DELL Latitude E5500 hardware linux support

Hello!

I own the subj. laptop, and am generally quite happy with it (except for some problems)

It does give a "ThinkPad-like" feeling, mind  gap.

Anyway, the problem is that 2 very useful features on this laptop:

• Trusted Computing Module Chip
• AuthenTec Fingerprint Reader AES2810

Are simply NOT supported under GNU/Linux, i.e. there are no software drivers for this hardware under linux.

Incidentally, the older Authentec chip, AES2501 is supported, but a newer and shinier is NOT.

Questions:

• Does anybody here know of any work done to change this ?
• Does DELL invest any amount of resources to enable this hardware under linux ?

Thanks in advance!