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TOSHIBA Satellite 2805-S202 for Linux

Tried to explain some of the installations I tried in my Laptop.

Initially I looked for laptops with preloaded Linux and I couldnt find one easily.First Impressed by the features and the price for the model I bought Toshiba.

After having used it for over 6 months I took a quick look at various sites and found Mandrake Linux will be the choice for its fair easy installation . Decided, I could try the download . I dont know what files need to be downloaded and after a long hours of study , its the iso image I need !!.

Downloaded the iso images for i586 and then copied the whole stuff to a CD , tried ... tried and tried to install with the CD I copied. Finally found the way I burnt the CD is not the right one.

The Next step was I just ordered 2 CDs Mandrake Linux version 8.0 and was eagerly waiting for almost more than 2 weeks, that was too long for me to wait. Sent some couple of emails to Mandrake and finally it was delivered. Wow ! I got pretty good working Linux I was wanted to .

The installation was so simple , just a couple of clicks. But I had trouble too, my X was not starting. Finally found kde was not installed by default, only gnome has been installed. I started X session by typing gdm, then installed all rpms from software managers. KDE finally came up. Heard music , tested couple of C programs and I thought thats it!. When i tried to connect to Internet I found my modem is not supported. Tried and finally found ltmodem drivers suites Xircom. It did work very well. The problem again is I was not able to connect to Internet using my MSN and AOL account.Posted messages and found that these two ISPs particularly do not work with linux :-( .

Interesting thing happenned in the middle, Mandrake Linux released a new version 8.1, this was even before I recieved my 2 CD sets, I thought I'll go for the latest version even before getting 8.0 , but Mandrake refused me saying they already shipped my CDs.

Now I learnt how to burn CDs from iso images, so I tried downloading all three iso images and again there was problem while upgrading , message was "* not found", likewise I found around 40 pkgs not found , during installation. It didnt work well. Tried with full fresh installation , instead of upgarde , again had the same problem, found some postings in mandrake user groups reporting the same problem what I had. I tried burning CDs with 2X, 1X , nothing worked , later found from a posting that I had to install just the gnome (no other applications) and then bringing up the basic installation try to install all other apllicatiosn including KDE. I tried and it worked.

The problem later I found was the CDs are not mounting properly, I had to manually mount and eject by running "mount /mnt/cdrom and eject /dec/hdc" Though I thought this should work for all CDs , again I was at mistake , except my installation and mp3 CDs all other CDS are not accessible , the message was Input/ Output error. Ran for newsgroups looking for postings and someone suggested to fix by correcting /etc/fstab, bcos it was messed up by Mandrake by the supermount they provided. I tried all options as found in the mandrake forum and finally got fed up using Linux, bcos all days I was just having problems and problems.

Finally I started finding articles saying SuSE is the one I should look for, again the download problem, I dont know what files to download , posted emails wiith my local user group Upstate Carolina Linux User Group and a person ( I wont forget him in my Life)named Doug was ready to give me his SuSE DVD he had. I dont have words to say. its simply the best I just got my Linux up in 40 minutes. Everthing works except my modem(It work now) Listed below is the complete story.

How I fixed the WinModem

TOSHIBA Satellite 2805-S202 for Linux

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