Ubuntu 7.10 on a Thoshiba U300-143

I recently bought a Toshiba U300-143 laptop with M$-Vista preinstalled. I made quite an effort to customize it in such a way that would resemble my previous ubuntu laptop (by installing cygwin and such utilities) but even the simplest tasks in Linux took for ever in Vista. So I decided to install Ubuntu, after loosing 4 days of hopeless Vista cutomization.

It turned out that Ubuntu installation was not an easy task: I had to google for almost two days to compile the following information from various web pages. I provide these pieces of information here primarily for my own reference and with the hope that somebody else might find them useful. Please keep in mind that what follows works for my installation, on my laptop so follow them completely at your own risk.

Realtek HD Audio

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-generic

Fix 1280x800 resolution

Modify your /etc/X11/xorg.conf like this:

Section "Device"

Identifier "Generic Video Card"

Driver "intel"

BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
Option "monitor-TV" "TVOutput"
...
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "TVOutput"
Option "Disable" "true"
EndSection

Fix usplash resolution

Edit /etc/usplash.conf:

xres=1280 yres=800

And then update initrd:

sudo update-initramfs -u

Download and compile the web cam driver:

svn co http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk/ make sudo make install

Finally add uvcvideo in /etc/modules

Download and compile the Toshiba-Omnibook module

svn co https://omnibook.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/omnibook/omnibook/trunk

Then follow the directions given in this thread.