What I did:
Boot windows, download CD image for net install, download CD burner that understands iso, burn CD.
Install from CD all goes fine, detects ethernet card fine.
Fails to modprobe ethernet card on restart, have to modprobe it. Install packages, including X. X works fine, but funky shit with console. using vesa drivers.
Recompile kernel with framebuffering. Repeat until penguin appears on boot (vga=792 seems necessary here). Console behaves now.
No APM on these things. Install lots of ACPI stuff. Can now get battery status, temperature, set brightness etc (once toshiba_acpi is fixed, see later). Suspend (echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep) works but hangs on resume: fixed later, see below.
Installed kernel 2.6 somewhere along the line and tap-to-click went away and mouse became a bit jumpy. Install synaptics package (downloaded from sourceforge or somewhere), means apt-get install x-dev, libx11-dev, libxext-dev (or something like this) (apt-file tells you these by looking for the files not found when make fails). I like this, is cool, have vertical scrolling, tap-to-click, etc, bunch of other features I haven't explored yet. I like it but you can turn it all off if you find yourself nudging the mouse a lot and doing weird things. I use flwm and different desktops for everything I do so few problems with eg typing in the wrong place even if I do hit the mouse accidentally. Have had a few problems with accidental pastes >_<
Hibernate working with 2.6. (echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep) ... mostly works. Sometimes the PCI things seem to interrupt at the wrong time and it all hangs. Not sure what's really going on.
Suspend (well, resume) now works, since someone suggested I pass acpi_sleep=s3_bios to the kernel and disable APIC. Not sure if I need the first one, actually. I also compiled a couple of things that were modules into the kernel: the thermal and button events from acpi, which weren't unloading properly when I tried rmmod (although with suspend actually working I don't need to rmmod things anyway). Might have turned the button back into a module again later. No idea which of these are relevent. Will check sometime. Once it stopped hanging, had to go to /etc/acpi{,/events} and turn off the action on the powerbutton (and moved the script it used to call out of the way, just to be sure), since pressing the powerbutton to wake it up was resulting in the powerbutton event being passed on, and poweroff being called. DOH. Failed to detect this at first because some bug in the 855GM graphics thingy meant that while it was powering down I was just getting funny patterns of green squares on the screen. But once I stopped it powering off the graphics comes back fine. Sometime I should find out how much power it uses while suspended. UPDATE 2.6.8 it stopped suspending; can't remove one of the USB-related IRQs. Worked find once I recompiled them as modules rather than into the kernel, but have to remove ehci module first. It snores. This really is an iBook in disguise.
USB mass storage worked fine with the right things (usb mass storage, vfat) in the kernel. Printer working fine with cups. Used to freeze when I plugged anything into the USB (but then work on reboot) but behaving fine since I updated to 2.6.8.
pcmcia card for wifi worked straight away.
Tried wifi with windows drivers (ndiswrapper). Works fine but had to manually set essid; didn't detect it. DOES detect it with 2.6.8; v. useful for using neighbour's wifi. Much better signal than the card (which is stuck together with tape). Couldn't get the install right via apt-get. apt-got the bits that include the windows .inf I think (fortunate as the download only tells you you need it, not where to find it). Then download package (sourceforge?) and make, make install, worked right away. hm, except that I have to go and make, make install again when I recompile the kernel. I think there is room for improvement here, should probably shove it into the kernel source tree somehow...
CD/DVD drive worked fine. CD burning worked normally. (kernel 2.6.5 -> no scsi stuff needed :) )
Sound: tried alsa + OSS emulation stuff, no complaints, no sound. Delete OSS emulation, pure alsa modules, no sound. Build into kernel, no sound. Give up, use OSS (marked deprecated in the kernel menu). Sound. Perfect. Modprobe: sound, ac97_codec, i810_audio.
Still to do: open source wifi; resume; try eg firewire, SD card reader thingy (?);
Should remap keyboard because Alt Gr is on the wrong side of Del/Ins/etc and | is on the wrong side of the space bar. Not got around to this yet.
Using the toshiba utilities, toshset: they work fine, but I had to do a bit of fiddling to work out how to make them go.