# How's installation and use on a Toshiba Satellite 1905-301

## UnuMondo

After a recent mugging in which I lost my Dell laptop, I've recently ordered a Toshiba Satellite 1905-301 which hopefully will arrive in a few weeks. It's got Windows XP on it, but I plan on wiping the hard drive immediately and installing Gentoo. Has anyone used Gentoo on this model, and if so how easy is installation and customisation of Gentoo? What features does turning on kernel support for Toshiba laptops offer? 

Hope to hear from someone on this!

UnuMondo

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## X-SoCiaL

Hi to ya ... Im running a Toshiba Satellite 5100-503 with Gentoo 1.4rc1 right now. I havent tried out any of the features in the kernel support though I got it compiled in the kernel. But as a general note about my Satellite the main problem  that I have is switching between internal(TFT) and external(CRT) monitor. My Satellite doesnt have all the FN button functions in BIOS it seems. The switch of VGA output doenst work in Linux(tried SuSE,Debian,Gentoo and a fue others).  In Debian there is a tool that is installed when adding the Toshiba module to the kernel but it didnt work with my Satellite =/. And also, I have to hack /usr/src/linux/drivers/char/keyboard.c to not get keystrokes to repeat itself. Otherwise than that Im happy with my Tux Toshiba. Ohh, one more thing, the support for i8x0 soundcards aint that good in linux yet.

/Roger

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## pilla

Have you tried to enable the toshiba laptop support in the kernel? And yes, i810 audio does not work that well... I still cannot make gnomemeeting work with it, even using ALSA

 *X-SoCiaL wrote:*   

> Hi to ya ... Im running a Toshiba Satellite 5100-503 with Gentoo 1.4rc1 right now. I havent tried out any of the features in the kernel support though I got it compiled in the kernel. But as a general note about my Satellite the main problem  that I have is switching between internal(TFT) and external(CRT) monitor. My Satellite doesnt have all the FN button functions in BIOS it seems. The switch of VGA output doenst work in Linux(tried SuSE,Debian,Gentoo and a fue others).  In Debian there is a tool that is installed when adding the Toshiba module to the kernel but it didnt work with my Satellite =/. And also, I have to hack /usr/src/linux/drivers/char/keyboard.c to not get keystrokes to repeat itself. Otherwise than that Im happy with my Tux Toshiba. Ohh, one more thing, the support for i8x0 soundcards aint that good in linux yet.
> 
> /Roger

 

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## X-SoCiaL

Ya, I got the Toshiba stuff enabled in the kernel ... activating the numeric keypad works fine but not the display switching with FN+F5

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## UnuMondo

Bump.

I just picked up the laptop yesterday, but won't have access to the necessary broadband connection until the 10th of January. Oh well, gives me more time to decide how to ideally tweak my installation.

I've heard that Toshiba laptops actually depend on software drivers in Windows to make the fan work, and that the fan will not come on in Linux until the Toshiba utils are installed. Will that complicate installation? I'd hate to be nearly finished bootstrapping and then the laptop suddenly bursts into flames.

UnuMondo

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## UnuMondo

Bump.

I just picked up the laptop yesterday, but won't have access to the necessary broadband connection until the 10th of January. Oh well, gives me more time to decide how to ideally tweak my installation.

I've heard that Toshiba laptops actually depend on software drivers in Windows to make the fan work, and that the fan will not come on in Linux until the Toshiba utils are installed. Will that complicate installation? I'd hate to be nearly finished bootstrapping and then the laptop suddenly bursts into flames.

UnuMondo

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## oniq

 *UnuMondo wrote:*   

> Bump.
> 
> I just picked up the laptop yesterday, but won't have access to the necessary broadband connection until the 10th of January. Oh well, gives me more time to decide how to ideally tweak my installation.
> 
> I've heard that Toshiba laptops actually depend on software drivers in Windows to make the fan work, and that the fan will not come on in Linux until the Toshiba utils are installed. Will that complicate installation? I'd hate to be nearly finished bootstrapping and then the laptop suddenly bursts into flames.
> ...

 

I don't see why the hardware fan would not turn on automatically when the system gets too hot.  Mine does on my Compaq (not as often as it did with ACPI, though) without ACPI.

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## X-SoCiaL

My fan works just fine even under the installation and I have to emerge the Toshiba Utils by hand when the installation is finished. This is a Satellite so I dont know about the Pro and Portage models.

/Roger

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## delta407

 *UnuMondo wrote:*   

> Has anyone used Gentoo on this model, and if so how easy is installation and customisation of Gentoo?

 I also bought a Toshiba 1905-S301, and didn't even give Windows XP a chance to boot up. Anyway, here's what I know so far:

Don't use the 1.4_rc1 boot CD; it hangs on the partition check. I was, however, able to use the 1.2 disk to partition, format, unpack the Pentium 4 stage 3 tarball, and go from there.

Don't use the eepro100 networking driver any longer than you have to -- use e100 instead. eepro100 locks up randomly if you're transferring data on a ten megabit link, but the 1.2 CD doesn't include e100. (!) So, you'll have to do the initial install over 100 megabit or from stage 1.

The fan runs regardless of drivers. This isn't true of other models, but the 1905-S301 is smarter.

Both APM and ACPI work, but apmd refuses to trigger events and acpid is more informative anyway. Use ACPI.

Use the 'radeon' driver for X instead of 'ati'. Be sure to enable the DRI half inside your kernel config, too.

The laptop uses the i810 chipset, which has a number of nifty features, including hardware entropy collection for better random numbers (via i810_rng).

Whatever you do, don't use the ATI framebuffer support. If you want a framebuffer, use VESA 2.0, because the ATI framebuffer creates some interesting display problems when switching consoles. (It shakes and goes fuzzy.) Note that XFree also does this on occasion, so you may have to restart X to get the video card into a working condition again.Anyway, I'm going to keep playing with it, but this should be enough to get you going.  :Wink: 

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## UnuMondo

I have Gentoo running just fine on this laptop now and want to mention:

* The 1905 series has a Phoenix BIOS, so the Toshiba kernel extras won't run on this particular model.

* Switching from X to the console or vice versa can indeed cause the screen to go fuzzy, but this can be solved by switching back and forth a couple of times.

* The Radeon DRI kernel module in the 2.5.59 kernels will lock up the system, so DRI and the development kernel is not a working combination. However, I've gotten everything else of 2.5.5* working fine on here. And the mouse is a lot more zippy with 2.5.5* than 2.4.* for some reason.

UnuMondo

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## doumalgentoo

I also have the 1905-301. You need to update the bios and everything will be fine. The bios controls all the fans and other stuffs. Even the Fn keys works under linux because the bios is handling the commands.

I just have not figured out how to get linux to recognize the battery for power management. I get 2.5hours when running linux and 3.5hours when  running windows with power management.

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