Slackware Linux on the Toshiba A135 - S2276



Version 0.20
Copyright © 2006-2007 by Zack Smith
All rights reserved.

0. Summary

System works pretty well. For almost all purposes it is a good replacement for Windows.

My only remaining gripe is: The kernel's Synaptics trackpad driver needs improvement. It seems to misconfigure the trackpad such that the pointer doesn't come to a prompt stop at the end of a finger movement.

1. System Profile

My A135-S2276 has the following hardware:

ItemDescriptionStatus
CPU Intel Core Duo T2060, 1.6 GHz L1=64 kB, L2=1 MB Works
Memory 512 megs DDR2 533 MHz (4200MB/sec theoretical max.) Works
Hard drive & controller Fujitsu MHW2080B 80GB SATA drive & ATI 4379 Serial ATA Controller Works great
Optical drive Pioneer DVR-K17A DVD writer Works with DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM
Display & Video Chip 15.4" 1280x800 TFT & ATI Radeon Xpress 200M Works in wide-screen mode under X.
SoundATI Technologies SB450 HDA Audio Works (kernel 2.6.20.15)
Wireless Networking Atheros wireless network adapter Works using Madwifi driver.
Ethernet Realtek 8139 Works
USB ATI SB400 Works
PCMCIA ENE Technology CB1410 Not tested
TrackpadSynaptics Works but driver misconfigures trackpad.

2. Installation

This information is provided as-is. Proceed at your own risk.

2.1 Linux + Vista

  • There is no need to use ntfsresize if you are OK with reinstalling Vista from scratch. The Toshiba DVD gives you the option to reinstall in a small partition that it will create. 20 gigs is the minimum.
  • After that is complete, boot under Windows and download the Slackware 12 DVD ISO. This download may require half a day, so plan to do it overnight.
  • Burn the DVD ISO to a DVD-R disc. Amazingly, Toshiba includes an ISO writing utility with Vista. You need merely double-click on the ISO file's icon to start it.
  • Boot with the Slackware DVD, press Enter at the prompt and log in as root. No password is required.
  • Once at the command prompt, use fdisk to create your Linux partition(s), i.e. using the 'n' (new) command, and finalize that with 'w' (write). Then run 'setup' and install whatever you want.
  • When you get to the stage where you will install LILO, note that you must install it into the MBR (Master Boot Record).
  • Note, I suggest that you use XFCE as your GUI, not KDE which is a bloated mess, parts of which do not even work.
  • Before you run X Windows for the first time, be sure to run "alsamixer" to set a sane volume level. The default is very loud. Then, run "alsactl store" to make sure the sane volume levels are stored in /etc.
2.1.1 Before abandoning Windows
If you plan on using Linux exclusively, be sure that before you do, you copy all of the Windows TrueType fonts to a disk for use with Linux. They're in c:\windows\fonts. Firefox looks much better when using Windows fonts.

2.2 Linux alone

There's nothing preventing you from, upon buying this laptop, downloading the Slackware 12 DVD mentioned above along with the additional needed files and then completely replacing Vista. You may find that Linux lacks a few things you may want, like a certain video game, but otherwise Slackware 12 is surprisingly complete.

The only things that you'll need to get first are:

  • The DVD ISO if you don't have it.
  • Madwifi driver for the Atheros wifi chip.
  • Linux kernel 2.6.21.15 might be good -- the sound works w/this one.
  • The proper xorg.conf file (below).

2.3 Fine adjustments

The following is my personal checklist for installing Slackware on this machine. You may want to do things differently. 
 
