
The M65 comes with a Nvidia Quadro FX Go 350, and the M90 with either Quadro FX 1500 or 2500. I've done some research, and found the following:

Nvidia drivers doesn't support these cards yet, but a new version is due in "several weeks from now" and/or "early in 2006". I don't know whether these cards will be supported in the new release.
I've checked x.org's CVS repository, and found that the chipset id's are added 2 months ago (but after the xorg 7.0 release) in the nv driver. I don't know if it will work, but I suppose that at the very least the video card will be detected.

Right now I'm running Ubuntu (Breezy + Dapper flight 6), but not on any laptops. From what I read, Ubuntu has good support for laptops, but I'm very pragmatic when it comes to distributions. I'll run whatever it takes to make it work.
I also have no problems compiling stuff, so the fact that I might need a CVS version of xorg don't scare me off either.

So my questions to you are the following:

Am i right in placing my concerns? In the beginning I can live with basic chipset support, hd, cdrom, wired network and the nv video driver until kernel/xorg/ipw3945/etc. catches up. Are there some functionality you believe I will have trouble getting to work? I'm familiar with compiling kernels and other software.
From what I've seen, it seems like Dell laptops are generally reasonably easy to run linux on. Is this a correct observation?


Thanks for your time.

Regards,
- The happy Salmon

Here's little update for those interrested.

Nvidia has confirmed support of the Quadro FX 350M (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=67669) in their upcoming driver release. I guess that the 1500 and 2500 will be supported as well, as they were released at the same time.

I forgot to add some product info in the last post. Here's some links.

M65 (http://www.mobilewhack.com/reviews/dell_precision_m65_notebook.html)
M90 (http://www.mobilewhack.com/reviews/dell_precision_m90_notebook.html)


- The happy Salmon

For those interested in the M90. I recently purchased one and put linux on it. As with all Dells I have experienced the install was decent with a few snags here and there.

I have done a howto and submitted it to the main site for submission, but it is not there yet.

For anyone interested you can check out my experience here (http://www.gidnetwork.com/b-103.html). Slackware 10.2.

The few snags I have run into so far:

Modem - It is a subunit of the sound card. Everything I have read seems to point to that it should work, but I have not been able to get it working yet.

SD reader - these are a bit tricky on any laptop, there is a kernel patch that appears to work for the Ricoh SD (sdhci (http://mmc.drzeus.cx/wiki/Linux/Drivers/sdhci)) that should allow it to work, but I have not tested it so far.

This is a sweet laptop. More powerful than most desktops. Plus for you Inspiron users (I was one), it docks!!!

I'm typing this using the Ubuntu Dapper LiveCD on a Dell Precision M65.

I'm not intending to install Ubuntu on it because it is for someone else.

Quick report, the wired connection works out of the box. Wireless is installed but doesn't seem to register as a wireless connection. It is calling it an eth1 device. Network-manager (nm-applet) doesn't see it.

Here is the lspci output:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PCI Express Graphics Port (rev 03)
0000:00:1b.0 0403: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
0000:00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
0000:00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 01)
0000:00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controllers cc=IDE (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01dc (rev a1)
0000:03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc.: Unknown device 7135 (rev 21)
0000:03:01.4 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc.: Unknown device 00f7 (rev 02)
0000:09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5752 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0000:0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation: Unknown device 4222 (rev 02)

I'm not going to spend much time on this but I will try to use fw-cutter to see if I need to download some firmware.