Notebooks and Linux
It was a great honour for me to put Linux on some laptops which belong to me, relatives and friends...
Sony Vaio Z21 (2011)
The report for the Sony Vaio Z 21 (2011) was updated on 29. January 2012.
Toshiba Portege R600
(Updated on 27. January 2012)Conclusion
After using this notebook for three years I have to say that I never was able to make this piece 100% working. Depending on the kernel version the one or other feature suddenly stopped/started to work. From kernel 3.0 on the notebook freezes after shutdown. Also the "ondemand"-governor of the "cpufreq" tools stopped working a long time ago.
This computer is a nice piece of hardware, but Toshiba doesn't seem to be "Linux-friendly" at all. I stopped using this notebook now and I'm really not unhappy about this fact!
According to www.linlap.com this laptop is supported by Ubuntu.
OS: Debian
I installed Debian Squeeze, this is the current (2011-01-11) testing version of Debian but decided to install the Vanilla kernel from www.kernel.org instead of the Debian kernel.
I'm able to get nearly all the hardware working, but there are some annoying troubles with this piece of hardware. Some features need the experimental Toshiba-acpi patch and the toshset utility. Details below:
Graphic card is working with the Intel driver (X.Org X Server 1.6.3). 3D Graphics is slow. Xrandr and switching displays only is working with the toshset tool. Without toshset, the external monitor already has to be connected before starting the computer.
Display Brightness, resolution, transreflective feature, ... is fine. The transreflective mode only is available with the toshset tool.
LAN is working fine.
WLAN is working since kernel 2.6.30 and the new firmware from www.intellinuxwireless.org (Version: iwlwifi-5000-ucode-8.24.2.12)
Bluetooth is working.
UMTS (wireless broadband) is currently not working, but it already did! At the moment, the computer completely freezes when I try to use the 3g modem. I don't know the reason, it seems not to depend on the kernel version...
GPS also was already working, I didn't try it recently.
Dell Latitude X1
OS: Debian
I installed Debian Lenny, this is the current (2009-06-10) stable version of Debian and Vanilla kernel from www.kernel.org.
Very well supported!
