Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on a Toshiba Satellite Pro A100
I recently got a Toshiba Satellite Pro A100 notebook for work, and as a first matter of business I had to check and see and see how well Linux would run on it. I decided to install Ubuntu 6.06 LTS because I need this latptop for work, and on the job I have little time to tweak and fiddle with settings, drivers and hardware. I need everything to work, and in my opinion Ubuntu Linux is the most polished and “finished” desktop available today.
Using the installer on the live CD I was able to resize the current XP Pro partition (just in case), and install Ubuntu. Everything was done in about 30 minutes and I now had a working Linux laptop.
Sound, Video, Lan, and the DVD+/-RW all worked out of the box. The only piece of hardware that did not work out of the box was the built in wireless card ( an Atheros AR5006GE). Atheros cards are normally supported by the “MadWifi” open source driver, but this card is “too new” at the momment. But thankfully, Ubuntu installs ndiswrapper by default which you can use to wrap around the windows driver. By default, ubuntu should have mounted your XP Pro partition under /media/sda1 and all that is required is to run a couple of commands, and ndiswrapper will make a copy of the driver in /etc/ndiswrapper for you.
To active ndiswrapper, issue the following commands:
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils
sudo ndiswrapper -i "/mnt/sda1/Program Files/Atheros/driver/net5211.inf"
sudo ndiswrapper -m
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
At this point there should now be a wlan0 interface available on your system.
There is one small bug however, and as of yet, I am unsure if it is related to madwifi or not. If you try to connect to a WEP protected AP it will try to associate in restricted mode. (Both of my access points do not use restricted mode). The workaround for this is to put the card into open mode (which still allows wep encryption):
sudo iwconfig wlan0 key open
The other manual setup that you will want to do is to setup the ATI card in the laptop, doing this will give you accelerated 3d graphics (which is great for google earth!).
To install the ATI Drivers, install the fglrx packages from synaptic package manager. You can find synaptic under System – > Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. Do a search within Synaptic for “fglrx” and install the associated packages. Once fglrx is installed, run the following command:
sudo aticonfig
This program will setup and configure the ATI Drivers to work with Xorg giving you 2D acceleration and Hardware Open GL Support.
So far everything works well and I am quite happy with this notebook, considering that it is currently retailing at the big box electronics stores for $699.00 Canadian. The specs on the notebook are:
- Intel Celeron M 410 @ 1.4Ghz
- 512MB DDR2 Ram
- 60 GB Hard drive
- ATI Radeon Express 200m Mobile Graphics
- Integrated Lan and WLAN.
- 1 PCMCIA Type II slot
- 4 USB ports
- DVD +/- RW Drive
- 15.4″ widescreen display. (1280×800)
If you have any questions about running Ubuntu Linux on your Toshiba Satellite Pro A100, or if I have missed something, please post below and I will do my best to help.
Hello.
I have similar laptop configuration on Ubunru 6.06. WiFi works out of the box, no major problems but unfortunately I couldn’t get 3D work with Ubuntu 6.06 although it worked on SUSE 10.1. It didn’t like Debian testing aither. I tried your recipe as well as official ATI Proprietary driver installation. No luck. it just doesn’t work. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Could you provide more detailes on the ATI configuration as this is quite an issue. Thank you for your time and dedicated work.
Egor.
Hi Egor -
Can you try installing the packages via the command line as per below:
sudo apt-get install fglrx-control
sudo apt-get install fglrx-kernel-source
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx-dev
After installing the 4 packages above, run:
sudo aticonfig
After running aticonfig you will need to restart X. Once you have restarted X, try running:
sudo fglrxinfo
you should see something similar to the following:
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON XPRESS 200M Series Generic
OpenGL version string: 2.0.5814 (8.25.18)
Sorry if my writeup wasn’t clear enough. I wrote most of it from memory. If the above works let me know and I will update my page.
Cheers, apeman
Would you mind contributing your wealth of expertise to this Wiki page?
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/ToshibaSatelliteProA100
I’m still pretty much a Linux Newbie and working with this laptop has proved a steep learning curve, so any additional help you can provide would be much appreciated. Cheers
Hi Glen -
Thanks for posting the wiki link. Once/if I can get the Function keys (Fn+FF6 etc) working I will add that to the wiki.
