Hello everybody,

Tomorrow I will buy this laptop, a Toshiba Satellite A100-676.
I've searched a lot about this model, but I can't find relevant information about it. It seems thats it a new model and it only for French speaking countries.
For people who don't know French this is a glance about the configuration I've translated :

• CPU : Intel® Core™2 Duo T5200
• Chipset: Intel® 945PM Express
• Wireless card : Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
• RAM : 1GB
• HD : SATA, 5400 rpm, 100 GB, certified S.M.A.R.T.
• Screen : Toshiba TruBrite® WXGA TFT, resolution 1280 x 800
• Video card : NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7300 with TurboCache™, 64 MB dedicated, up to 320 MB with TurboCache™ (will 3D work?)
• I have no idea about the sound card
• I have no idea about the card reader
• OS installed : MS Windows Vista Home Premium
• The OS I want to install : OpenSuse or Ubuntu

If you need any other information, tell me

Think the best bet would be to try the live cd or dvd for the os's you want to install.

There's something similar (Satelitte A100-something) in the HCL, check it out. If the model there works, I'm confident yours will work too. 3d depends on the drivers; see nVidia's site if it lists the card as supported that the laptop has. I'm positive you can get everything on it work, some parts may take more time than others, it depends on your skills and which distribution you pick up. I'd prefer Ubuntu over SuSE but there are other reasons than just workability.

If you buy it from a store you could ask if it was possible to try an Ubuntu LiveCD, called 'Desktop version', (or some other for that matter) with the lappy before buying it; the live distribution won't modify anything so it's "safe to try" but it quickly shows you if it works or not. There are good chances it works, and if it doesn't on the first try, try a second time and put all the resolution etc. settings to minimum; if it then boots, you can be fairly sure you'll encounter no big problems. I'm not sure if all stores let you do this but here it's no problem, the salesmen understand it's only five or ten minutes off their time but if I'm not allowed to try it's a lot of money off their day.

Thanks for advices,
nVidia shows thats it's supported (I'm happy).
I just wanted to ad that I'm still new using Linux and I'm not used to text manipulations, are they easy to perform?

An other question plz: what version of a Linux Distribution should I install, x86 or x86_64 (some fomrums make me worry about the Tntel Core 2 duo CPU)?
Thanks

I would suggest installing the X86 version of a modern distro such as Ubuntu. You can download a Ubuntu live CD and try to run Ubuntu at the store before you purchase the laptop.

64-bit OS gives nice boost to database and high calculation task on server use so I'd stick with 32-bit OS until I need over 4GB of RAM in use. Benchmarks have shown that 64-bit is slower on games and other desktop related tasks than 32-bit.

And most likely you will get any modern distro to work with that laptop. I have quite similar specs on my Acer and it works fine.

Thanks for all, you all helped me a lot.
I'm relieved now, I'll buy it tomorrow.
For a second time thanks a lot.

Try using Mandriva Spring. Its very easy for noobs and it works just out of the box.