adoll's Journal: Linux on Panasonic CF-Y7 laptop

--Update--
Changed to Ubuntu Ibex. Generally has better hardware detection and seems to run with less crashes than SuSE. And the Gnome support seems a bit more solid than SuSE. Still has trouble going to sleep (locks up solid) and having trouble locking sessions without logging out.

I miss how SuSE automatically sets up things like the directory encryption and rsync daemon, but so far, so good.
--Update--

Bought a Panasonic CFY7 "Toughbook" laptop to use as a Linux server in meetings. I've been using SuSE 10.3 on my tower server, so figured I'd give that a try on the laptop.

Short answer is SuSE 10.3 needs one change at the startup menu, but does install.

- Doing a default install results in the screen blanking when you attempt to load the Linux Kernel, and the computer dying shortly thereafter (it looks like things are going on in the background and the display isn't responding). Solution: choose "VESA" as the display type at the installation menu (F3 when you see the "Boot from hard drive / Installation / etc" menu).

I had a problem getting the first installation/formatting to work - turns out that when I turned the computer on it started to boot Windows. I shut it off before it booted as I don't want Vista to do anything to the computer. But that ended up setting the dirty flag on the NTFS partitions, so when the SuSE installer tried to probe/mount these drives, it died with an error that crashed the install. The fix for that was to boot Vista in safe mode and then shut it down properly. Fortunately Vista didn't Borgify the laptop from safe mode (in fact, it seemed quite annoyed to be in safe mode).

So I'm playing to see what works and what doesn't. Stay tuned.

Fingerprint reader - works.
Ethernet card - works
Graphics driver - works (you have to manually enable 3D, but that works too)
Sleep/hibernate mode - no
Wireless card - works
USB - works
CD/DVD - works (both read and write)
Extended function buttons (vol up/down) - no (well, not yet. Probably need to train X to see them)