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Toshiba Tecra A10
Introduction
This is a guide to running Linux with the Toshiba Tecra A10 laptop.
This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which modules you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required modules have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.
This page is just for discussing using Linux on the Toshiba Tecra A10. For a general discussion about this laptop you can visit the Toshiba Tecra A10 page on LapWik.
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Specifications
For full specifications see the Toshiba Tecra A10 specifications page.
| Name | Toshiba Tecra A10 |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo |
| Screen | 15.4” WXGA or WSXGA+ Widescreen |
| RAM | 1GB to 4GB |
| HDD | 120GB to 250GB or 128GB SSD |
| Optical Drive | DVD+-RW |
| Graphics | Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD or NVIDIA Quadro NVS 150M |
| Network | Ethernet, Intel 5100 802.11abgn, Bluetooth |
Linux Compatibility
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Good | |
| Screen | Good | |
| HDD | Not Tested | |
| Optical Drive | Partial | Fedora 10 - needed to change from SATA to IDE mode in BIOS. Otherwise drive gets error during boot re: setting xfermode |
| Graphics | Good | Fedora 10 - works well @ 1680×1050 Ubuntu 8.10 - works fine |
| Sound | Good | Fedora 10 - haven't managed to get this to work yet Ubuntu 8.10 - problem solved with a few changes, works ok! |
| Ethernet | Good | |
| Wireless | Good | Fedora 10 - just worked Ubuntu 8.10 - works, problems with wpa & wpa2 |
| Bluetooth | Not Tested | |
| 56K Modem | Not Tested | |
| USB | Good | Fedora 10 - works with what I have tried todate |
| Firewire | Not Tested | |
| Card Reader | works | |
| ExpressCard Slot | Not Tested | |
| Fingerprint Reader | Good | OpenSuse 11.1 works |
| Camera | Good | Fedora 10 - just worked, Ubuntu 8.10 works fine |
Notes
You can enter any specific notes with running Linux on the Toshiba Tecra A10 here.
Audio:
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
Add on a new line:
options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=toshiba position_fix=1
reboot
Summary
You can enter a summary of how well the Toshiba Tecra A10 works with Linux here.
Discussion
Hey, a quick note of interest about Tecra A10's.
Optical Drive: If you have it set as AHCI (SATA) in BIOS, you can avoid the xfer mode error messages by starting the drive with a CD or DVD in it. This is the only way I have found that is easy, I had tried another updated custom kernel and had success in changing this while breaking other things.
Graphics: Dual screen (non cloned) does not work with Graphics Acceleration. I cannot get it to work with 2 screens and different resolutions, only a cloned display. Trying to set a “Virtual” line in xorg.conf with acceleration enabled will cause X not to start and it complains about how it cannot allocate memory for the front buffer.
This is all with Fedora 10.