Ubuntu 10.4 on a Toshiba SP6000

Installing Ubuntu 10.4 on a Toshiba SP6000 is actually quite painless.

Essentially everything seems to work out of the box, except the SD card reader (for which there are no drivers as far as I know) and a small resolution problem.I haven't tried the built-in modem either, but the third-party driver manager does install something in Ubuntu.

Display resolution fix:

The device will boot fine, but the X server will not detect the fact that the laptop supports 1024x768 and will only offer a maximum of 800x600.

This can be changed by editing the xorg file, but odds are that you won't have one under /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

To fix this, do the following. If you have an xorg.conf file, skip this bit:

1. Change into a TTY pressing CTRL+ALT+1 or 2 or 3 or ...
2. Log in using an account with sudo privileges.
3. Type 'sudo service gdm stop'. this will kill the X server
4. Type 'sudo Xorg -configure'. this will create an xorg.conf file in your home directory.
5. Type 'sudo mv ~/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf' to copy the file to the correct position.

Edit the file (using nano for example - don't forget to sudo it!) and change the following:

Add the HorizSync and VertRefresh lines to the "Monitor" section to make it look like this:

 Section "Monitor"  
   Identifier "Monitor0"  
   VendorName "Monitor Vendor"  
   ModelName "Monitor Model"  
   HorizSync 31-60  
   VertRefresh 50-75  
 EndSection  

Similarly, add the modes lines to the display subsection of the screen:

 SubSection "Display"  
   Depth 24  
   Modes "1024x768"  
 EndSubsection  

Start the X server again (sudo service gdm start) and you should be done.

TTY resolution fix:

A second problem (which you might have noticed if you followed the guide above) is that the TTY display is a bit weird.

To fix it, edit the /etc/defaults/grub file and add/edit the following two lines:

 GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768  
 GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=1024x768x32  

Afterwards, recreate the GRUB by typing "sudo configure-grub" and restart to see it work.