[plug] [Semi-OT] Laptops- Toshiba A100

[Kirk Turner]

On 2/12/07, Tim Bowden <tim.bowden at westnet.com.au> wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-02-11 at 11:07 +0900, Max wrote:
> > I will be in the market for a low to mid priced laptop in the near
> > future,
> > so this thread interests me also.
> >
> > The first question for me will be:
> >   Will linux install and run on it making it possible to use the laptops
> > hardware features - in my case, can i run Mandriva or Kubuntu ? .......
>
> I've always had good success with toshiba (hardware reliability wise and
> linux wise), to the point where I no longer look seriously at any other
> brand.
One thing to note with the toshiba laptops - some of them (my A100 for
example - which I also got from cybershop) is actually just a rebadged
compal rather than being a toshiba made toshiba. What this means is
that the toshiba utils (and hence the toshiba acpi driver) don't work
with the laptop, and so some of the advanced power management and
function keys don't work (the acpi driver for the compal (omnibook -
HP also rebadge these things) doesn't support most of it (because
compal doesn't release the info). The main one that annoys me is that
the screen dimmer function keys don't work.

The easiest way to tell which type of Toshiba you have is at boot
time. Toshiba toshibas will boot with a toshiba bios, compal toshiba's
use a phoenix bios (going from memory - I'm not on my laptop atm).

Playing around with the acpi driver and also getting in touch with the
author of nvclock (the Nvidia Go 7300 isn't currently supported by
nvlock) are on my todo list so that I can get some of these things
working... but its not something I've any experience with and have a
major learning curve.

Kirk