Linux on Toshiba Satellite A105-S4274

Picked up a new Toshiba Satellite A105-S4274 computer to support Linux development for a new project for one of our clients. Installed Centos-4.5. The install worked but the system locked up during booting.

Some web searching found me booting with "nonet simplex acpi=off" options from the LiveCD version of Centos-4.5.

I was able to boot - so I temporarily modified my Grub startup command to add "nonet acpi=off" and was able to get the system to boot.

Doing an Up2date update of the Centos system.

Was able to get networking, audio configured. Not bad.

Once I updated the system I edited the /boot/grub/grub.conf file and added "acpi=off" to the kernel command. (Aside: I also removed the rhgb and quiet parameters - this ends up not providing a graphical border and causes boot process to provide more details - no big deal - not needed).

The ACPI is the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface developed by Intel, HP, Toshiba, et al.

It appears that ACPI is not compatible with CentOS (Red Hat) yet.

Right now the system is running in generic VGA mode 800x600 - and this is probably where it will stay. Turns out my Toshiba has the Intel GMA 950 graphics chip set, which is not supported as part of the free linux driver support offered by Intel. I could not find a release of Linux that supports this driver. There is a driver for the GMA945 and there is a reference on the Intel site about support for the new 965 chipset, but no mention for the 950. The 945 driver, which is a standard part of the Centos4.7 distribution does not work for the 950.