I also have not tested the modem yet but it does show up and should work. Oh yeah, the PCMCIA slot does work. I have tested my Cisco Aironet 350 wireless card and it works like a charm.
Cheers, Chris
Hi,
I have a Toshiba Satellite A100, not the Pro version, and I installed Ubuntu as a dual-boot with Windows XP. Everything works, as for the Wireless LAN card and the Ethernet Lan card, but the microphone won’t work, as well as the keyboard hotkeys, and the touchpad special functionalities (scroll up/down, left/right, minimize/maximize, etc…) I was wondering if you knew how to fix that.
Thank you in advance,
David
Installing the ATI Driver:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
sudo depmod -a
sudo aticonfig –initial
sudo aticonfig –overlay-type=Xv
Hi
I have two questions on audio.
What chipset does this laptop use, and were you able to get sound recording (e.g. Skype) to work under Linux?
Hi Khalid –
I have not tried skype, or audio recording yet. However, I can tell you that the laptop is using the following kernel driver for audio:
snd_hda_intel
Here is the output of “lspci | grep Audo”
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 437b (rev 01)
I hope this helps.
Cheers, apeman
I have just installed Ubuntu Linux (ubuntu-6.06.1-server-i386), running via Ms Virtual PC, and in full screen mode, on my Toshiba Satellite A15-S157 (Celeron, 15″ TFT display et al) and i cannot seem to set the display to 1024×768. I did once for the install (LAMP server) where F4 allowed setting the VGA settings, but since installing, I’ve been unable to.
I cannot find the /etc/X* directory, and sudo dpkg * reports an unknown package.
I would appreciate whatever guidance, please.
I have an Acer Aspire 5050 series (5051 AWXmi) which has pretty much identical specs, except it has an AMD Turion 64 chip. The sound is the part I’m trying to get going now with Ubuntu Edgy. lspci shows this:
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 437b (rev 01)
It _appears_ to be loaded with the same module as yours but no sound comes out. If anyone has any ideas please email me on
joe
at
ballofdirt
dot
com
Thanks!
:s How odd. We’re on the same computer with the same specs using the same Ubuntu, but my sound card can’t be found!
Hi Devlin -
The problem that you are having is likely this same problem I had in Fiesty, my sound worked under Dapper, the Edgy, and the Feisty beta, but a kernel update seemed to kill my sound.
Try the fix on this post:
http://www.apeman.org/2007/04/28/147/
Cheers, Chris
Hi,
I have Tosh Sat A100-570. When I use the Wireless access it connects for 5-10mins but then cuts off automatically. So if I’m loading something, it will be cut off and I have to lauch the satellite again-connect etc. How can I combat this?
Hi Stephen,
What program is it that you are having to launch again? It sounds like you may be referring to the windows utility.
I think this may have more to do with your access point. Try rebooting it to see if it helps, normally access points are set to auto channel selection, this should force it to pick a cleaner channel to use.
The software is ConfigFree. It allows one to lauch the wireless lan as well as connectivity doctor, summit etc.. When you say access point, are you referring to the home computer that I connect through for example?
I installed Ubuntu 7.04 on my Toshiba Satellite A100 (not pro), everything works fine except for the sound and mic, very low volume. I tried configuring the alsa mixer and it didn’t work. I also tried installing the new drivers, also didn’t work (I think I kindda missed up there), I even tried upgrading it to Ubuntu 7.10 and still doesn’t work. The sound works fine on suse10.2 and 10.3, but the wifi adapter doesnt connect to all networks on 10.3. You have a solution for that?
Thanks in advance.
Hello to all.
I am currently trying to convert my Toshiba Satellite A100 from Vista to Xp Pro.
Any help that can be sent to me in regards to driver locations on the web would be very much appreciated.
I have some of them but can’t seem to find the right chipset driver, ati display driver for an intel celeron platform.
Thanks for your time and consideration,
Paul G.
Toshiba Satellite A100, Model – PSAAKC-VA104C
Paul G.
I am looking for the same thing. Any luck?
Where do I get the ones you already have?