Slackware 10.1 on Satellite A55-S306

I write to you to tell you that I have had good success with installing Linux on a
Toshiba Satellite A55-S306. I am going to walk you through what I had to do.


1) Installation
A normal Slackware installation was performed. Using a Mandrake 10.1 CD (#1),
the Windows XP Home partition was resized to half the hard drive. Then a "normal"
Slackware installation was performed.

2) Configuring kernel
Slackware 10.1 ships with 2.4.29 (last Slackware release to ship with a 2.4.x
kernel according to Patrick Volkerding). It includes 2.6.10 kernel in /testing.
Installing this was straightforward with an initrd. However, this didn't give me
many features that I wanted (but very close to all of them), so I recompiled the
kernel.
(my configuration can be found at http://www.puresimplicity.net/~neosadist/kernel.config)
I basically added SpeedStep / CPU Frequency Scaling support and ALSA
OSS-compatibility support, and compiled in what I needed for this machine
while leaving out what I didn't need. This resulted in immediate cpu frequency
scaling support (including the ondemand mode) and hibernate support.
Also, the i915 video module was compiled right in, as this is necessary
for having X.org DRI support.
NOTE: psmouse is a module, it should load or be loaded manually at boot
so that your mouse works.

3) Configuring X.org
I basically go with a default file generated by running "xorgconfig". The LCD
monitor vsync and hsync values are not known, so I picked generic
1024x768@60Hz values. After that, I then did minor tweaking. I did not patch
kernel for synaptics or ALPS touchpad at all by the way. Anyways, this config
works just fine using the "i810" X.org driver, which after compiling in i915
works just fine.
My config is at http://www.puresimplicity.net/~neosadist/xorg.conf

4) Configuring wireless
I basically downloaded the ipw2200 drivers and firmware and compiled the
drivers into the kernel after I compiled the kernel (see step #1). However, the
pitfall is that the drivers ask you to put firmware in /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware,
and this is incorrect. Make the directory /lib/firmware and put the firmware there.
My ipw2200 loaded just fine on boot and seems to work better than the same
support under Windows.

5) Configuring touchpad
After trying synaptics drivers and the ALPS-to-synaptic hack (neither worked),
I tried compiling psmouse as a module so that I could call options to it (see #1 above),
which worked great. I basically thought in terms of my display when I did the
refresh rate (30/sec) and resolution (72dpi), and it "just worked" after this
(before, when it was compiled INTO the kernel it would disable taps). The
tapping and scrolling zones do not work, but I usually disabled those in
Windows anyways.
My /etc/modules.conf is located at http://www.puresimplicity.net/~neosadist/modules.conf

6) Ethernet over Firewire
I never use this, and it's detected and set up by the kernel by default.
However, I added it to /etc/hotplug/blacklist because to me it's annoying.

7) Sound
Sound works fine with ALSA and OSS-compatibility for ALSA.
They're included by default and work out of the box. However, if your sound
does not, as mine did not, add snd-intel8x0m to the /etc/hotplug/blacklist
to prevent it from loading (it's the modem sound module, but it can cause
issues with the sound card so i blacklist it).

8) What doesn't work
So far the multimedia keys on the keyboard and the v92 dialup modem both
do not work, but these are minor issues. I've been told that it's possible to
make both work, but I didn't bother even trying, as I do not even use these
two features.

Overall, this laptop works great with Linux, provided that you do a little
work. In terms of quality, this is a very nice laptop. I am impressed with
how well it works under Linux.