Linux on a Toshiba Satellite 1805-S154

The version of Linux I chose is Mandrake Linux version 8.1 download edition.

Mandrake comes with:

KDE 2.2.1

GNOME 1.4.1

Kernels 2.4.8 and 2.2.19

XFree86 4.1

KOffice 1.1

Evolution 1.0 beta 3

Mozilla 0.9.4

RPM 4.0.3

The Toshiba Satellite 1805-S154 comes with:

900 MHz Celeron with 128 kb level 2 cache, and an 100 MHz front side bus

128 Mb PC100 SDRAM 3.3v

10gb hard drive

13.3 TFT Active-Matrix display

Trident Cyber Aladin-T graphics controller

with 16 Mb UMA VRAM video memory

A 56K Modem (which I have not identified yet)

Full size 85 key keyboard with 12 function keys

2 pcmcia slots will take 2 type 2 cards or 1 type 3 car

serial and an ecp printer port

2 usb ports

video out and infrared ports

I had been using an older IBM thinkpad model 760xl which I had lent out to someone who was in need of a PC for a couple of days. This machine was a little long in the tooth but it got the job
done. To make a long story short she dropped my laptop out of her car. To her credit she replaced the machine with a new one this Toshiba. If I had been out shopping I probably would have
bought something that I knew would work with Linux, but this gives me an opportunity to try something new . The Toshiba has both the DVD and floppy built in which will be a blessing if I get a
version of Linux that is not bootable. On this particular model you press f12 during the boot process to get to an alternate boot menu ( It is just like the new IBM's ) pressing [C] boots from the
DVD-Rom drive. The Mandrake boot screen came right up. I had spent about a week looking at the various Linux hardware databases and HowTo pages and come up with almost nothing on this
model. This didn't leave me with a lot of hope that I would be able to get Linux on the Toshiba without a lot of problems. The Mandrake boot screen came right up and not having a lot of
information on the machine I just pressed enter to see if Mandrake could pick up the hardware. The installer came right up.

First up was the language selection United States was highlighted so I just clicked ok.
Second up is the license agreement (which I have already read as I have installed Mandrake on a couple of desktop machines so I clicked on accept).
Third up was the installation class you have the option of using recommended or expert this being a laptop I decided to use the expert option.
Fourth up comes the SCSI interfaces this machine does not have any so I just clicked no.
The fifth option is mouse selection standard PS/2 is highlighted and not having any experience with touch pads I decided to leave this alone as the mouse was working.
The sixth screen is keyboard layout I just hit enter as the US keyboard was already highlighted.
The seventh option is the security screen you have the options of low ( like Windows) medium ( standard Linux ) or high ( use this for servers or if you are connected to the internet 24/7 )
I have a cable modem so I am connected all the time but I have a firewall up to protect my internal network so I choose medium.
This will give me the most flexibility without sacrificing the integrity of the box.
The eighth screen is partitioning
I decided to remove Windows XP which came with the laptop as I didn't really care for it after playing with it for the last couple of weeks. I chose to clear the entire drive and auto allocate to see
what Mandrake would choose. I was not happy with the layout so I next tried auto allocate with /usr, again i was not particularly fond of the choice it made for me so I decided to make my own
partitions. I made a / partition of 1.5gb, swap 400mb, /usr 3gb, /home 3.3gb, /var 400mb, /tmp 400mb, and a /temp partition of 400mb for downloads and testing. All partitions are reiserfs as I have had
problems with ext3 under both Mandrake 8.1 and Suse 7.3 and I really wanted a journalized file system. The installer then formatted all the partitions for me and presented me with a screen
asking me which CDs I had. 
The ninth thing is to choose package group selection. I chose Office Workstation, Multimedia Station, Internet Station, Network Computer ( client ), Configuration, Documentation, KDE
Workstation, Gnome Workstation, and Individual Package Selection. I went through and did some customization of the packages selected hit ok and sat back and waited. 
The entire install of packages took about 20 minutes. 
  
