When I bought this laptop 14 months ago, it came preinstalled with Windows XP Home.

I got it home, booted it up to make sure the laptop itself functioned hardware-wise, and immediately reformatted and installed Windows 2000 Professional on it.

Having read horror story after horror story about people trying to get Linux (of any distro) working on various laptops (including kinds similar to what I have), I decided to hold off until I had a better handle on Linux, preferring instead to use my older, slower desktop machine at home as my Linux guinea pig.



Well, just between you and me, I probably didn't have to wait as long as I did. I reformatted my laptop last night and reinstalled Windows 2000 on the first partition and Slackware on the second, and I have to say... Slackware installed a lot more smoothly than Windows 2000 did.

Windows 2000 doesn't like Toshiba Satellite 1905s's. Oh, it installs, but you only have 640x480 resolution, no modem, no network card, no sound card, and the touchpad works funny.

I practically need to hold Windows' hand to get hardware to work properly after a fresh install.

Slackware, by comparison: 1024x768 resolution right away, sound card works, networking works, modem works (even though I don't use it -- I'm on cable), touchpad works, USB wheelmouse works.... everything just works.

And it's fricken fast. You gotta realize... I've gotten used to running Slackware on a PIII 450mHz dinosaur from five years ago, and I was fairly impressed with the speed on that machine.

My laptop is a Pentium IV 2gHz with half a gig of RAM in it. Slackware smokes on this baby!

I only have one thing on this laptop that isn't working, and that's the wireless network card (a D-Link DWL-G650), and that's just going to be a matter of finding the right drivers for it. I'm not too worried about that.

Anyway, I just thought I'd put a success story out here, since I didn't see one for the kind of laptop I have. In short, if you have a Toshiba Satellite 1905s and Slackware 9.1, you got nothing to worry about. It set up pretty slick. No problems whatsoever.

Quote...
"Windows 2000 doesn't like Toshiba Satellite 1905s's. Oh, it installs, but you only have 640x480 resolution, no modem, no network card, no sound card, and the touchpad works funny."

Possibly this is why the last 2 toshiba laptops I have seen/purchased have come with no less than 5 warning stickers, paper inserts in the box, labels on plastic bags... NOT to use anything but windows XP on it as the hardware has features that were not available when Win2k was programmed...

There was nothing of the kind with mine. There's a "Designed for Windows XP" sticker on the laptop itself, but that's it.

Not that it would have stopped me anyway, mind you.

I won't have XP in my house. Period.

Drivers are available from Toshiba for Windows 2000 for all those components (video, sound, network card, et cetera), so it's no big deal... it just doesn't work right off the bat without some special attention.

And the Windows driver for my wireless network card is on a CD that came with the card, so that's the first thing I install after getting Windows up and running. That enables me to get to my file server, where I have all the Toshiba drivers for the other components stored, waiting for installation. After installing all of those, everything works just fine.

I've been using this laptop for over a year with Win2K and I've had no problems. It's kind of a pain to set up because of all those extra drivers that need to be installed, but I'm rather used to that by now.

Thanks for the post Melkor. I do have to give Slackware a try. I have been running Fedora on a T40 IBM laptop, and thankfully everthing seems smooth. At some point, I may add Slackware as it seems to be pretty popular from what I've read here at LQ.


Very best,
Nick

The only caveat so far is the D-Link wireless card. After doing some research, it appears that I will need to download something called "Prism54" and recompile it into my kernel. If you have one of those and you're not sure how to do that, you might want to do some reading to figure out what's supported and what's not before going ahead.

I haven't recompiled a kernel yet, or added anything like this into one, so I'm a bit nervous about that part, but I figure the worst-case-scenario is just me having to reinstall Slack on this laptop, and as I mentioned, that's no problem at all. It only took about 20 minutes, and it was a total no-brainer.

Well, aside from the confusion I had with partitioning. But that was my own damn fault.


Anyway, in reference to Slack, the install's a snap. It's not graphical, but it is menu-driven, and it's very simple, straightforward, and logical. If you've ever done a Windows installation, it's no more complex than that. And you have a lot more control over what gets installed and how.

Thanks for the tip Melkor The advice is greatly appreciated. As frustrating as glitches can be, it makes it all worthwhile when they are finally figured out. Part of the learning process, I guess.




Very best,
Nick

Well, to be fair, it's less of a "glitch" than just something I haven't learned how to do yet, so I'm a bit uncomfortable at the prospect.

But that's how it goes. If I wanted my goddamn computer to do every little fricken thing for me and think for me while it's at it, I'd whack myself in the forehead with a shovel and then go out and buy a copy of Windows XP.

Slackware 9.1's all ready for the latest 2.6.x series kernel - has all the utilities preinstalled. The best thing to do I found was to keep the 2.4 kernel there *just in case*! As long as you don't overwrite the main boot image (/boot/vmlinuz) and you just add another Lilo entry you should be fine.

2.6.x can take some persuading to start up without a black screen, but there's a useful message here to make sure you get the right options: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...5&pagenumber=2

I did my first kernel compile for a few years (did it once back in the 2.2.x on Redhat and a P200) and I've since upgraded all my machines to the new, faster, 2.6.3 kernel. My Fujitsu laptop loves it as it has nice ACPI support and is a bit nippier.

Good luck

That was reassuring... thanks!