youngsun45 Posted July 19, 2006 Share Posted July 19, 2006 Sony Vaio SZ110 (SZ Series) and Ubuntu Linux by Ariel Vardi (www, email) This page describes the current status of my installation of Ubunutu Linux on my new Sony Vaio SZ110. Overview of the Sony Vaio SZ110 The Sony Vaio SZ is a great laptop. The design is awesome and it looks very sleek. From what I know, it's the same laptop as the SZ120 except for the version of Windows XP installed. I don't think there is going to be any difference in the Linux support with all the Sony Vaio SZ series. I think that the new Sony Vaio FE model is also very similar to my machine, except for the screen size. It runs very cool and is very quiet. It gets a little warmer and noisier when you switch to Speed mode and use the Nvidia chipset. The screen is great, and the 1200x800 resolution is comfortable for most tasks. The battery life of this Sony Vaio SZ110 is about 4.30 hours on Stamina mode. It's about 40 minutes less when you switch to Speed mode. I personally use the Stamina mode most of the time. I use the Speed mode mostly when I reboot under Windows XP and what to play a game or two. Here's the output of lspci: 0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile Memory Controller Hub (rev 03) 0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PCI Express Graphics Port (rev 03) 0000:00:1b.0 0403: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02) 0000:00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) 0000:00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) 0000:00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02) 0000:00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02) 0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02) 0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02) 0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02) 0000:00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02) 0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) 0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2) 0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02) 0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02) 0000:00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controllers cc=IDE (rev 02) 0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02) 0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01d8 (rev a1) 0000:06:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation: Unknown device 4222 (rev 02) 0000:07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8036 Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 15) 0000:09:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments: Unknown device 8039 0000:09:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments: Unknown device 803a 0000:09:04.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments: Unknown device 803b Video The Intel chipset works, and the ACPI works better (suspend resumes properly) when the laptop is switched on this card than on the NVIDIA. Got the DRI to work with some patches here and there on the i810 chipset. All the necessary changes should be uploaded to Ubuntu very soon and no patch will be needed. For more information, go to: https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/35741 I also got Xgl+Compiz to work today, but it's extremely slow and barely usable. From what I understood, this is due to the i810 driver being not completely implemented (see this for more info). The nvidia chipset works very well with the new Nvidia drivers 1.0-8756. There's an Ubuntu package for it since recently but you can also download it from Nvidia. Xgl+Compiz works very smoothly on the nvidia chipset. To use the Stamina/Speed switch, John Lathouwers (email) has written a little script to switch from one xorg.conf to another depending on the video chipset used. He uses two xorg.conf files in /etc/X11: xorg.conf.stamina and xorg.conf.speed. You then have to create a small script in /etc/init.d (called xorg_conf) with the following content: VIDEO=`/usr/bin/lspci |grep -c nVidia` if [ "$VIDEO" = 1 ]; then cp -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf.speed /etc/X11/xorg.conf else cp -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf.stamina /etc/X11/xorg.conf fi Soft linking the script into rc2.d as S12xorg_conf will copy the correct xorg.conf file into place before X starts. Here are my two xorg.conf files: xorg.conf.speed xorg.conf.stamina Ethernet Worked out of the box. Wireless The wifi card wasn't working at first, but the drivers came out 2 days after I received the laptop. They are still development drivers but they seem perfectly stable to me. Intel said the stable drivers will be released in the next couple of weeks. The driver and instructions to install it can be found there: http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/ Sound The sound card annoys me a lot. It seems like it's recognized, I can even play sounds without errors. But no sound comes out of the damn speakers. That's my main concern so far. Update 03/14/2006: The sound and mic now work perfectly thanks to a patch delivered by the alsa team. For more information about how to apply this patch, please read this. Touchpad The touchpad works with scrolling, corner tapping, etc. Update 03/07/06: Synaptics section in xorg.conf. I use the bottom right corner as the right click and the top right corner as the middle click Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad" Driver "synaptics" Option "AlwaysCore" Option "Device" "/dev/input/event2" Option "Protocol" "event" Option "LeftEdge" "120" Option "RightEdge" "930" Option "TopEdge" "120" Option "BottomEdge" "700" Option "FingerLow" "14" Option "FingerHigh" "15" Option "MaxTapTime" "180" Option "MaxTapMove" "110" Option "ClickTime" "0" Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "75" Option "VertScrollDelta" "10" Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0" Option "MinSpeed" "0.45" Option "MaxSpeed" "0.75" Option "AccelFactor" "0.020" Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "200" Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "200" Option "UpDownScrolling" "1" Option "CircularScrolling" "0" Option "CircScrollDelta" "0.1" Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2" Option "RTCornerButton" "2" Option "RBCornerButton" "3" Option "TapButton2" "2" Option "SHMConfig" "true" EndSection ACPI As far as the ACPI goes, it seems like it works but that the video card goes crazy when you come back from the suspend mode. I HIGHLY suspect the default nvidia driver to cause this. It will probably be fixed in the next couple of weeks with the official drivers. Update 03/25/06: Suspend to RAM works fine with the Intel video chipset. Hibernation hangs when waking up. Dual Core The dual core is recognized, as well as the frequency scaling feature. Be sure to use a -686 ubuntu kernel package to have SMP enabled and see the 2 cores. processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 14 model name : Genuine Intel® CPU T2400 @ 1.83GHz stepping : 8 cpu MHz : 1834.893 cache size : 2048 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 1 core id : 255 cpu cores : 1 fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 10 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx pni monitor vmx est tm2 xtpr bogomips : 2000.22 processor : 1 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 14 model name : Genuine Intel® CPU T2400 @ 1.83GHz stepping : 8 cpu MHz : 1834.893 cache size : 2048 KB physical id : 255 siblings : 1 core id : 255 cpu cores : 1 fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 10 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx pni monitor vmx est tm2 xtpr bogomips : 3666.41 Fn Keys They finally work! The problem was with the sonypi module that needed to be patched. See this link for more information. The patch is towards the end of the page. I've applied it and it works very well. The fn keys work without any setup needed in gnome. Brightness As far as the brightness goes, it doesn't seem to work yet on the nvidia chipset. It works on the Intel chipset by write values between 0 and 8 in /proc/acpi/sony/brightness. That's done by defaut by gnome-power-manager and the fn-keys in gnome. Don't use spicctrl though, it tries to set the brightness to invalid values and messes up everything. To switch back to a normal behavior, write a valid value (0-8) in /proc/acpi/sony/brightness. Camera Not recognized out of the box. Haven't tried to install it yet. Fingerprint sensor Not recognized out of the box. Haven't tried to install it yet. There is probably something to try with this link. Bluetooth Recognized but I didn't have any application to try. It seems like Linux recognizes it though so it should work. Memory card reader Works out of the box. Conclusion So the bottom line is that my Sony Vaio SZ110 is far from being completely supported by Linux Ubuntu, but I expect the situation to improve in the near future. I'm still very happy with my purchase, this laptop rocks, and it will rock even more soon Hope it helped! Feel free to send me an email if you have any question. Ariel www.arielo.net For the specifications of the Sony Vaio SZ, please go to Sony's website. SOURCE URL:http://ariel.vardi.free.fr/ariel//vaiosz.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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