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Hello all.
I recently purchased a Toshiba Satellite laptop, model 2435-s255.
A really great machine! (Sorry, couldn't go the route of the MAC
yet.) Anyway, I knew before I bought it that I was going to have
problems installing Linux on the machine, but it was too good of
a deal to pass up. I figured with a bit of reading and help from
others--that's here--I'd be able to get it done.
Here's what I've found so far...
The newer Toshiba laptops--and many others as well--are now using
the new standard acpi for power management, instead of apm. My
problem is that Redhat--the distro I prefer--uses a stock kernel
in their ISOs that conflicts with acpi causing the install to
freeze at "Uncompressing Linux...OK. Booting the kernel". Passing
parameters to the kernel doesn't seem to work either (Linux acpi
or linux apm). I read that I could install RH 7.1 on the machine
since it uses an older kernel--one that doesn't conflict with
acpi--then recompile a newer 2.4 kernel including the acpi patch.
But then I'd have to upgrade package by package till I had the
system I wanted. WOW!
I tried it anyway. Computer booted just fine, install went well,
but I wasn't given the option to install LILO so when the machine
rebooted it automatically booted WinXP. Not what I wanted!
The only other distro I've tried in the past is Debian. So I gave
that a try. A network install using v.3.0. With this I had a list
of problems and ended up with a machine that wouldn't boot Linux
or WinXP.
This laptop is new enough that the other Linux users that have
purchased it haven't quite figured out how to get past this catch-22,
with one exception...install SuSe 8.1. Apparently SuSe is the only
newer distro that comes with a kernel already patched for acpi. I've
read that SuSe 8.1 installs without any problems--minimal tweaking.
However, I have no experience with SuSe and don't want to go out and
spend money on something I may or may not want to keep. As I said,
I'm partial to Redhat but if I have to install SuSe to have a laptop
running Linux then that's what I'll do.
Doesn't anyone here use SuSe? Comments please?
Does anyone have any suggestions about how to get past the kernel
issues when installing RH 8.0? I was thinking if I could get an
older version of RH installed on the machine I could recompile a
newer kernel, including the acpi patch, then alter the first RH 8.0
CD to include a different kernel--vmlinux.img. I'm not sure if this
can be done or even how to do it.
Suggestions please!
As always, TIA.
Chris Shanahan
_________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
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