Installing Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) on Dell Vostro A860

Last updated: 2010-04-24

General Hardware Specifications of Dell Vostro A860:

Hardware Components	Status under Linux	Notes
Intel® GM965 Express chipset	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Mobile Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5870, 2000 MHz	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
15.6" WXGA HD Display (1366x768)	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Intel Graphics x3100	Works	Haven't tried 3D games...
2048MB DDR2/800MHz RAM	Works	No special procedure required during installation
250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation
8x DVD+-RW DL drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Integrated Sound Card	Works	No special procedure required during installation
10/100mbps LAN Integrated Network Card	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Wireless 802.11b/g	Works	The Network Manager of Kubuntu was unable to connect to my WPA encrypted wireless network. Ubuntu had no such problem.
5in1 Card reader	Works	Tried only with SD Card
Bluetooth interface	Doesn't work due to this bug	The laptop and the phone find each other, but the data transfer does not work.
FireWire I-link	Haven't tried
PCMCIA (PC Card)	Haven't tried
USB 2.0 (2 slots)	Works	No special procedure required during installation. The laptop can boot from a USB flash drive.
External VGA interface	Works	External monitor can be plugged in when the OS is already running. "System > Preferences > Display" works fine. Both the external monitor and the laptop's own screen can run at the same time. If you want the external screen to be the left one, first turn off the laptop's own screen (from "System > Preferences > Display"), then turn it on again.
4200 mAh Lithium-Ion Battery	Works	No special procedure required during installation. The battery life is around 3 and a half hours.

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.31. I tried both the 32bit and the 64bit versions; there is not much difference.

Unresolved issues

Hibernate does not work. Suspend to RAM works. Another Dell Vostro A860 review writes that "After hibernating, I was unable to reconnect to a network until rebooting. Again, might be a coincidence". I had the same issue when I used the "hibernate" command.
Adobe Flash usually works (rarely Youtube videos have to be reloaded).
If I close the lid, the screen turns off for a second, then it turns on again, so it is unnecessarily on.

Notes

I used Sunspider to test the speed of browsers. The results were the following (the less the number the faster the browser is):

Chrome 32bit 598-616

Chrome 64bit 602-630

Firefox 32bit 1545-1619

Firefox 64bit 2818-3008
Generally the laptop works fine :)
Author: Csaba Hoch

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Chrome 32bit	598-616
Chrome 64bit	602-630
Firefox 32bit	1545-1619
Firefox 64bit	2818-3008