Debian on Dell Latitude e6400
This is a quick guide on how to install Debian on a Dell Latitude e6400 with integrated Intel GM45 graphics. Most things can be solved by downloading a new kernel :)
- Download netinstall Debian testing from here
- Install as usual, sudo -s to do the next steps as root
- Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and find the section for the video driver and edit into this:
Section "Device"
Identifier "intel"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
EndSection
- Restart GDM
- Stock debian testing kernel (2.6.26-something) doesn’t support the wireless lan card included so let’s install 2.6.27. Add this to /etc/apt/sources.list:
#kernel repo
deb http://kernel-archive.buildserver.net/debian-kernel trunk main
- Run
apt-get update
apt-get install linux-image-2.6.27-1-686
- Microcode is needed for the wireless card to work. Do this:
wget -nH -nd http://www.intellinuxwireless.org/iwlwifi/downloads/iwlwifi-5000-ucode-5.4.A.11.tar.gz
tar xzf iwlwifi-5000-ucode-5.4.A.11.tar.gz
cp iwlwifi-5000-ucode-5.4.A.11/iwlwifi-5000-1.ucode /lib/firmware
- Reboot into your new kernel
- I found that the intel video driver prevents correct suspend/resume. Go http://www.entner.net/blog/workaround-intel-graphics-and-suspend-in-linux-english and install the 00CPU script.
10 If this still doesn’t work, upgrade to the latest stable kernel finally fixed my problems:
cd /usr/src
wget http://www.nl.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.27.10.tar.bz2
tar xf linux-2.6.27.10.tar.bz2
cd linux-2.6.27.10
cp /boot/config-2.6.27-1-686 .config
make oldconfig
make-kpkg clean
export CONCURRENCY_LEVEL=2
time fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd -rev myversion1 kernel_image kernel_headers kernel_source
cd ..
dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.27.10_myversion1_i386.deb linux-headers-2.6.27.10_myversion1_i386.deb
That’s it!
Some more info can be found here (some stuff I took from there):