This is a guide to running Linux with the Toshiba Portege R200 laptop, model PPR20A-02Q003. You will need a recent Linux distribution to get this laptop working well.
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.
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| Name | Toshiba Portege R200 |
| Processor | Intel Pentium-M 1.2Ghz |
| Screen | 12.1” |
| RAM | 512MB |
| HDD | 60GB |
| Optical Drive | None |
| Graphics | Intel Extreme Graphics |
| Network | 10/100/1000 Ethernet + Atheros 802.11g Wireless + Bluetooth |
| Other | Fingerprint Reader + 2 x USB2.0 |
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Yes | Use speedstep-centrino module |
| Screen | Yes | |
| Graphics | Yes | Use i810 module |
| Sound | Yes | Use Alsa snd_intel8x0 modules |
| Ethernet | Yes | Use sk98lin or sky2 module |
| Wireless | Yes | Use ath_pci module, from Madwifi module |
| Bluetooth | Not Tested | |
| 56K Modem | Not Tested | |
| USB | Yes | |
| Firewire | Not Tested but should work | |
| Card Reader | Yes | |
| PCMCIA | Not Tested but should work |
Since there is no optical drive included with the R200, you will need either a usb optical drive or to do a network boot install.
I didn't get a chance to test the modem in the R200, but from experience it should work with either the smartlink module or the Linuxant module.
The network card wont have modules for the majority of Linux distributions available at the moment (as of May 9th 2006). You will need to compile and install the latest sk98lin module. This shouldn't be necessary for distributions running the 2.6.16 or greater kernel.
There is a little messing about to get the Toshiba Portege R200 working for some Linux distributions, but if your using Fedora Core 5 or something else with a 2.6.16 or greater kernel you should be fine.
Discussion
keyboard not working fully
can anyon enyone please tell me what driver or settings to change to get the function keys working accross the top of the keyboard
ripping my hair out
cheers
Hooty
I forgot to add that the Speed Stepping works in Ubuntu with out any problems.
Hooty
In ubuntu the SD card reader works with out any problems. The only thing you need to fiddle around with to get working is the Bluetooth, but there's a nice tutorial on how to get it working here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=560475
Either than that, everything works.
cpu speedstepping
I recently bought a Portege r200, but speedstepping doesn't work. I tried the speedstep-centrino module as instructed, but I only get one available frequency in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_frequencies.
I'm running debian unstable and linux 2.6.17.9. Additional information is posted at http://bred.no/laptop/.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks