Toshiba Satellite A135
This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which drivers you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required drivers have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.
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Author
idsfa (idsfa at yahoo.com)Introduction
This is a guide to running Linux with the Toshiba Satellite A135 laptop, specifically the S2276 variant.Editing This Page
View our Editing GuidelinesSpecifications
| Name | Toshiba Satellite A135 | |
| Processor | Intel Pentium Dual Core, 1.6GHz | |
| Screen | 15.4" WXGA widescreen TFT-LCD 1280x800 | |
| RAM | 512MB | |
| HDD | 80GB (5400rpm SATA) | |
| Optical Drive | Double-layer DVD+-RW/CD-RW (4x DVD+R DL; 4x DVD-R DL; 8x8x8 DVD+RW; 8x6x8 DVD-RW; 5x DVD-RAM; 24x16x24 CD-RW) | |
| Graphics | ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M - 128 MB shared memory | |
| Network | Atheros AR2425 / AR5007EG | |
| Other | S-Video Output, Built in Stereo Speakers, WiFi Cut-Off Switch, 4x USB 2.0 Ports, 56K Modem Port | |
Linux Compatibility
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
| Processor | Yes | |
| Screen | Yes | |
| HDD | Yes | |
| Optical Drive | Yes | Burn capability tested successfully |
| Graphics | Yes | Both open source and ATI proprietary drivers |
| Sound | Yes | |
| Ethernet | Yes | |
| Wireless | Yes | Using development madwifi driver, madwifi-hal-0.9.30.10 branch |
| 56K Modem | untested | People still use these? |
| USB | Yes | |
| PCMCIA | Yes | |
| S-Video | untested | |
Notes
Suspend and hibernate not yet working ... likely due to legacy USB support. I expect them to be functional with further effort.For the audio system to function you need to install ALSA version 1.0.14rc4 or higher. At time of writing no Linux distribution has this as default so it will need to be installed manually. With these drivers audio begins to work except for the headphone jack. For the headphone jack to work you can follow the instructions here.
Related Resources
Preparing your laptop for LinuxConfiguring an ATI graphics chip
Configuring the audio
Configuring the ipw3945 driver for the Intel 3945ABG wireless controller
Increasing battery life
Summary
I used the installed Vista tools to shrink the existing installation to the minimum allowed size (about 10 G), then installed Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn). Sound did not work (and still does not). The delivered madwifi drivers would initially connect, but performance would erode until the connection was dropped. Some users reported success with the XP drivers and ndiswrapper, but I was unable to get this working. A bleeding edge Atheros driver was able to sustain a connection at a substandard bitrate which still exceeded my 1.5 Mb network pipe (averaging about 24 Mb).If you are looking to purchase this laptop you can visit Toshiba's Satellite page.
Have you installed Linux on this laptop? If so how about leaving a comment about your success in the comments section below.
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Comments
Toshiba Satellite A135-SP4796
Xubuntu 6.06
sound works but not so good, sd-card-reader and wireless doesn't, no hibernate or suspend
Ubuntu 7.10
sound works with the generic kernel, but not with the i386 version
sd-card-reader works well
no luck with atheros
some unreliable behavior with suspend and hibernate
centOS 5.01
still working on it, no sound yet, no atheros, but apparently good suspend and hibernate support
SuSE 10.3
still working on this one, no sound, no atheros so far
Fedora 8...
couldn't get the installer to work properly
Sound Toshiba Satellite A135-S4467
On mine the sound chip is Realtek ALC861-VD. I have not done a whole lot of testing with sound but on the Mandriva 2008 version the headphones would not work, so I booted the desktop kernel and added options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=3stack to modprobe.conf and commented options snd-ac97-codec power_save=1. Now I did this AFTER the laptop was booted into the desktop kernel. I have not rebooted the laptop yet. The wifi works fine on Mandriva 2007 and 2008. In SUSE I had to manually install the ip3945 drivers. Do not know the exact model of dvdrom but it burns cds and dvd's fine. The built in SD card reader reads sd cards fine under Mandriva 2008. The front volume control only seemed to work under SUSE 10.2. The birghtness keys only seem to work under 2008. Under 2007 I had to install the omnibook modules. Suspend seems to work ok under 2007 but you need to restart the sound on resume. Do not yet know how it works under 2008. If I can think of anymore stuff in the future I will add it.
56k modem