  

The next part of the installer is the configuration options: 
Up first was to set the root password (remember to choose a good one not easily guessed and not a word found in the dictionary).
The second screen up is the add user screen and you should add at least one other user, I set up accounts for me and my wife and hit next.
The third thing you will need to configure is networking
The Toshiba does not come with a network card built in so you will need to choose one that is compatible with Linux. I chose a 3com 3ccfe574bt card that I have used successfully in the past
with RedHat. This particular card has always worked but is usually a bear to setup ( a good test for Mandrake ) I chose to auto detect fully expecting Mandrake to tell me it could not find the
card, but to my suprise it found it and asked if I had any others. I said no and clicked next. I set the card up for DHCP
( I will disable the card from starting on boot later as I am not always connected to the network. It is a simple matter to run ifconfig eth0 up after the machine is up to connect to the lan.).
I set the Hostname for the machine and told it not to use a proxy server. The installer loaded a few packages and showed a summary screen. To my suprise Mandrake had picked up the sound
card for the laptop and automagically and set it up.
The next thing the installer asks you to do is configure services. I made a few changes to the chosen services to reflect me use of the laptop
On to the make boot disk screen.
I can't stress this one enough make a boot disk if you ever need it, the time saved repairing the system versus the 2 minutes it takes to make the disk is amazing. Trust me you don't want to
reinstall every time you make a mistake.
The next thing you will be asked to do is install the boot loader. Mandrake gives you 3 choices grub, lilo with graphical menu, and lilo with text menu.
This is completely a matter of personal taste. I chose to use lilo with text menu as i am most familiar with it.
The last thing you will need to configure is X windows. This is the step that can make or break an installation. I decided to to go with a generic laptop display panel at 1024 x 768.
After hitting the next button it gave me a default setting of 800 x 600 at 65k, I changed it to 1024 x 768. There was no option of using 24bit color so I clicked next as I can always change the
settings later if I need to. I decided not to let the installer set the the laptop to boot to X windows just in case there was a problem with the display. I can always set the laptop to boot to X later if
I want it to. The installer never told me but I checked later and it is using the frame buffer driver. This does not give you an accelerated display, but with 16mb of video ram I have found it to be
very quick.
Clicking ok ejects the cdrom and reboots the machine.

The system rebooted and lilo came right up
( always a good thing I won't need the boot disk I created yet).
I hit enter and let the default entry load.
The system was not connected to the network so I had to wait a couple of minutes for DHCP to fail so it would continue to boot.
The laptop came up with no obvious errors and I logged in as myself.
The first thing I did was run dmesg | less to check for any problems nothing caught my eye as being unusual so I typed startx to go to X windows.
KDE came up quite quickly and I was presented with the Mandrake first time wizard.
I have heard there were problems with this so I have not used it on my other machines. I decided to try it on the Toshiba.
I chose KDE as my default desktop with the default theme.
It then presented me with the privacy policy I read through it and clicked next.
The wizard asked me for some personal information like Name, Company, E-mail, and Address. 
Next up the wizard asked me to configure my E-mail and News settings. I chose Kmail as my default and put in my ISP information.
I was a little suprised when I clicked next and it told me that the action required the root password.
If this was a production machine the end user probably would not know this.
It is possible that if I had logged in as root first and run the wizard I might not have seen this but if this was a production system I doubt that this would have been done.
After inputting the root password I was presented with a network configuration page which explained why it wanted the root password.
I would recommend that Mandrake remove this section or ask before this if this is a work or home system.
I decided to continue and I chose to let it auto detect my card as the installer had already correctly identified it.
The Mandrake wizard was unable to detect the card which I thought to be unusual as the installer had.
Looking through the list I could not find a card to match and not wanting to have to resetup the networking
I decided not to continue with the wizard. It seems like a good idea but I feel that Mandrake should do some more usability testing on the wizard if they are going to include it in the next version.
KDE logged in and played the default loggin sound so I know the sound card is setup correctly.

I decided to shut the machine down and take it down to my office to see if the networking was setup all right.
Mandrake booted flawlessly and I was on line in less than 2 minutes from power on to launching my browser.
So far everything is running on the laptop as well as it did in Windows XP or better with one exception the modem.
I have not been able to find out what chipset this modem is using from Toshiba's web site I am going to write to their technical support and see if they can tell me.
To be fair this may be a regular modem and not a winmodem like I suspect but it has been over 3yrs since I have used a modem under Linux and I just may not be setting it up correctly.
I will have to check out some of the modem HowTos on the web and give it another try.

Overall my experience with both Mandrake and the Toshiba have been positive the machine is very responsive and stable. 
If you are looking for a descent machine to run Linux on I would highly recommend the combination of Mandrake 8.1 and the Toshiba satellite 1805-S154.