Since there are always questions of support for newly released models, I thought I’d put up a post on Natty Narwhal on the new Dell Precision M4600.  I got mine last week and have just finished replicating my M4500 setup on it.

The only issue I’ve run into is for my Quadro.  NV claims that Optimus is "impossible" under non-Windows operating systems, so you’ll need to disable this in the BIOS.  It’s easy enough to switch on and off if you dual-boot with Windows, but note that Win7 will install a new driver and reboot the first time you switch between Optimus and non-Optimus hardware modes.  If you do want to try to get Optimus working on Linux, you can give the new bumblebee package a shot (there’s even a PPA).

Here’s what the hardware looks like to the kernel:

 

mjbommar@m4600:~$ lspci 
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family KT Controller (rev 04)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b4)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b4)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b4)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b4)
00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 8 (rev b4)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 82801 SATA RAID Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 0dfa (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation GF108 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250 (rev 5e)
0a:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 04)
0b:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Device 11f7 (rev 05)
0b:00.1 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Device 8320 (rev 05)
0b:00.2 Mass storage controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Device 8330 (rev 05)