Credit for original sources of this information goes here -- thanks, Ultim8Fury!
Hardware:
Toshiba NB205-310 specs here
Upgraded with 2GB SODIMM
Note: (important for reasons discussed below) Audio chip is a Realtek ALC-272, found via lspci as:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem Toshiba America Info Systems Device ff6e
Hard drive was partitioned as
/dev/sda1 - 20GB, reiserfs*
/dev/sda2 - 1GB swap
/dev/sda3 - ~139GB, ext4 for data
This netbook was obviously designed for extreme power efficiency, and incorporates one annoying feature, apparently in the motherboard firmware, which is a frequent "falling asleep" in the absence of keyboard or mousepad input. This is a big annoyance during installation and initial package upgrading, when there are long periods when no keyboard input would otherwise be required. It is a minor annoyance during booting, when it requires a couple of touches to get it all the way to the login. It is not particularly noticeable during normal use - assuming one uses the NB205 for normal netbook activities. I assume the Windows motherboard driver gives it a frequent "poke" to keep it from falling asleep during booting -- but Linux users will have to tickle it to the login prompt.
I booted the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (NBR) 9.10 Beta Live CD, 3 OCT daily build, but that desktop is just not to my taste. The Kubuntu 9.10 NBR daily build site was not cooperating over the past weekend, so I test-installed sidux 2009-02 with KDE4, but even though sidux is typically very fast, I found the KDE4 desktop a tad sluggish on the Toshiba. I thought seriously about a Xfce desktop for the Toshiba, which is what is on my Asus EeePC 701/4G, but that is soooo spartan, that I wanted to try something with a little more eye-appeal. I ended up with Elive Development ver. 1.9.47, a Debian "stable" distribution (uses a 2.6.30 kernel), which installed from Live CD without incident -- it correctly detected all the hardware in the Toshiba, and automatically selected a very suitable video mode. After running updates and starting to play, I noticed that merely moving the mouse cursor on the desktop sometimes caused the "left-click" menu to appear. A little research found a useful touchpad definition file for HAL, which I installed in /etc/hal/fdi/policy. Get it here. Then I installed gsynaptics and used it to disable the tapping mode. That fixed the menu pop-ups. I next installed wicd, rebooted, and was amazed to discover that wireless networking (roaming mode) was already fully functional -- no twiddling /etc/network/interfaces or /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf needed. I only had to enter my WPA PSK in wicd, and I was connected to my wireless router. Marvelous! I installed samba, and with wireless networking running, used the new smb-browser (a modified thunar) to explore my local network, found my shared folder on my Kubuntu system, and was able to mount it and access my data. Very nice! I installed cheese and observed that the webcam "just works".
The major challenge with this particular netbook, for Linux users, is audio. Actually if you google it, the Windows users also complain of low speaker volume. The bottom line: with Linux, you will be using the Open Sound System (OSS). According to the Ultim8Fury post linked above, the ALSA driver can be convinced to operate the headphone for you, but I was interested in speaker output, so I didn't bother with ALSA, except to confirm that you get no speaker output from ALSA, with or without the "model=asus-mode4" option.
So, you must (a) download the OSS .deb file for i386 architecture from here and install it with dpkg -i, (b) dpkg-reconfigure linux-sound-base and change it to OSS, (c) install the asound2-plugins package, (d) use your text editor to make a /etc/asound.conf file as said here , and (e) reboot the system. Upon reboot, you should see a message regarding the OSS driver -- it appears to report an issue with the HDA system, but there is no problem with it. I opened the previously-installed alsaplayer, and was delighted to hear speaker output. But it was at a very low volume, even though the alsaplayer volume was at max. So, the next learning experience was ossxmix. This OSS mixer for the X display is part of the OSS package, so no separate installation is needed. You just run it from a terminal window and it presents a GUI. A little playing taught me that pushing the PCM 1 channel up to the max position provides a very reasonable speaker volume (for a netbook ...). I also installed the flashplugin-nonfree package, and tested flash on youtube in Iceweasel -- no problem, audio works great.
Finally, I installed VMware Player 2.5.3 and my Windows XP Pro VM, just to see how the Atom N280 CPU and Elive would do with that load. There were no issues installing VMware or running the VM. Win XP is, as expected, a little less lively under the Linux OS than it would be if natively installed, but it is not unacceptably slow. I have a proprietary database that I sometimes need to run on Win XP, so this is good news for personal productivity. I previously tried this on my EeePC 701/4G, and even when overclocked to 900MHz, it doesn't have the guts to run the VM acceptably.
Conclusion: Linux runs great, and without any obvious bugs, on the Toshiba NB205. Lack of a suitable option for the ALSA snd-hda-intel driver requires use of OSS, but it has a good driver and performs well. The power conservation firmware necessitates user tickling of the mousepad during installation and booting -- it is is not a noticeable problem while using the netbook for normal activities.
Other thoughts:
A SSD would be very cool in this netbook -- it should perform faster, and use less power, than the hdd. Christmas!
