Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi under Ubuntu Dapper Drake. With all features please.

Disclaimer : This is no NEWBIE guide: I may have skipped trivial steps. Take your own responsabilities.

1. Core Installation

First install the core Ubuntu system. If you don't know how to do it, go ahead with the live CD, it's quite easy or look around on the internet. In the end, you should get a working Ubuntu system with a working wired ethernet adapter, a working soundcard and an ugly display resolution (WideScreen distortion). Afterwards, activate universe & multiverse in your sources.list and update (look around on the internet to do it).

1. Intel Core Duo T2500 (2x2Ghz)

Unleash your cores, get an optimised SMP kernel.
sudo apt-get install linux-686-smp

2. Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG

Be mobile, activate the WIFI.
sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome
drop the ethernet cable and reboot.
A new icon has appeared in the traybar, click on it. There are now two options. If you detect the wireless network, everything's okay, skip to the next paragraph. If not, the bug I encountered is not fixed. You need to edit /etc/network/interfaces and to comment out (place # signs at the start of the lines) everything except lines about the loopback (lo) interface. Ofcourse, when doing that, you drop all the tools like standart network configuration and so on.
sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces
Reboot.

3. ATI Radeon X1600 256 MB DDR3

Activate the true resolution and the 3D Acceleration.
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
sudo aticonfig --initial

4. The Acer-Orbicam Camera

Check it out : here

5. The Rest

The main stuff now works. The rest should be working out of the box, except :

the multimedia keys : except internet, mail, volume and brightness, you must configure them with xev and xkbd.
the smart card reader : a driver should exist in project MUSCLE.
the ACPI events may be a littled flawed.
the DVD might be slow because DMA seems to be flawed.

5. Links

Another installation guide on gentoo
Another installation guide on Debian