Install Slackware 12.
	If you install everything except TCL, Emacs, 
	and KDE-Intl, it requires 4.04 gigs.
Get linux 2.6.20.15 and untar it into /usr/src.
Copy the good config to /usr/src/linux-2.6.20.15/.config
Go to /usr/src and remove the linux link.
Create a new link: ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.6.20.15 linux
Go to /usr/src/linux-2.6.20.15 and 'make'.
Do 'make modules_install'.
Put madwifi driver in /root.
Go to /root/madwifi* directory.
Do 'make'.
Do 'make install'.
Create /etc/hosts.deny as ALL : ALL
Copy the good xorg.conf to /usr/X11.
Reboot; wireless driver should load during startup.
Create user account.
Create mount directories for storage: mkdir /dvd /usb
Set acceptable speaker volume with alsamixer.
Store this volume setting w/ "alsactl store"
Add aliases to /etc/profile...
 alias d1="mount /dvd; ls -l --color /dvd"
 alias d0="umount /dvd"
 alias u1="mount /usb; ls -l --color /usb"
 alias u0="umount /usb"
 alias w1="iwconfig ath0 essid ...."
 alias w0="rmmod ath_pci"
 alias ll="ls -l --color"
 alias ..="cd .."
 alias D="cd /nt/Users/Me/Desktop; ls --color"
 alias lx="cd /usr/src/linux"
 alias mk="make"
Get, compile and install libdvdcss2 -- needed to play DVD movies.
Get, compile and install libsigc++ -- needed by Skype.
Install major applications.

3. Drivers

3.1. Video

3.1.1. X Windows
In Slackware 12, you can start up X Windows without modifying xorg.conf, however this will get you the VESA mode, which is 1024x768. Also, trying to switch to a virtual console or exit X Windows when in VESA mode crashes the X server.

It is better to use the xorg.conf that I provide below, which allows for wide screen operation and doesn't crash the server.

3.1.2. Framebuffer
You can start up in VESA 1024x768 mode. There may be a BIOS mode for 1280x800 but I haven't tested to verify that.

3.2. Sound

The ATI High-Def audio chip works with kernel 2.6.21.15, but not with 2.6.22.*.

Problems:

    The headphone output does not work, or rather you can plug in your headphones but the speaker will continue to output sound.

    The volume control on the front of the machine doesn't work because it's a new type of control -- it's basically a jog dial without start or stop position. Using it results in codes being sent to the console.

Sound recording does work. This command will record 10 seconds of WAV data: arecord -d 10 foo.wav

For debugging purposes, here is a useful script alsa-info.sh. Run that before asking questions on Usenet.

3.3. ACPI

I've seen the CPU slow to 1.2 GHz but I haven't learned how to change the power-management strategy just yet.

3.4. USB

Four ports total. They work. The one in the back appears to be slow USB only, whereas the others are USB2.

3.5. Printing

CUPS appears to work quite well. Just connect your printer to the USB port and then point your browser to http://localhost:631/. I was able to print from Konqueror in about 2 minutes.

3.6. External flash drive

These work fine, although KDE seems to get confused about whether they are mounted or not.

I ran some tests to determine the speed of my various CompactFlash cards: link.

3.7. PC Card slot

There is only one Type I slot. It appears to be supported, but I didn't test it.

3.8 Networking

3.8.1 Ethernet
The Realtek 8139 Ethernet chip is a very commonly used chip and works very well.

Don't forget to create /etc/hosts.deny in which you should have the line: 

ALL: ALL
3.8.2 Wireless
Warning! Even if you think you have manually switched off the internal Wifi chip using the switch on the front of the computer, such that the LED turns off, it appears the Wifi subsystem is always operational under Linux.

The Madwifi driver requires that the kernel be SMP and that module auto-loading works. The kernel I've used with Madwifi is 2.6.20.6.

The process for using the wifi driver is:

  1. modprobe ath_pci
  2. iwconfig ath0 ....
  3. dhcpcd ath0

3.9. Internal DVD writer

Seems to work fine.

3.10 Synaptics trackpad

It works as a PS/2 mouse, but the Linux driver is not as good as the Windows driver. In particular, it seems to produce more motion data than is needed, whereas the Windows driver dampens that somehow. Under X, the result is extra motion at the end of a finger-stroke. I'm trying to find a solution.

It turns out that there is a driver in the X server for the Synaptics, and there is a utility called ksynaptics that uses libsynaptics that is supposed to let you modify trackpad behavior. However, these are all after the fact. The right thing would be to fix driver in the kernel first.

4. Performance

4.1. Video

I tried playing a flash video and it worked fine.

4.2. Hard drive

The program hdparm says that buffered reads happen at 37.3 MB/sec. Cached reads happen at 745 MB/sec.

