I got a new laptop last night. It’s a Toshiba Satellite (A105-S1014). I am configuring it for dual-boot with WindowsXP and Linux (probably Dapper).I tried installing Fedora Core 5 test 2, but the hardware detection was almost as bad as Windows. It didn’t find the wireless card, the onboard nic, or the LCD. In fairness, neither did Windows. Had it not been for the included drivers CD , I wouldn’t have been able to get anything to work with Windows.

Fedora, at least, was able to detect the sound card. The Dapper install CD, on the other hand, was able to get on the internet and start downloading packages without any fuss. I’ll post a more detailed install summary later, as there doesn’t seem to be too much out there at the moment.

Update:

Well, there really wasn’t anything to report. I installed Breezy, and everything magically worked. (…almost. I still have to fiddle around with the Radeon drivers.)

Ubuntu is so nice.

Update Update:

I started a new article with answers to your harware questions.