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My goal for this webpage is to share my experience working with Linux.
Specifically to show how I got SuSE 9.2 correctly working on a Toshiba A75 series laptop.
Some of the information may be useful for other Toshibas but I can not verify that.
What I have here works for me.  If you find anything that is incorrect, please contact me.

 

Installing SuSE 9.2 on Toshiba Satellite A75 - S206

Last updated: March 25, 2005

General Hardware Specifications of Toshiba A75:
Hardware Components
Status under Linux
Notes
Mobile Intel Pentium 4 518 2.80GHz Works No special procedure required during installation.
15.4 TFT WXGA 1280x800 Works Select 1280x800 display during install. SuSE defaults to 600x400!
ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9000 IGP Works Nothing special. I think it works.
512MB, SDRAM, 2DIMMs Works No special procedure required during installation
60 GB Hard Drive Works No special procedure required during installation
Integrated Network Card Works No special procedure required during installation
Internal 56k Modem Is recognised. I did not test if it works
CD/DVD-ROM Drive Works I haven't tested CDRW. But it plays CD and DVD without issues
Atheros AR5004G wireless card Works I had to configure it with correct SSID and Encryption Key. But it did work out of the box
Lithium-Ion Battery Works No special procedure required during installation
Sound Card - Realtek ALC250 Codec Chip Works

No special procedure required if using Kernel 2.6.x.

ALSA Sound drivers required for Kernel 2.4.x

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6

Basic Installation of SuSE 9.2:
  • To start with, I tried Knoppix. It really worked well out of the LiveCD. The only issue was the wireless card. That never worked. Then I tried Mandrake 10.1. For that I actually partitioned my hard drive and installed it along with XP. That worked. However, I wanted Linux to work with MONO. Hence I went with SuSE.
  • You can click on this link to obtain SuSE 9.2
  • Installation went pretty smooth. You have to remember to change atleast two settings, one for the resolution (by default SuSE puts it at 600x400) and the timezone.
    NOTE: very important point. I selected KDE as my default X-Window during install. It would not work. I had to reinstall with GNOME.
    I am not sure if it was me/my machine or KDE that caused this issue with A75/SuSE 9.2.
  • Post-Install modifications/tweaks

    I did not need to tweak much. I changed the background image. I also installed Mono.
Setting up additional features for [Linux Distribution]
  • Getting Suspend-to-Disk to operate correctly -- Did not try. Does not work by default
  • For the touchpad to operate correctly, I followed this advise
Unresolved issues
  • KDE doesn't work.
  • Sound comes out distorted
  • MONO is not available on the DVD install
Configuration Files
  • Did not modify any config files except for the touchpad issue mentioned above
Contact Information
  • For questions or comments you can email me at info at dnkcreations dot com
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This site was last updated 11/04/04