Linux & Toshiba Laptops

stakey

Hi all,

I have an old Toshiba Satellite 3000 X4 Series laptop knocking around my place and i've decided im going to install the latest copy of Fedora or Suse (or any other package that anyone strongly recommends).

Im going to wipe the entire drive and install from start. Give the lappy to Linux entirely.

The specs are:

Celeron (what is linux support for celeron like?)
385 megs of RAM
15 Gig HD
8 MB onboard Intel Adapter
DVD Drive
Modem
3 * USB ports

Not a mean machine but it'll do for what i want to do with it...

Just wanted to ask a few questions:

1: Has anyone installed Linux on a Toshiba Satellite laptop before and how successful did that go?

2: I have a PCMCIA network card installed, its Chinese so finding a Linux driver might be tricky enough. So, if someone has installed Linux before can they say a good Network card that has Linux drivers available?

3: I heard often there is a problem with keyboards on laptops with Linux, how true is this?

4: Does Suse/Fedora support Intel graphics chipsets?

Might have more questions, but thats it for the moment...

Thanks in advance...

eggshapedfred

first place to look is here

Suse and fedora are quite demanding ram-wise.

1. no
2. depends on the chipset used. try booting knoppix from CD and seeing if it detects it automagically
3. have installed linux on a few laptops (Fujitsu Siemens and Dells mostly) and never had a problem with the keyboards (sound was a different matter altogether)
4. fedora does. havent installed suse on a laptop (use it on desktop) - should support it though. theres probably a hardware compatibility list on the fedora and suse websites, if you have a look around

maxheadroom

have a look here and here and see if there's anything relevant there. Generally, finding linux drivers for slightly older equipment i easier than for the latest, cutting edge stuff.

Fenster

Integrated Intel graphics are well-supported in xorg, as a hell of a lot of OEM machines use them.

I use a Toshiba laptop myself, albeit a much newer one. Beyond some teething problems I always have with its display, it works brilliantly.

Your machine will run Linux perfectly fine, although if I might say so, you'd probably be better off using one the lite window managers, rather than Gnome or KDE.

de8o

I use a Toshiba Satellite A40 with SUSE 9.2. my PCMCIA card is a D-Link DWL-G650. No problem in general, although haven't worked out how to enable s-video with fnfxd

stakey

i presume a windows manager takes less resources than a desktop environment then?

Which version of Linux would anyone recommend. I'm looking to Suse at the moment (possibly mandrake).

Main use of laptop afterwards is just improving my general skills with linux and the bash shell as well as rewriting my php CMS

tck

www.ubuntulinux.org : support is excellent - pcmcia etc..

hoary is the current release : http://www.ubuntulinux.org/download/

here are some other goals of the next ubuntu release

http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDownUnder/BreezyGoals

including a specific laptop version.

http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopMission

stakey

cheers tck, will look into this...

Raz

Ubuntu shipping CD's for free! That's really cool. I just ordered 7 copies

RE*AC*TOR

I'd strongly recommend Ubuntu as well, for a number of reasons. Although if you don't like Gnome - try Kubuntu, which is the KDE analog. Suse and Mandriva are both fine although I'd have no desire to return to either anytime soon. Suse in particular is a bit of a ram whore. I had ubuntu running swimmingly on a 192mb ram laptop - so you shouldn't have any problem with it.

niallb

RE*AC*TOR wrote:

I'd strongly recommend Ubuntu as well, for a number of reasons. Although if you don't like Gnome - try Kubuntu, which is the KDE analog.

I'd recommend ubuntu very strongly for its hardware detection.
If you have broadband, just go with the ordinary ubuntu,
and with synaptic or apt-get, install the single package 'kde'.
It'll download all the required packages and set it up right beside gnome. edit /etc/apt/sources.list and uncomment the line with
universe in it - then type apt-get install kde and wait.

I've installed linux on 4 different toshiba satellites, from the 230CX to the 4300, and it worked well on all.
The modem is the tricky bit. If you use ubuntu, you'll have to
get the modem driver. Search synaptic (package manager) for the letters 'lt' and install the package that mentions modem!

SuSE also has this driver fairly easily installable,
not certain about Fedora.

As for laptop keyboards, no trouble to report except maybe
a bit of fiddling to get hotkeys for suspend going.

DON'T WIPE THE DISK COMPLETELY WITHOUT EXAMINING IT.
Some toshibas have a hibernate partition. It's about the same
size as your installed RAM. You need to keep it.
Others use a FAT partition, which has to be hda1 and put memory image into a file on that.
You need a file called toshhiber to rebuild it under DOS.
In either case, don't choose format whole drive during an install.

Linux 2.6 can hibernate to a swap partition, but the laptop's
BIOS sleep modes need the dedicated space.

Good luck with it.
NiallB

stakey

k, i ordered a copy of ubuntu from the website. looking forward to playing with that.

niallb i presume fdisk will reveal any partitions like the one you spoke of yes?

zAbbo

fdisk -l