Linux
I had no idea what to call this section but I created it mosty to help me when I need to update or install linux on my computers again.
Toshiba Sattelite Pro L40
This is my newest machine. It's running Gentoo 2007.0 dual boot with Windows Vista. Most of the hardware worked without problems. My biggest headaches were from my sound card and wireless card.
The wifi card is an Atheros 5007EG which did not have working drivers for it when I bought the laptop. I did manage to get it working thanks to handy tickets at madwifi-ng.org and the process is now much easier. It's documented in one easy to read place now thanks to Jiang Yio and can be seen here. Just in case it can't be reached, here are instructions:
svn checkout http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/branches/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/ madwifi-hal
cd madwifi-hal
make
note: If reinstalling then first do
ifconfig ath0 down
ifconfig wifi0 down
./scripts/madwifi-unload
make install
depmod -ae
modprobe ath_pci
When I originally installed 2007.0 with kernel (2.6.23) I could not get my sound card to work. It is a Intel HD Audio ich7 card and there had been many reported problems on various laptops. I tried some of the standard ways to fix it by playing with ALSA configurations and every now and then got a blip or two (or a long and aweful scream) and then nothing if I did anything to the mixer settings. Despondent I gave up for a while and decided to wait for kernel updates and ALSA updates. I forgot about the issue and just used my powerbook for any movies or music. After 2.6.27 kernel came out I decided to do a full system update - which killed my entire weekend. Now with latest everything it works wonderfully without issues.
This website was created using Mozilla SeaMonkey. It is an open source internet suite developed in tandem to Firefox and seems to work well. I was looking for an interface that provided wysiwyg web page creation with eary access to source html and no complications that get in the way, this seemed to be it. My workhorse that created this space is an Apple Powerbook G4 12" dual-booting with OS X 10.4 and Gentoo Linux.