17 Dec 2010

Another brick in the Toshiba wall, or It yet moves again!

My last post was about Linux Mint, which in my humble opinion is just slightly facelifted Ubuntu. Facelift makes it better, no doubt. But that it still facelift, not separate distributive.
My post before last was about usage of Live Linux on my Toshiba laptop. That time I tried to run Ubuntu 10.10 from CD.
As soon as I had CD with Linux Mint 10 Julia on it, why not try to run it on Toshiba as well?
No questions! Just do it! Or, as I like to tell my friends, just Nike it!



What result would you expect from facelifted Ubuntu when it runs on the hardware which was only properly recognised by Ubuntu 10.10? I think an answer depends on which version of Ubuntu was facelifted under name of Linux Mint 10 Julia. The answer can be easily found on official web site of Linux Mint: http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_julia_whatsnew.php. Mint Julia is based on Ubuntu 10.10. That's intriguing, isn't it? Let's see if it can run on Toshiba laptop then.
The results which I saw in Julia was another type of ground-hog day, compared to Ubuntu 10.10 run a week ago.

  • WiFi card. Yes! WiFi card was recognised, activated and WiFi range scanned by the time when GNOME was ready to use. All I had to do was to enter access code.
  • Speed. I am again using quick and reliable Linux on Toshiba computer. Yes, it is relatively quick. As quick as CD-based system can be. It means that Julia runs fast once you have necessary components read from CD. Every request for new software component to be read from CD means inevitable delay.
  • Network drive. Using Julia from Live CD, I was able to connect to my network drive. It required installation of Samba (hehe, what does "installation on Live CD" mean?), and when done, connection went without any issue. All folders visible, all Russian characters in folder and filenames are correctly recognised.

Few annoying things were noticed though...

  • Mouse. Mouse was working very unstable. Sometimes it was moving all around the desktop as crazy horse, even without any touches to touchpad.
  • Graphic file support. Graphic images in svg format is not supported by Firefox "out of the box". This format is widely used in Wikipedia.
  • MP3 playback. Even though I managed to connect to network drive, I could not play MP3 files stored there. Why? I don't know. No one file could be played.
Anyway, I was happy to get another Linux working on Toshiba. That could not be another way, as long as Mint Julia has the same kernel and core as Ubuntu 10.10.
But still... That does not mean that I am going to install Linux on that machine.
Actually, this gives me flexibility to choose operating system and even computer. Before that I could only run Win7 on Toshiba. Now, if I want, I can run Linux there.
By the way... If any reader of this post knows and can give me bit of advice, I would be highly obliged... I have 1Gb USB flash drive. When I try to run Julia installer, it asks me for at least 2Gb space on the disk for normal installation. That is not suitable for 1Gb drive. Is it possible to use it to run persistent version of Linux Mint Julia? Or I need USB drive of higher capacity? Welcome to contact me via comments!

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