[ILUG] Sony Laptop on linux Tale

[Stephane Dudzinski]

Hello all,

Here's my experience on a brand new sony vaio gr214mp with linux
(including 4 distros). I thought it might be of interest for some of
you. Here's the detailed conf :

* CPU : Pentium III Mobile 1Ghz on Intel Camino mobo 8xx
* Memory : 512MB SDRAM PC133
* Video : ATI Radeon Mobile Afinity VT
* CD/DVD: Combo LG-4080 DVD/CD-RW
* Hdd : Hitachi 20GO
* Sound : Integrated Intel Chipset  AD1881A - ICH 3
* Modem : Conexant 56K Soft Modem
* Net card : Intel EtherExpress 10/100
* Screen : LCD 1024x768
* Ports : 3 USB, 1 Firewire (IEEE 1374), 1 MemoryStick
* Mouse : Touchpad kynetics (compatible PS/2)

First off, i agree that debian 2.2r4 is based on old stuff (no need to
mention kernel 2.2.19 and xfree 3.3.6 but also the famous glibc 2.1). My
goal was (and still is) to install and customise it from sources.

Debian install went smoothly, got acpi running in no time on a nice
2.4.16 which also runs the network card with no problems. Got recognized
my combo drive by cdrecord as a rewriter.

Then was X, this b**** bit**** didn't recognize my ati mobility chipset.
After installing XFree 4.1.99 (CVS) and cleaning a Makefile (install
would fail because of those awfull wacom input support). I got myself a
running X. xf86cfg went nice and easy and i was running X no longer that
one minute after my ldconfig :)

lspci is also quite outdated, i then uninstalled debian's package and
went for the sources. Surprise, it recognizes then the ATI chipset and
also the intel mobo chipset (a palomino last generation) and the network
card (a new intel flava).

Recompiled also Windowmaker 0.80 and KDE 2.2.2, nice and easy. Issues so
far are with the sound. Integrated chipset (after looking into the
windows drivers inf files) indicates a ADI1881A. Close enough to :
AD1881A on the matrix soundcard projet of alsa. This little guy is an
AC'97 like chipset!

I'll leave debian for now and installed suse straight off in order to
chunk down xp partition from 10gb to 5gigs and have 5 other gigs for my
green lizard. It actually detected a couple of things.

Suse performed well, installing acpi support straight and X. Downside
was the network card wasn't detected. Had to recompile a 2.4.16 kernel
to get it right.

Mandrake 8.1 supported all without glitches. X acceleration was partly
disabled so i reinstalled XFree from CVS sources.

Redhat 7.2 went well, detected everything but used apm instead of ACPI,
recompiled with intel patch and now works like a charm. Sound fully
supported !

Just got drivers for my modem, even though not opensource, they are my
last step to get XP out of my box :)

Steph


-- 
______________________________________________
"Linux philosophy: Do it Yourself" L. Torvalds
Stephane Dudzinski       Systems Administrator
a n t e f a c t o            t: +353 1 8586009
www.antefacto.com            f: +353 1 8586014