Will OpenSuse Work Well with a Toshiba Satellite?

English Hardware
1

Hello OpenSuse Community!
I am new to the OpenSuse Community, but am not new to the Linux community. I have been using Ubuntu 10.04 then 10.10 64-Bit for eight months now, on my Toshiba Laptop. I will post those specs at the bottom of the post. Anyway, Ubuntu is beginning to break in 10.10, getting slower, and having some sleep issues on this machine. I am now in need of something that “Just Works” besides OS X or Windows. I have a few questions:

  1. Will OpenSuse work well on my Laptop?
  2. What is the latest 64-bit KDE stable version? Do you have a Live CD?
  3. How are your Web Development tools? I am a web developer, and hate using Windows to Develop

My laptop specs are:
Toshiba Satellite L455
4GB RAM
250GB HDD; Data Partition, Windows Partition, Ubuntu Partition
What do you guys think?
Thanks for helping! :wink:

2

Try the live CD
software.opensuse.org: Download openSUSE 11.3

Some Toshiba info here, but not yours
HCL:Toshiba laptops - openSUSE

3

OK. I looked, and since this laptop is a year old, they do not seem to have anything like it I can compare it to. So, I might just have to try a Live CD or Live USB and see how it works. Then possibly install it in a VMware install inside of Windows. Any other place?

PS: I love the look of your site, and all the pages load very quickly. Then there are these forums, and that makes coming over to OpenSuse very promising.

4

OK. Good luck with the Live CD
Any questions, just pop in here and we can help.

5

As you note, it works on Ubuntu, so it most likely also works on openSUSE. Its just a matter of learning the ‘openSUSE’ way of doing things.

What can you tell us about the hardware specifics ? ie Graphics, Wireless, Webcam, Sound ?

Perhaps post the output of running in a Ubuntu terminal:

/sbin/lspci -nnk

and

lsusb

and post here the output from both of those commands. They will tell us about your hardware so that we can provide any warnings or hints.

And as noted there are many liveCD varients on openSUSE in which you can boot/test from. Use the link that caf4926 gave you to download the live CD. BUT before you burn it, take a look at the links below that start with "NEW Users - openSUSE… ".

Reference KDE, the version in openSUSE-11.3 is KDE-4.4.4. But there are repositories in openSUSE with more cutting edge versions of KDE that are declared stable by the KDE community (but not by SuSE-GmbH) and many users add those repositories and update their KDE. I’m not one of those users.

I can’t answer the web development tools, but the odds are if the tool is in Ubuntu, then it is also available for openSUSE. And if it is not available, then one can either compile it or get someone to compile it for you.

Some openSUSE Links for new users:

  1. NEW Users - openSUSE Pre-install (general) – PLEASE READ
  2. NEW Users - openSUSE-11.3 Pre-installation – PLEASE READ
  3. Multi-media and Restricted Format Installation Guide
  4. MultiMedia Checker or mmcheck - Check Your openSUSE MultiMedia Setup in Just 16 Steps
  5. openSUSE software installation hints
  6. new version - Concepts - openSUSE
  7. old version - Concepts - openSUSE

Links 1 & 2 above provide good information for new users. Some might say essential information.

Link-3 tells you how to setup multimedia on openSUSE. Many distro hoppers criticize openSUSE multimedia because it does no come with proprietary software. That link tells you how easy it is to setup your multimedia on openSUSE.

Link-4 gives you a script to test your multimedia, so that if you fail with the advice in Link-3, you can run the script in Link-4 to see why you failed.

Link-5 gives you hints on installing software on openSUSE, especially for cases where you can not find already packaged the software package you want.

Link-6 is the new version of the openSUSE concepts guide with basics on openSUSE Linux that is important for new users to have a general idea about.

Link-7 is pretty much the same as Link-6, but in a different all in one page.

6

I have come back of trying to get it to work. So, I used UNetBootin to make my flash drive bootable, but upon changing the BIOS settings to boot from the USB Drive, it just says


Could Not Find Kernal Image: gfxboot

It then repeats the error to infinity. I just hit power and have come back to Ubuntu, to post this. Any ideas? Also, oldcpu, I am reading through all that information. Looks good.
Thanks

7

Until you have the image written correctly, you’ll have to keep trying.

Unetbootin might not work

You could try the dd tool for windows
SDB:Live USB stick - openSUSE

8

can you not just burn the kde live cd image for 4.4.4 to a cd and boot from it?

you can then open this link http://opensuse-community.org/codecs-kde.ymp

and install the necessary software into the live image and see how it works for you?

