Debian Sid on an Dell E5400

First the screen and then the power supply of the Acer 5051AWXMI I've been using for work died some 9 months after the warranty expired. Work said 'Pick a Dell', so I did.

I wanted something not too large but with a screen with plenty of resolution. I picked the E5400 with the WXGA+ display after reading good things about its Linux compatability.

This time I'm installed Debian Unstable (Sid) from scratch. Or rather installed Debian Stable (currently Lenny) from a CD I had lying around and then upgraded.

So far I'm pretty pleased. Everything I want worked out of the box or with minimal fiddling. The hardware supports kernel modesetting, and that plus the new startup dependencies system means that I'm at a KDM login screen just over 20s after booting.

After the combined niggles of getting my old Acer working, this has been very smooth.

So, what's in the beast?

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 92)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ba)
02:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04)
02:01.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 21)
02:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev ff)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5761e Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100