Linux trouble with new laptop......

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So my old laptop crapped out on me 2 days ago and I went out and bought a new one. A toshiba Satelite. Wish i would have went with HP!! At least I know they interface with Linux great!

So, I took the laptop home and tried a dual boot with Ubuntu. Installation went great but then the wireless connection might as well have not even been connected at all. I went to install nasm through the terminal and it said 6 hours for just that one package. I decided to wipe the whole HDD. Since I have another had drive(250GB) with Windows 7 on it. So, I tried using Lubunutu after Ubunut crapped out but everytime I went to use the internet, it disconnected and became unuasable. I would have to restart. Everything from the terminal worked though. Like downloading packages. There was a flickering line at the very top of the screen though. I am now using KDE Kubuntu and it is working great so far. Except when I try to sign into youtube. Then the wireless stops working and i have to restart. Pain in my ass. Since I removed the copy of windows this laptop came with, I voided the warranty.

Maybe I can DD my other WIn 7 onto this HDD and then go return it???? I would rather get this working though!!

What is the wireless chipset on the computer in question?

I doubt you can return it.

Every computer maker has their own, tweaked OEM version of Windows. So your other Windows disc won't have the "right" version on it. Depending on what that version is (was it an OEM installation from another manufacturer, for example?) it might not even include the right drivers to work with this computer. Yes, Windows is supposed to automatically find those things, but in some cases, that doesn't work so well. And, even if you can get it working, the chances are that anyone who boots up that computer will be able to tell at a glance you don't have the original software package running on there.

For what it's worth, I've had to get Linux running on a couple of different versions of the Satellite - for other people. I'd never personally buy a Toshiba or an HP. And most flavours of Linux would not play nicely for me, but I found Mint worked on every Satellite I tried putting it on. I sometimes had to do a bit of work to get it all running nicely, but it wasn't that tough.

Also, even with the OEM Windows installation, I often had wireless issues with those Satellites. Two different models of Satellite, too. All connecting to the same wireless network, and I had no trouble with the Presario I used on it for a while (also Linux) or the ThinkPad I use on it now (again, Linux). So in my experience, Toshibas just have more trouble establishing connections, dropping signals, taking forever to transfer data, etc. Your mileage may vary, but what you've posted sure hasn't made me any more likely to ever look at a Toshiba. I've seen more hardware failure with those, and more difficult / impossible to resolve bugs interfacing with that hardware, than I've seen on any of the other machines I've personally fooled around with. Not just a Presario and a ThinkPad (that's a machine I'd look at again), but various Dells. The Toshibas I had to futz around with were even worse than my friend's eleven year old, low-end no-name generic desktop riddled with malware. And one of those was brand new, out of the box software, so it isn't just a Linux issue.

I just installed the realtek wlan device drivers and rebooted my linux box and everything is fine now. I ended up going with XFCE instead of KDE. XFCE interfaces much more smoothly than KDE with the Toshiba. I am ordering a recovery CD for 30 U.S. dollars and am going to reinstall Win 7 on one of the smaller 250GiG HDD's instead of the newer bigger 620GiG HDD this laptop came with. I'd rather have Linux on the bigger HDD! Since I use Linux 90% of the time. The only reason I use Win is to burn PS2 games or load music up onto my iTouch. Since Linux doesn't want to recognize my iTouch.

So, all I had to do was uncompress the tarball cd into the dir, build-essential, make, and make install. Then a reboot was in order. All is well now though. I was just told by toshiba, that each laptop's OS only works with the laptop it came with. The only way to reinstall is the recovery CD directly from Toshiba or an OEM CD. Which is a few hundred dollars. Ef that. This thing was $600.

EDIT: For some reason Ubuntu 11.10 does not agree with this laptop at all. I have never used XFCE before and let me tell you that it is very smooth and super clean! Reminds me of Ubuntu 10.10 but a lot sharper! I like how my GTK applications look on it. Versus the dead plain look Gnome gives them.

It's too late now but if you intend to only use Linux, it's best to buy a machine which has Linux-compatible hardware. The easiest way to do this is to order one from a manufacturer which ships machines with Linux preinstalled. Most hardware can be made to work with Linux but it's easier to get some hardware to work than others.

You also don't need to order a replacement Windows CD as long as you have a product key (which should be on your laptop somewhere); there is a site where you legally download a Windows ISO which you can then use as long as you have a key.

It sounds like the problems are are having may be a combination of wireless driver issues and graphics driver issues. There are some graphics cards which have really terrible Linux drivers. It's hard to say what's going on without having more detailed information.

Thanks everyone for the helpful replies! You guys/gals are great!

For future installs, it is a good idea to connect the laptop with a wired connection during the installation process. Some distributions will check the hardware and prompt to install non-free hardware drivers. These can not be distributed with the OS. Also, Ubuntu and Mint treat the CD/DVD as a repository, but require that you enable it manually - there are sometimes additional drivers there.