I think its less fussy than trying to boot from USB

Stuart

9

Sure, I will begin burning now. I just wanted to see how far I could get to see if it would completely fail or if it would work. I have never done a USB boot before, and wanted to see how it was. I guess that will not work out. KDE version 4.4.4 you mean? What if I have a lower version or higher version? I also see I should run the checksum while I am on the CD. I cannot DD in Windows, because I have 7. I tried using DD in Ubuntu, but heard it is dangerous. How can I find out if I have 4.4.4?

10

I will just assume I have KDE 4.4. Is that a safe thing to do?
Anyway, I am currently posting from the Live CD, and am enjoying it all. It boots faster than Ubuntu (From Live CD), and has a wide range of apps. I am installing web developer tools and now am going to install the other ones you guys mentioned. Now I expect a few problems along the way, so not all issues will be reported. I will update after I get some more going…
But my two questions are:

  1. How do I find out what version of KDE I am using?
  2. When clicking on my Data Partition, it says access denied. How do I gain access to my partition(s)?
    Thanks for helping. :wink:
11

Howdy,

Toshiba and Sony seem to have a competition to see who can make the worst Linux laptop. The two problems that you will probably run into are that the fan won’t work reliably, causing the machine to overheat and the video driver may crash and then you can’t see diddly squat.

The good news is that the latest kernels and video drivers may actually work if you add the following kernel boot parameters:
nolapic nomodeset acpi=“Linux”

12

Agree with above post, fan control has probably been biggest issue with potentially serious consequences. I have a Toshiba Sattelite U500 series and have managed to work through all the issues related to my usage.

13

I also have a U500 and eventually solved the fan problem by changing the fan wiring so it always runs at medium speed. To that, you need a Philips screw driver and a decent soldering iron…

14

I have a german Satellite L500-120, PSLJ3 series assembled in late 2009( sold elsewhere in the world as 550 and 505 series) .

**Intel C2DUO@2.10GhZ **( "Intel 4/5 express chipset )
4GB RAM

ATI radeon 4650HD mob @1366x768 1GB real vram , ( fan problem = needs Catalyst, read below. )
Intel Wifi 5100 AGN ( works out of the box , WPA2 with Gnome NetworkManager)
Realtek Lan,internal Realtek USB Cardreader
Realtek / Intel HDA Sound

FN-Keys/brightness ( F6 and F7 ) sound mute/sound off (FN+ESC) work.The sound volume wheel next to the cardreaders slot works, on-screen-display shows indicator.
Multimedia Keys work in banshee.
Trackpad,scrolling work with Gnome Mouse config tool.
The built in Webcam ( “Chiconey UVC Cam” ) works well in cheese and with GUVCview
Suspend/Standby/Shutdown = acpi S3 and S4 all works automatically.

Opensuse 11.3 fully supports the hardware, **either x86 or x64 **out of the Box ( so does Ubuntu since 10.04 too).

The only issue I ran into with 11.3 is a popping sound when logging into gnome, but thats only once per login and it is limited to 11.3 because SLED11SP1 didn’t have t´his issue ( therefore others … ) as well as ubuntu also does not have this effect.

**for the constant fan you need to install the proprietary ATI catalyst **from AMD.com. Once installed and activated ( aticonfig --initial ) you need to go into the CCC application and **point the “Powerplay” Slider to “optimize for battery” **even if plugged in.

The fan will automatically be silent, as the card voltage and Mhz speed is going down in this mode. Still enough horsepower to run compiz with it.

I think it runs Linux really well since the 2.6.30 kernel without much tweaking necessary. When I just bought it a year ago and the kernel was at 2.6.2x - it was more complicated - for example opensuse 11.0 could not make the wifi or the trackpad working and atis driver were not ready … even the original release of Enterprise Suse 11.1 was somewhat a fail on the laptop ( that changed with SP1 / opensuse 11.2) as well as I needed to wait for ubuntu 10.x, cause 9.x would not do it. :\

So it is really true … if a specific distro does not do it, likely the next version will. Linux is developping at lightspeed - I can tell you that configuring a Laptop with Linux ten years ago was a horror compared to today where its really much easier as dealing with Windows. ( Even the preloaded VistaSp1 on my Toshiba needs a load full of drivers and 3rd party tools to operate the hardware. In Linux its only the graphic driver I need… )