Let me say that this laptop is a beauty, its color availability let’s you choose the one for you, and that’s not all, because you are selecting a highly configurable computer, and of course at lower price you are on a great deal. Since my older Inspiron 1150 I fall in love with Dell, yeah, we all know that takes, at least 2 weeks, that your order arrives at home (or somewhere else), but who cares, because at the end you will enjoy a great laptop.

There are known histories about running Ubuntu on Inspiron 1420 and mine is another. First I use Gusty Alternate CD to install it, then by using Integrated NIC started downloading updates and upgrade to latest Gusty version. The following were the issue I faced.

1. No X Windowing System. Do dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg, and select intel as your X module.
2. No sound, followed the Sound Howto and after adding options snd-hda-intel model=3stack to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base did the trick. I didn’t install anything from sources.
3. DVD/CD Rom didn’t worked after installing, Add ide-generic module to /etc/modules.

After doing all those tricks, Compiz Fusion works “out of the box”. No more Vista.

Missing things to test: Card reader, FireWire and Bluetooth.

Update Sat 4. Card reader works, also out of the box, at least with SD cards. Bluetooth seems to be detected by the Nokia 770, FireWire is missing I don’t have anything with FireWire

Update Mon 6. Touchpad bug is now fixed.