You should add -h to the poweroff command in /etc/rc.d/rc.6 to ensure a quiet hard drive powerdown.

4.3. Processor

The Intel Core Duo T2060 has two processors and is really quite sufficient for most purposes.

It rates at 3191 bogomips.

The BYTE magazine Dhrystone benchmark, is available here. The T2060 processor gets an index of 159.0.

4.4. Memory Bandwidth

To ascertain memory performance, I wrote a utility called "bandwidth", which is here. The results for this machine when ACPI was enabled is: 
  
CPU MHz = 1200.000
L2 cache sequential read 3627.51 MB/sec
L2 cache sequential write 3195.66 MB/sec
Main memory sequential read 2796.2 MB/sec
Main memory sequential write 578.525 MB/sec
Framebuffer resolution: 1024x768, 16bpp
Framebuffer memory sequential read 13.981 MB/sec
Framebuffer memory sequential write 84.2907 MB/sec
Library: memset 516.222 MB/sec
Library: memcpy 479.349 MB/sec
Library: bzero 447.392 MB/sec

4.5. Internal DVD writer

Reading works fine for single-session DVD-R & DVD-R DL discs.

Reading of one "live" DVD-R/DL UDF disk did not work for me, because the standard was too new. Linux only supports older UDFs.

Reading and writing works fine for DVD-RAM discs (5 for $13 at Circuit City, but only 3X) but writing is slow. FYI, DVD-RAM uses the older UDF standard.

For writing to DVD+/-R, I've tested it using DVD+R discs first running mkisofs to create an ISO, then writing that using growisofs. Worked fine.

I've tried using K3B to write some files to a DVD-RW. It was slow and it failed.

Playback of DVD movies has not worked, apparently because I don't have libdvdcss2 installed properly. I'm working on that problem.

4.6 KDE

I really must say that KDE is a pain in the ass. It's like a bad joke of an imitation of Windows, which shouldn't be imitated in the first place. It is truly unfortunate that neither KDE nor Gnome are very good, but there you have it. That's why I use XFCE.

Specific problem with KDE in Slackware 11 (also 12?) :

  1. The file manager doesn't seem to know when a disk gets unmounted and its idea of whether a disc is mounted or unmounted is typically wrong and requires restarting KDE.
  2. The wireless configuration GUI is quite useless. It has no effect on the wireless subsystem's behavior.
  3. KDE starts up very noisily and it doesn't manage the ALSA mixer levels properly.

For a possible future alternative, check out my project FramebufferUI.

5. Applications

If you're installing Slackware, you're probably already technically adept. Still, you may not know about all your options. Here is a table of equivalent applications between Vista & Slackware 12. (I'm not very familiar with KDE so I mostly leave its apps out.)
TypeVistaSlackware graphical Slackware framebuffer Slackware command-line
Word processing MS Office, Open Office Open Office, Koffice - TeX
Web browser Firefox, IE Firefox, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Konqueror ? Lynx, links
Email reader Thunderbird, OutlookExpress Thunderbird - Pine?
Torrent client uTorrent KTorrent N/A N/A
DVD writer Windows, Nero K3B - growisofs
Audio player WMP, Winamp, Real Xine fbxine amp, mpg123, mpg321
Video player Zoom player, Quicktime, WMP, Winamp, Real Xine fbxine xine with ascii art output
DVD player WinDVD Xine (get libdvdcss2) fbxine (get libdvdcss2) xine with ascii art output (get libdvdcss2)
Video editor Windows Movie Maker, VirtualDub AviDeMux - N/A
Photo editor Windows Photo Gallery, Photoshop, GIMP GIMP, xv ? N/A
CD ripper w/net capability Windows Media Player, FreeRip, iTunes - ?
DVD backup utility FairUse, DVDShrink, DVD Decryptor Same programs under Wine - ?
Simple document editor Wordpad ? ? ?
Text editor Notepad XVim ? Vim, Emacs
Keyboard macro utility AutoHotkey ? N/A N/A

6. Kernel

My .config file for kernel 2.6.20.15 is here.

Here is the compiled kernel that the above .config creates, which I provide AS-IS so you use it as your own risk: bzImage.

7. Mailing list

Link.

Links