E6400 Ubuntu 9.04 Install

I just got a new Dell E6400. I like it ok so far. I upgraded from an old IBM T30. The buttons are still a little better on the T30, but all in all I think I'm going to like the Dell just fine and as I type on it I think I like the keyboard better. Here's an issue I ran into that seemed pretty common, getting the NVidia driver to work for the Quadro NVS 160M (rev a1). I installed Ubuntu 9.04 without any problems. Loaded it up and the background was all grainy. I went to the System->Administration->Hardware Drivers but there wasn't anything in there. So I followed these steps and now it seems to be working just fine & there is an NVidia XServer Settings program in the System->Administration menu.

Helpful Commands

lspci -- this will tell you what video card you have
uname -r -- this will tell you the name of the kernel release

Steps

* Some other blog mentioned that you needed the kernel headers first to get things to work. I didn't test this without doing this first so I don't know if this is completely necessary but either way it's not going to hurt anything.

* sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic (run uname -r to determine the version you should specify for this command)

* sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-180

* Restart X

* System->Administration->Hardware Drivers

* It will search for drivers and find the NVidia ones. It found two and I picked the latest 180 that was the recommended one.

* Restart X again and then you should be good to go.