One of the best things that has happened to Linux enthusisasts the world over is the confluence of two big players one in the Linux arena (Ubuntu aka Canonical) and the other in the PC hardware space (Dell). And the end users have already started reaping the benefits.
The benefits include device driver support for hardware components which were otherwise not compatible with Linux. A couple of years back, I had to struggle getting my internal modem based on a conexant chip to work with Linux. These internal modems are infamously known as winmodems because they delegate some of its job to the parent operating system and work flawlessly only in Windows.
Because they were not full modems, most of them are incompatible with Linux and are as good as paper weight. I have documented how I got my internal modem to work with Linux with some difficulty.
Now the good news is that Dell has released device drivers for the conexant internal modems for their E1505n and 1420n machines which is available here for download.
The driver is provided as a deb package and so will be compatible with other Debian based Linux distributions.
