When we got our new laptops at work (Dell Latitude E6510) we had some various problems while installing our preferred Linux distros on it.
The first problem which we all had was trying to get the screen to work. I could get it to work by booting with the following kernel params xforcevesa nomodeset (I also removed the default quiet splash). Now I just run with only nomodeset, which works without problems for me, but without 3D. Jan has compiled a patched kernel for Ubuntu with 3D support but with less colors.
Then the second problem: scrolling with the touchpad didn't work. To fix this I ran the following commands:
cd /tmp/
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/57421117/patch-dell-e6510
sudo apt-get build-dep --no-install-recommends linux-image-$(uname -r)
apt-get source linux-image-$(uname -r)
cd linux-2.6.35/drivers/input/mouse/
patch -p0 < /tmp/patch-dell-e6510
make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd` psmouse.ko
sudo rmmod psmouse
sudo cp psmouse.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/input/mouse/
sudo modprobe psmouse …