This procedure outlines the setup that I ran to achieve a pretty solid Debian 5 setup on my Latitude C600. Works well even though ~ 500MHZ, 128MB ram, 20GB hdd. I also included the the setup for my PCMCIA DWL-G630 wireless card. Currently no native driver provides WPA support for the G630, so you’ll have to use ndiswrapper if you want WPA. I need to use a native driver for Kismet’s scanning ability to work properly. Grammar will not be focused on.

do netinstall with laptop packages enabled, default partitions will work just fine
apt-get install ssh xfs xdm fluxbox xorg – this should take care of the gui and remote administration
optionally you can install tightvncserver for remote gui access
modify /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers for your preferred depth and geometry

modify /etc/apt/sources.list to include contrib and non-free packages: deb [server uri] lenny main contrib non-free
add the line so installation of wicd will work later: deb http://apt.wicd.net lenny extras
to add the gpg key for the wicd repo: wget http://apt.wicd.net/wicd.gpg -O- | apt-key add -
do an apt-get update

just in case the netinstall didn’t already install this package for cardbus support: apt-get install pcmcia-cs
follow the instructions found here: http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/Distribution_list/Debian [for installing the ACX based DWL-G630 pcmcia card]
remember to perform special instructions for ACX111 chipset (which the DWL-G630 is)

apt-get upgrade, and then install wicd and kismet

For battery details I put together the following bash script and stuck it in /bin/bat. This allows me to type “bat” to get details on the battery status.
#!/bin/bash
more /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state

Automounting is a must have: apt-get install autofs
enable the auto.misc file by vi /etc/auto.master and uncommenting. vi /etc/auto.misc and change the cdrom entry to cdrw and remove the “ro,” bits from the line. if you have a cdrw drive that is. restart the daemon to finish.

in case you are looking for a gui minimal dependency file manager go with thunar.
that wraps it up.