I got my Sony VAIO VGN-S260 laptop computer last Christmas (2004). Since then I’ve been running Windows XP Pro on it, but I’ve been contemplating switching to Fedora Core 4 for a while now. After plenty of research on Google, I finally decided to go for it. By the way, this report is listed at TuxMobil – Linux on laptops, notebooks, PDAs, mobile phones.
Hardware Specs
- CPU: Intel Pentium M (Centrino) 1.7GHz CPU
- RAM: 512MB DDR (expandable to 1GB)
- Hard Drive: 60GB
- Video: ATI Mobility Radeon 9200
- Screen: 1280×800, 13.3″ wide aspect XBRITE (glossy) screen
- Ethernet: Intel EtherExpress Pro 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet)
- Wireless: Intel Pro Wireless 2200/BG
- Audio: Intel ICH4 AC’97 controller
- Firewire: Texas Instruments IEEE 1394
- Memory Stick: by Texas Instruments
- Modem: 56Kbps Fax/Modem
Backing up my system
First and foremost, I copied all my data to an external hard drive and used Norton Ghost to image my entire HD, just in case something went wrong or (heaven forbid) I wanted to switch back to Windows XP.
Download, Burn, and Install
I downloaded Fedora Core 4 (Stentz) i386 binary ISO images using their torrent and burned them onto CDs. The install was fairly standard. I chose to wipe all existing partitions, and half an hour later, I had a clean install of Fedora Core 4.
First Boot
The installer wasn’t able to detect what monitor I had, so I was stuck at 800×600, stretched onto the wide screen. Ugly. I immediately logged into root with KDE and started reconfiguring the system.
Wide-Screen
KDE Menu > System Settings > Display > Hardware > Monitor Type > Configure > Generic LCD Display > LCD Panel 1280×800. Done.
I also occasionally plug my laptop into a external 1280×1024 LCD panel (especially nice for programming). I was able to configure this by adding a modeline for “1280×1024″ to my /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Unfortunately, when the X server selects it, it causes the screen to “pan” a 1280×800 area up and down on BOTH monitors. On the external monitor it doesn’t show black stripes above and below the screen, like in Windows, but it STRETCHES the picture. I can fix this by running xrandr -s 1 to select the correct resolution once I log in, but then the picture on the laptop display is magnified horrendously. I have yet to figure this out. Since I only use one monitor at a time, this is a temporary annoyance at the moment. Can anyone help? See my xorg.conf.
I might try the ATI Proprietary Linux Driver and see if that helps.
Recompiling the Kernel
Some features of the laptop require recompiling the kernel to use. I downloaded vanilla 2.6.12.4 sources from kernel.org, and ran make xconfig. You can use my kernel config file as a starting point.
Ethernet and 802.11 Wireless LAN
Ethernet worked out of the box.
Wireless LAN didn’t.
After recompiling the kernel with the appropiate settings, I downloaded the ipw2200 driver (version 1.0.6), built, and installed it. Then I downloaded and extracted the firmware to /lib/firmware/. Used system-config-network to set up connection parameters and it worked. Easy.
3D Acceleration
After recompiling the kernel, this just worked. glxgears was doing 700+ frames per second and glxinfo said Direct Rendering: Yes. I even installed ppracer (yum install ppracer) and played through the first cup. :-)
Sound
After recompiling the kernel I kept getting an “aRts informational message,” upon logging into KDE, stating that the device “default” could not be found and the null device would be used instead. dmesg showed that the module was choking on the parameter ”. That’s right, a blank parameter. After googling the error message, I found this forum discussion. Thankfully, it solved my problem.
I’ve seen multiple sites suggesting that you MUTE your External Amplifier in alsamixer to get sound, but for me I had to ENABLE it. Strange.
Power Management
Absolutely necessary on a laptop! Check my kernel configuration’s ACPI section for details. Specifically, cpufreq and sonypi need to be enabled.
Hmm. On Windows I was able to easily do 5 to 5 1/2 hours on a full charge, but now the battery is used up within 3 1/2 hours. I do remember that in Sony’s VAIO Power Management applet for the Windows Control Panel, there was the ability to disable the optical drive (DVD/CD-RW drive) as well as a “power saving mode” for the LCD. The power saving mode blinked the screen once but otherwise didn’t seem to to much at all, although I think this feature saves a lot of power. I’ve heard somewhere (can’t remember where) that it dims the backlight but exaggerates brightness levels to compensate. The VAIO Power Management also allowed me to control the fan and put it on “performance” or “quiet”.
I’m really hoping I can improve the battery life under Linux.
Fn Keys and VAIO-specific functions
sonypid, spicctrl and sonyxosd will enable these, as well as allow you to change the brightness level of the LCD.
Palm Sync
I haven’t looked very far into getting this to work yet, but I do know is that gpilotd is crashing whenever I try to set it up from within Evolution. I didn’t see an option for the visor module in the kernel config.
Applications
Migrating from Windows, I needed to find new applications to use. Here they are:
- Evolution: a GREAT app for email. It accesses IMAP mailboxes in the background, so the interface remains responsive. This is much unlike Outlook, which hangs for several seconds whenever I do a server operation.
- Firefox: “Rediscover the web.” What can I say? You’ve probably already heard all about this one!
- Vim: the best editor. Great for both programming and general purpose text editing. It’s just too bad there’s no hack to do rich-text editing in it–that would make it great for email.
- Subversion: excellent version control system. Absolutely necessary for any software development project.
- OpenOffice.org: a free office productivity suite, including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and database software. The toolbar icons take extreeemely long to load for me though.
- Gaim: ultimate instant messenger. Migrating from Trillian, I find it intuitive, in addition to more responsive.
- X-Chat: IRC client. Yes, I know Gaim has an IRC client built in, but I prefer X-Chat because it’s more specialized.
- gFTP: pretty ordinary FTP client
- Games: Bored? ppracer is a fun 3D game where you slide down snowy mountains as a penguin (Tux). XPilot is a great multiplayer 2D space game. And of course, you can always play the standard KDE games, Kolf especially. Kolf is an addicting miniature golf game with downloadable and editable courses, plugins, and more.
Conclusion
Okay, I’ll admit it. Linux isn’t for your ordinary user–it’s not at all easy to set up, particularly on laptops. This is mainly because many hardware vendors don’t provide specs or Linux drivers for their products. I’ve heard that Ubuntu Linux can support most hardware out of the box, but I don’t have any experience with that distribution.
Battery life is still 3 1/2 to 4 hours compared to 5 1/2 hours on Windows. This is my biggest gripe with my new installation.
Appendix
My files for reference:
Other sites:
- TuxMobil lists other installation reports like this one.
- sonypi allows you to use VAIO-specific functions of the laptop.
- Another resource on how to install Linux (Slackware) on the S260.
- Installing Gentoo Linux on the S260.