Mon blog

I just installed Ubuntu on a Dell Vostro 3350 laptop. This article documents a few things about this machine and the issues I had. The main one is that this PC is very recent and therefore works only with "bleeding edge" software, requiring a beta version of Ubuntu.

I first tried to install Ubuntu from an USB key, created on an older machine via System -> Administration -> Startup disk creator and using the currently stable version of Ubuntu, "Natty Narwhal". F12 at startup to boot on the USB key, the system starts and then I have only a "zebra" screen with moving color lines. I tried several things, for instance using the nomodeset option (keep a key pressed to have the startup menu, then F6, then choose nomodeset, then Escape). Here, the kernel boots but initramfs says "Unable to find a medium containing a live file system". Various tricks found on the Web such as option all_generic_ide or changing the order of boot devices in the BIOS did not work. (But it may help to read in detail the excellent LiveCDBootOptions documentation.)

The solution was to create a new USB key, with an image of the most recent Ubuntu, "Oneiric Ocelot". It was at this time still beta but I was lucky, Beta 1 works fine. (This version is now officially released.)

Here is a list of what seems to work on the machine:

• The screen, at 1360x768,
• The sound (and I was able to see an episode of Game of Thrones at high definition),
• The Ethernet network,
• Wi-Fi.

Things which do not work include:

• Among ACPI things, suspension works fine but hibernation does not: the machine does not complain but shuts down instead of going to sleep.

I did not test yet:

• Gadgets such as the fingerprint reader or the webcam.

Some good texts to read:

• A good documentation on some installation problems (but was not sufficient in my case)
• An experience with this machine (quite different from mine, probably because, under the same name, Dell uses different components). The author was able to install but had screen problems afterwards.
• The Dell Vostro 3350 is officially certified for Ubuntu, which does not say a lot. Read a good explanations why certification is useless : the certified components are described here.

The PCI cards are described here. Here are the boot messages of the machine.