this document will recount my experiences with the toshiba laptops and hopefully serve as a good guide for those hoping to run linux on a satellite pro.
the only hardware problems i ran into were the sound card, modem and video card. not too bad. here's what i did:
soundcard: this particular sound card only seems to work in the 2.4.x series of kernels. when you are compiling the kernel, you need to compile in Sound --> Sound Card Support --> OSS sound modules --> Yamaha YMF7xx PCI audio (native mode) and under that, Yamaha PCI legacy ports support. you want them built-in, not as modules. I've done this successfully on 2.4.2, 2.4.5 and 2.4.6. and i've found no way at all to get the soundcard to work under v2.2.x.
videocard: i didn't have trouble at first with the video card, as slackware will install the framebuffer support on the console, and the framebuffer server for X. slackware 7.0+ had the fbdev X server by default, so it would work on basically ANY machine, BUT the s3 savage mx/ix card isn't supported by xf863.3.6 (don't worry, there's a drive for it in 4.0.x) so, tim roberts has a binary server that works for 3.3.6 and another module for 4.0.2. so, if you can't or don't want to run a frame-buffer X server, then you can use this. it works great. (i've had people tell me that the framebuffer server has serious performance issues, but i've been using fb servers for over a year now, and don't notice any lag.
modem: i haven't successfully used the modem yet, but according to olli at jmop dot de, the lucent driver works in a sat pro 4300 and acoording to toshiba, it's the same modem as in the 4260.
that's it for now... i'm going to write up the problems i had with slackware 8.0 later, but this should help. thanks again to olli at jmop.de... an unsuspecting help to me :)so with this laptop, i first installed slackware 7.1, (that being the current release when i got the laptop) and had to upgrade the kernel to 2.4.5 (for the soundcard, as stated above). i had no significant problems with the distro as far as development and hacking were concerned.
that brings us to the fourth of july, 2001. slackware 8.0 was released on 30 jun 01. i started downloading 1 july 01, the download didn't finish until 4 july 01 (no i wasn't using a modem, everyone and there mother was on sourceforge that week). anyway, i was so excited that it had finally downloaded, that i forgot to backup my email and whatnot. GREAT! alright, that being left out, the install went without a hitch, the install program is still the same as it has been since 3.5. so i get it up, recompile the kernel for my soundcard and the apm support, and then i get down to reinstalling my mail client (evolution) before i have to go back to work the next day. being as i had gotten comfortable compiling the source from CVS, i start grabbing the packages. what's this? ./autogen.sh won't run properly? what the hell is going on? i didn't have any problem like this before! alright, let's try compiling it on the server, see what it says... (server is freya, running slack 7.1) works fine there... what the hell did this distro do?! after a while i found that the autoconf version (2.50) that came with slack 8 is wonky. i downgraded to 2.13, and lo and behold, it ran like a prince. okay, lesson learned, the newest version isn't necessarily the best version.
that's pretty much all that i had MAJOR problems with... most of the other stuff that was bothering me was related to that. so, there you have it. please, if you have any questions about running slack on a laptop, let me know! email me at slacker at linuxcowboy dot org. i've installed linux on several different toshiba, compaq and ibm laptops.
| page last edited 11;06 EST 09 july 01 |
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