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I am in desperate need of a distro that just plain works. I need my sound and wireless working. I'm willing to use any distro as long as it's gnome and the darn thing works. Vista is driving me insane...
Yeah, I have this exact laptop.
Here's what you need to do. First, go here http://www.datanorth.net/~cuervo/blo...te-a215-s7407/
Then, go to Realtek's page here http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/ and download their drivers for you High Definition Audio. Installation is very simple. You unpack the archive, become root and run ./install from the directory created after unpacking. The script will install everything and modify your module configuration file. You will need to add one option to the configuration, though, so it looks like this
teddy@toshiba~$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel options snd-hda-intel model=toshiba
This is on my Slackware 12 installation. And this is on my Arch AMD64 on the same machine
teddy@toshiba~$ cat /mnt/hd/etc/modprobe.conf
#
# /etc/modprobe.conf (for v2.6 kernels)
#
#alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF version 1.0.14 ---
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel options snd-hda-intel model=toshiba
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
Don't forget to unmute the controls in alsamixer. After reboot you'll have sound. Pretty good sound, actually.
Now, wireless. You can make it work with ndiswrapper. I haven't tried that. Instead, you can go here http://www.datanorth.net/~cuervo/rtl8187b/
and get the "modified" driver pack. You'll need to unpack it and run ./makedrv from inside the created directory. The rest is explained on the first page I gave you.
The real problem is the 3D graphics on this machine, actually. The latest ATI proprietary drivers work, though, with occasional memory errors. Arch and Slackware handle those errors well, that's why I chose them. Other distros can have problems. But in any case, 3D acceleration is present, I can play all 3D games easily with no problems.
It's a pretty good laptop, it just has some non-standard parts.
Good Luck,
Last edited by Uncle_Theodore; 12-27-2007 at 12:45 AM.
You said something about Slackware. Is that the version of linux you were running? I was running ubuntu for a long time before I ran into these issues. I still run ubuntu on my desktop, though. I wonder if these fixes you posted would work for ubuntu? I'll have to give them a try tomorrow... it's entirely too late to deal with an installation of any sort!!
By the way, do me a favor. Plug in headphones to your laptop while playing a music file. Do your main speakers shut off? I got my sound to work in ubuntu previously by adding that additional line, but once I plugged in headphones, my main speakers never shut off. That's a problem with me... What did yours do?
You said something about Slackware. Is that the version of linux you were running? I was running ubuntu for a long time before I ran into these issues. I still run ubuntu on my desktop, though. I wonder if these fixes you posted would work for ubuntu? I'll have to give them a try tomorrow... it's entirely too late to deal with an installation of any sort!!
By the way, do me a favor. Plug in headphones to your laptop while playing a music file. Do your main speakers shut off? I got my sound to work in ubuntu previously by adding that additional line, but once I plugged in headphones, my main speakers never shut off. That's a problem with me... What did yours do?
Yup. Just checked it again right now to be sure. When I plug in headphones, the main speakers turn off as expected.
As to your other questions, I'm triple-booting Vista that came pre-installed with the machine (I never boot it, but since I paid money for it anyway, I figured what the heck? ), Slackware 12 (in the 32-bit mode) and the latest Arch AMD64 in the 64-bit mode. Mostly for reference and for some professional needs.
Slackware is rock stable while Arch is a little bit rough. But it provides cutting-edge packages, as fresh as they get. I'm typing this from Arch right now.
I'm pretty sure the fixes described above will work on about any distribution with a more or less recent kernel, as they are kernel patches, not distro-specific stuff. Good luck!
PS One more thing though. Slackware doesn't have GNOME on its disks. But you can install it from dropline-gnome, once you're done with the system install.
Last edited by Uncle_Theodore; 12-28-2007 at 12:38 AM.
Man... I'm installing Ubuntu Gutsy as we speak. I REALLY hope this fixes it on Ubuntu... I have openSuSE 10.3 on it now. I installed it simply to see if that distro would have any better luck.
What do you mean about the 3d graphics on this card? This is one of the better graphics cards I've used on laptops...
Back to the sound topic...
I went into my sound file to add those lines. However when I opened it, it was blank. I quickly remembered that I had done something like this in the past... a quick bit of researching over at ubuntuforums reminded me that instead of editing etc/modprobe.d/sound, it was etc/modprode.d/alsa-base. I went into alsa-base, sure enough a ton of stuff was there.
At the bottom I added those three lines. I saved and rebooted.
I booted up, no sound. Oh wait, maybe it's muted in the system? I get into the system, click on the volume icon to adjust the mutedness of it... And I got this dreaded error...
The volume control did not find any elements and/or devices to control. This means either that you don't have the right GStreamer plugins installed, or that you don't have a sound card configured.
You should use the alsamixer command to unmute the sound. Also, look at what controllers it finds.
The "options" line should be after "alias" lines. Did alsaconfig pop up at the end of installing the driver? Does the snd-hda-intel module show up in lsmod?
As for the wireless - I downloaded it, unpacked it, and ran the ./makedrv. Afterwards, I ran ./wlan0up. I can see my wireless network in the list. However, if I select it, it just cycles for a minute and comes back as being unable to connect. It shows 0 signal in the list when I select it. There is no encryption on this network, only wireless MAC filtering which this laptop + my usb adapter is permitted. What can I do?
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