This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which drivers you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required drivers have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.

Page Contents Authors Introduction Editing This Page Specifications Linux Compatibility Notes Related Resources Summary

Authors

James McArthur (jamesm at the-workbench.com)

Introduction

This is a guide to running Linux on the Dell Precision M6300. This is a "workstation" class laptop that has great Linux support.

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Specifications

Name	Dell Precision M6300
Processor	Intel Core Duo T9500 - 2.63 Ghz
Screen	17.0"
RAM	4096MB
HDD	160GB
Optical Drive	DVD+/-RW
Graphics	nVidia Quadra FX1600M
Network	10/100/1000 Ethernet, Intel 4965AGN 802.11a/g/n Wireless
Other	6 x USB2.0, 1 x Firewire,SD/MMC, Smart Card Reader, Bluetooth

Linux Compatibility

Device	Compatibility	Comments
Processor	Yes
Screen	Yes
Optical Drive	Yes
Graphics	Yes	Current stable nvidia driver (169.09) doesn't compile with 2.6.25, use the beta nvidia driver (173) instead
Sound	Yes	Use snd-hda-intel driver
Ethernet	Yes	Uses the tg3 module
Wireless	Yes	Driver inbuilt in 2.6.25
Bluetooth	Yes
56K Modem	Not Tested
USB	Yes
Firewire	Not Tested	Appears in dmesg output
ExpressCard Slot	Not Tested
SD/MMC Card Reader	Yes	Requires the kernel modules ricoh_mmc, sdhci, mmc_block and mmc_core

Notes

The wireless light doesn't appear when using wireless.
The laptop has two modes for SATA drive access - ATA and AHCI - changeable in the BIOS. For the installation from the Gentoo LiveCD, ATA was used as the kernel didn't support AHCI. Once installation was complete the change to AHCI was possible and everything worked fine.
The Ricoh card reader was a little confusing to setup - the ricoh_mmc module was required, but nothing happened until the sdhci was also loaded.

Wireless.
Wireless took a bit of fiddling to get working. The modules ieee80211_crypt_ccmp, ieee80211_crypt_tkip, ieee80211_crypt_wep needed to be loaded before the iwl4965 module.
Every now and then the module goes into 'rf_kill' mode and stops responding. The driver needs to be reloaded to get it out of this state.
wpa_supplicant was used to test the wireless. The driver option for wpa_supplicant was '-Dwext'.

Related Resources

Preparing your laptop for Linux
Increasing battery life

Summary

Installation of Gentoo Linux went off without a hitch. Like all Intel Core based laptops, it is recommended you use a Linux distribution with kernel version 2.6.16 or greater.


Have you installed Linux on this laptop? If so how about leaving a comment about your success in the comments section below.