Installing Kubuntu 9.10 on Dell Inspiron M5010

Last updated: 10 April 2011

General Hardware Specifications of M5010:

Hardware Components	Status under Linux	Notes
AMD Phenom II N870 Triple-Core, 2.3 GHz processor	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
15.6" HD WLED backlight Display	Works	Use pci=noacpi during install boot. Once installed, should be able to boot as normal.
ATI Video ( ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 )	Works	After installation, enable restricted driver to achieve full effects.
6GB, SODMM DDR3, 2DIMMs	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
640 GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Integrated Network Card	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Integrated 1.3 megapixel webcam	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
DVDRW/BD-ROM Drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
Internal DW1501 half mini-card Wireless G/N Networking	Doesn't Work	No idea where to begin.
9-cell Lithium-Ion Battery	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
HDA ATI SB ( STAC92xx Analog ) Sound Card	Works	No special procedure required during installation.

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.31.

Basic Installation of Kubuntu 9.10:

Could not install any version higher. Video is "scrambled" after Grub menu -- never gets to desktop (that I can tell). After dist-upgrade to 10.4, had to revert.
Kubuntu 9.10 is still available from Kubuntu website.
Installed using "Try Kubuntu" option, and then install from desktop. Used standard options, other than manual partitioning.

NOTE

Setting up additional features for Kubuntu 9.10:

Have not tried setting up sleep/hibernate functions.
Activating fglrx driver worked as expected.

Unresolved issues:

System seems sluggish (takes a second to respond) even though CPU/memory usage is very low.
Seem to have to boot twice -- first time never goes to desktop.
Wireless does not work. lspci shows a Broadcom 4727 (rev 1) device. Tethered Android provides wireless access.

Configuration Files:

Didn't modify any configuration files.

Contact Information:

I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but you can reach me at comment.form@[this domain] with any questions.

Links:

Other:

This is a great laptop under Windows 7. Plenty of memory and drive space. The sluggishness has me perplexed and the wireless not working makes it almost useless (especially if my phone is not handy). I'm not smart enough to fix the "scrambled" video signal for later versions of [k]ubuntu which may fix the sluggishness and wireless.