* The Elive installer does not yet allow installation of the root filesystem on ext4. Thinking reiserfs would be fastest among the remaining choices, that's what I went with. Probably it's not a good long-term solution, however -- ext2 on a new SSD would be the best answer. 8)
Hardware:
Toshiba NB205-310 specs here
Upgraded with 2GB SODIMM
Note: (important for reasons discussed below) Audio chip is a Realtek ALC-272, found via lspci as:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem Toshiba America Info Systems Device ff6e
Hard drive was partitioned as
/dev/sda1 - 20GB, reiserfs*
/dev/sda2 - 1GB swap
/dev/sda3 - ~139GB, ext4 for data
This netbook was obviously designed for extreme power efficiency, and incorporates one annoying feature, apparently in the motherboard firmware, which is a frequent "falling asleep" in the absence of keyboard or mousepad input. This is a big annoyance during installation and initial package upgrading, when there are long periods when no keyboard input would otherwise be required. It is a minor annoyance during booting, when it requires a couple of touches to get it all the way to the login. It is not particularly noticeable during normal use - assuming one uses the NB205 for normal netbook activities. I assume the Windows motherboard driver gives it a frequent "poke" to keep it from falling asleep during booting -- but Linux users will have to tickle it to the login prompt.
I booted the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (NBR) 9.10 Beta Live CD, 3 OCT daily build, but that desktop is just not to my taste. The Kubuntu 9.10 NBR daily build site was not cooperating over the past weekend, so I test-installed sidux 2009-02 with KDE4, but even though sidux is typically very fast, I found the KDE4 desktop a tad sluggish on the Toshiba. I thought seriously about a Xfce desktop for the Toshiba, which is what is on my Asus EeePC 701/4G, but that is soooo spartan, that I wanted to try something with a little more eye-appeal. I ended up with Elive Development ver. 1.9.47, a Debian "stable" distribution (uses a 2.6.30 kernel), which installed from Live CD without incident -- it correctly detected all the hardware in the Toshiba, and automatically selected a very suitable video mode. After running updates and starting to play, I noticed that merely moving the mouse cursor on the desktop sometimes caused the "left-click" menu to appear. A little research found a useful touchpad definition file for HAL, which I installed in /etc/hal/fdi/policy. Get it here. Then I installed gsynaptics and used it to disable the tapping mode. That fixed the menu pop-ups. I next installed wicd, rebooted, and was amazed to discover that wireless networking (roaming mode) was already fully functional -- no twiddling /etc/network/interfaces or /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf needed. I only had to enter my WPA PSK in wicd, and I was connected to my wireless router. Marvelous! I installed samba, and with wireless networking running, used the new smb-browser (a modified thunar) to explore my local network, found my shared folder on my Kubuntu system, and was able to mount it and access my data. Very nice! I installed cheese and observed that the webcam "just works".
The major challenge with this particular netbook, for Linux users, is audio. Actually if you google it, the Windows users also complain of low speaker volume. The bottom line: with Linux, you will be using the Open Sound System (OSS). According to the Ultim8Fury post linked above, the ALSA driver can be convinced to operate the headphone for you, but I was interested in speaker output, so I didn't bother with ALSA, except to confirm that you get no speaker output from ALSA, with or without the "model=asus-mode4" option.
So, you must (a) download the OSS .deb file for i386 architecture from here and install it with dpkg -i, (b) dpkg-reconfigure linux-sound-base and change it to OSS, (c) install the asound2-plugins package, (d) use your text editor to make a /etc/asound.conf file as said here , and (e) reboot the system. Upon reboot, you should see a message regarding the OSS driver -- it appears to report an issue with the HDA system, but there is no problem with it. I opened the previously-installed alsaplayer, and was delighted to hear speaker output. But it was at a very low volume, even though the alsaplayer volume was at max. So, the next learning experience was ossxmix. This OSS mixer for the X display is part of the OSS package, so no separate installation is needed. You just run it from a terminal window and it presents a GUI. A little playing taught me that pushing the PCM 1 channel up to the max position provides a very reasonable speaker volume (for a netbook ...). I also installed the flashplugin-nonfree package, and tested flash on youtube in Iceweasel -- no problem, audio works great.
Finally, I installed VMware Player 2.5.3 and my Windows XP Pro VM, just to see how the Atom N280 CPU and Elive would do with that load. There were no issues installing VMware or running the VM. Win XP is, as expected, a little less lively under the Linux OS than it would be if natively installed, but it is not unacceptably slow. I have a proprietary database that I sometimes need to run on Win XP, so this is good news for personal productivity. I previously tried this on my EeePC 701/4G, and even when overclocked to 900MHz, it doesn't have the guts to run the VM acceptably.
Conclusion: Linux runs great, and without any obvious bugs, on the Toshiba NB205. Lack of a suitable option for the ALSA snd-hda-intel driver requires use of OSS, but it has a good driver and performs well. The power conservation firmware necessitates user tickling of the mousepad during installation and booting -- it is is not a noticeable problem while using the netbook for normal activities.
Other thoughts:
A SSD would be very cool in this netbook -- it should perform faster, and use less power, than the hdd. Christmas!
* The Elive installer does not yet allow installation of the root filesystem on ext4. Thinking reiserfs would be fastest among the remaining choices, that's what I went with. Probably it's not a good long-term solution, however -- ext2 on a new SSD would be the best answer. 8)
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