I bought a Toshiba P105-6104
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?seg=HHO&poid=351574&coid=-30597
(2nd choice and long story). I've been having some problems getting video
and sound up for Linux and hope someone here can help me make this usable.
If not I may have to try to take it back. I have tried Ubuntu 6.06,
6.10Beta, and
SUSE10.1. The problems are not universally the same. Although I now have
SUSE running, it has problems too and is not my preferred environment.
Resizing the NTFS partition to permit dual boot:
- Partition magic 8.0 tried but failed safely in the end (no damage)
- Ubuntu 6.06 failed (had to run CD in safe graphics mode) and
corrupted something (had to use Restore Disk)
- Ubuntu 6.10 failed to even boot in safe graphics mode (acted like
regular start so maybe safe mode inactive)
- SUSE 10.1 resized NTFS although XP Media Center Edition had to do a
chkdsk on startup
Between bullets 3 & 4 above I ran the machine with no Windows partition at
all. The results noted below were checked there and then reverified for
SUSE now that I have restored XP MCE and then reloaded SUSE.
1440x900 Display:
- Ubuntu 6.06 Was never able to run anything but safe mode (1024x768)
even after installing 915resolution and changing /etc/X11/Xorg.conf (from
memory) which is supposed to fix the problem for Intel's 945GM graphics
chip. This issue has been resolved but the person who did it has not
answered my email in 4 days.
- SUSE 10.1 booted right into 1440x900 (lower resolutions available)
but displays an artifact in the lower right corner of the screen but ONLY
for the desktop background. It does not show up for any window which covers
it. The artifact looks like a line of morse code about 1 inch above the
bottom and about 2 inches long reaching the right edge.
Intel 82801G Sound:
- Ubuntu 6.06 produces no sound. It is a known issue but again the
one source I found who had solved it AND gave a contact has not answered my
email.
- SUSE 10.1 does have a driver for the 82801G but it seems not to
work. Windows is still the only place I can hear sound.
Software Updates for SUSE 10.1:
- Update Manager indicate the are 246 updates to do but is apparenly
unable to do any of them. Using Yast/Yast2 directly also fails. There is a
known issue here as well but I have found no published fix for it. The
public info seems to say it is extrememly slow and error prone. That
matches my experience. One site said if you updated only one specific item
it would help the problems but I was not able to successfully do even that
update (BTW I did complete one update which took the original number from
248 to 246). The error I get from trying to update anything is the attached
graphic.
- I did find a web page that showed a partial solution using y2pmsh
from the command line but other than installing specific packages it sems
rather cryptic to me. While it might be used to install fixes for the main
problem, I have not a clue what would solve it.
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