Model: Toshiba
Satellite A80-117
Processor: Pentium M, 1.6 GHz
Graphics: Nvidia Go 6200, 64 Mb, 1400x1050 on 15"
Sound: not investigated
Network (wired): 100 Mbit Ethernet (Marvell Yukon)
Network (wireless): Wlan b/g (Intel 2200BG)
Bluetooth: n/a
The Toshiba A80-117 seemed promising from a hardware point of view. However, as of 2005-05, various driver issues prevented me from using Linux on it:
I tried with three Linux variants: Ubuntu 5.04, Knoppix 3.8.1 and Debian 3.1 sarge testing. After 10 evenings of trial, I gave up and returned the notebook to my local dealer (Mediamarkt).
Update: I had an email conversation in 2005-07 with a guy named Thomas Meyer, who bought a successor of the notebook, the Toshiba Satellite A80-154, and succeeded installing Gentoo on it. It turns out that if you compile your own kernel with updated netcard and wlan drivers, Linux works at least on his hardware. He also wrote an install article.
Ubuntu is a Debian based distro. I took the Hoary version 5.04 live CD and tried to boot. It failed at device detection due to PCMCIA. When I tried with kernel boot option hw-detect/start_pcmcia=false, it survived the device detection but ultimately failed when trying to load PC card services. I was not able to skip this on the Live CD.
Thus, Ubuntu failed completely for me.
Not to mention that plugging in my USB mouse caused another crash. Yuck.
Since Knoppix is the most reliable cutting edge Live CD based on Debian, I gave it a try. As expected, it failed during PCMCIA detection. Luckily, with the nopcmcia boot option, which is more reliable than under Ubuntu, I was able to start the system.
Loading the wireless card (ipw2200) is done automatically and works (as eth1); I used wlcardconfig for setting it into my WLAN. So I had basic connectivity.
The network card (sk98lin) loads without problems, and ifconfig eth0 up seems to find the hardware. However, I was unable to establish any kind of network connection (neither per DHCP nor using netcardconfig for static IP). I had tried that previously with the pre-loaded MS Windows so my network environment was confirmedly working.
Overall, the Knoppix experience is the smoothest of the three. Crash by PCMCIA and non-working network card irritate me, though.
Usually, I like to configure my own Debian testing, even if it takes longer, since I like to learn but are not ready for slackware yet :)
With kernel 2.4, booting is painless; PCMCIA does not crash the system. However, neither the Marvell Yukon nor the Intel Wireless card is detected by the standard kernel. With kernel 2.6, PCMCIA crashes the system (disabled only by compiling my own kernel); Marvell Yukon is not detected, nor is Intel Wireless.
Additionally, the Debian installer did not recognize the hard disk when started with linux26 or expert26, and I believe the installer is not so brittle as to fail at a simple serial ATA disk.
I tried a day long with customizing a kernel 2.6.11. Disabling PCMCIA was painless, but I was unable to make the network card (sk98lin) work. I did not come to the wireless card (ipw2200).
Overall, this has been a somewhat frustrating experience. Especially the inability to work with out-of-the-box 2.6 kernels is cumbersome.
Update: According to Thomas Meyer, the sk98lin can be brought to work if you patch your kernel with the official Syskonnect drivers. The ipw2200 could use a try from the official Intel drivers. It simply seems that the driver maintainers of the standard kernel were not up to date.
I would like to have tested the Nvidia display drivers. However since Knoppix does not come with the kernel sources (or its kernel configuration), compiling it did not work. None of the other Linux options were far enough to test this. However since nVidia supports Linux professionally, this should not be much of a problem.
It should be noted that the fan is running for about 10 seconds each minute or so, even with a completely idle Linux (on all of the three). This is rather annoying since my Toshiba Satellite 4210 is doing a far better job at this.
The Toshiba Satellite A80-117 did not work well for me. In the future, when better kernel drivers are available, standard kernels might work. As of 2005, I would recommend against buying this notebook.
Last Update: 2005-07-26. This article is also listed at TuxMobil.
EOF (Jul:2005)