HardwareSupportMachinesLaptopsSony

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Notes on installation and compatibility of Ubuntu with Sony laptop computers.

Summary

Make

Model

Installs ?

Not working

Ubuntu Release

Comments

Last Updated

Sony

Vaio PCG-F409

Yes

v5.04 (Hoary)

Mouse cursor sometimes displayed as a blurred rectangle. Fix : add line "option 'sw_cursor'" to /etc/X11/xorg.conf in "Device" section

2005-05-18

Sony

Vaio PCG-C1MHP

Yes

v5.04 (Hoary)

2005-04-15

Sony

Vaio PCG-F590

Yes

Fn Key combination.

I needed to add the line "option 'sw_cursor'" to my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to get the annoying box off the screen (occurred rarely in Gnome). In addition, there are occasionally strange goings-on in KDE that i'm sure I could kill with the right option. If someone knows it, add it(them) here! (see below, added to PCG-F590K to be safe).

Sony

Vaio PCG-F590K

Yes

Fn-Esc & P3 (suspend to RAM).

v5.10 (Breezy) & v6.06 (Dapper)

Like the PCG-F590, "Option 'sw_cursor'" must be added to your X configuration file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf in Breezy and higher). Also, the default DisplayDepth should be lowered to 16 from 24 (in the same file). At 24, all KDE/QT apps have ugly blue vertical lines. The Xorg server doesn't even display 24 bpp color anyway, so you're actually losing any quality. At least some of the function keys work, Fn-F3 does do a hardware muting of the sound, and Fn-F5 and Fn-F6 darken and lighten the screen respectively. There's just no on-screen notice. Fn-F12 suspends to disk.

2006-06-22

Sony

Vaio PCG-FX705

Yes

(Warty)

Modem untested. See here

2005-01-23

Sony

Vaio PCG-GR370

Yes

(Warty)

Details below.

Sony

Vaio PCG-GRX500

Yes

Synaptics Touchpad.

Softmode, sleep/suspend not tested.

Sony

Vaio PCG-K13Q

Yes

v6.06 (Dapper)

Everything works - Details below.

2006-05-03

Sony

Vaio PCG-N505X

Yes

v5.04 (Hoary)

Mapping of Fn-keys slightly different to how they are labeled. Most work, including suspend to disk. Suspend to RAM does not function.

2005-12-22

Sony

Vaio PCG-N505X

Live CD

v5.04 (Hoary)

Boots correctly. Sound seems to function. Fn-Keys not checked.

2005-12-22

Sony

Vaio PCG-SRX51P

Yes

v5.10 (Breezy)

Everything except for the modem works "out of the box". Installation report see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InstallingUbuntuOnASonyVaioSRX51P

2006-01-04

Sony

Vaio PCG-TR1A (TR series)

Yes

(Warty)

See http://usefulinc.com/edd/notes/UbuntuOnSonyVaioTRSeries

Sony

Vaio PCG-V505P

Yes

Details below.

Sony

Vaio VGN-S260

Yes

v5.04 (Hoary)

Everything works out of the box, however, I suggest installing the newer ipw2200 drivers (version 1.0.2). You'll also need 3rd party software to make the special Fn-keys work like volume, brightness, etc. I wrote something myself based off sonypid that I'll try to package and release soon. The advanced features (circle scrolling, etc.) of the trackpad won't work until the 2.6.11 or 2.6.12 kernel

2005-08-04

Sony

Vaio VGN-S3XP

Live CD

v5.04 (Hoary)

Screen blanks at startup.

2005-05-18

Sony

Vaio VGN-S3XP

Yes

v5.10 (Breezy) & v6.06 (Dapper)

Memory card reader is not working, everything else works great (volume, screen dim), suspend to ram and to disk is broken

2006-05-08

Sony

Vaio VGN-S28GP

Yes

v5.10 (Breezy)

Add: vga=792 in grub's menu.lst for startup res, install fglrx for ATI drivers, otherwise problem free

2005-02-12

Sony

Vaio VGN-S38GP

Yes

v5.10 (Breezy) Preview

Following Bios upgrade (V9). Installed without problems, though needed 'LCD Expansion' in Bios. Hibernation misbehaves (display goes berserk on resume)

2005-10-02

Sony

Vaio PCG-FX103

Yes

v5.04 (Hoary)

Boot CD with acpi=off See http://www.binonabiso.com/en/Ubuntu-miniRAM-HOWTO.html for low memory system

2005-08-06

Sony

Vaio PCG-195HP

Yes

Fn keys are not detected, ACPI is buggy.

v5.04 (Hoary)

Battery monitor works, but I need to plug-out/plug-in the battery every time to make it work (also a sudo modprobe -r battery / sudo modprobe battery works). Hibernate to disk and ram doesn't work at all. The sony_pi driver doesn't work but I can change screen brightness using sony_acpi driver http://www.popies.net. All other thinks seems to work well

2005-07-29

Sony

Vaio VGN-S4HP

Yes

v5.10 (Breezy) & v6.06 (Dapper)

BREEZY: LCD Fn-Keys don't work; doesn't reboot, needs cold shutdown. DAPPER: everything seems to work fine, but acpi. Doesn't shutdown/restart, just freezes.

2006-06-04

Sony

Vaio VGN-S4XP

Yes

Some Fn keys don't work, possible PCMCIA Issues, no magicgate

v5.10 (Breezy)

This laptop was severely allergic to Hoary, and PCMCIA support caused kernel panics; thanks to a broken DVD drive, I installed by booting the Ubuntu kernel from grub4nt, and I disabled pcmcia via a kernel parameter, so I'm not sure if the laptop would install without this. Everything else (including everything that broke in hoary, such as soundcard) works fine bar the magicgate/memorystick reader (for which I understand there's no linux driver). bluetooth, wifi, etc. work fine (even with kismet as of the newest ipw2200 drivers/firmware). Haven't tested suspend/hibernate.

2005-10-15

Sony

Vaio VGN-FS215E

Yes

Fn keys don't work.

v5.10 (Breezy)

Everything works fine so far (except sony_pi driver). Little trick for the sound: You need to click on the sound applet, choose preferences, select the Realtek ALC260 device and the volume track in order to enable it. Haven't tested suspend/hibernate.

2005-10-16

Sony

Vaio VGN-FS315B

Yes

Fn keys and ACPI reboot don't work

v5.10 (Breezy)

Everything works fine so far (except sony_pi driver). The laptop doesn't reboot, force shutdown manually.

2005-10-29

Sony

Vaio VGN-FS315S

Yes

Dapper: everything except function keys. Breezy: sleep and hibernate don't work.

v5.10 (Breezy) & v6.06 (Dapper) flight 7

Dapper: so far, everything works except for the function keys (so a really bright screen as echo "5" > /proc/acpi/sony/brightness (or brightness_default) does not persist). Sleep and hibernate work as does warm reboot and the DVD eject button. Untested firewire and PCMCIA, although they are detected. Network manager works perfectly with WPA, although you probably shouldn't have to comment the interfaces in /etc/network/interfaces before use. Breezy: laptop will do a warm reboot by passing "reboot=h" as a kernel option. Fn keys worked (changing brightness and volume) following this HOWTO: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-88611.html Wireless card works with wpa_supplicant. Suspend2 works, but not with NVIDIA driver. CPU frequency scaling works. Firewire untested but recognised, infra-red untested, modem untested, memory stick reader untested, PCMCIA untested, DVD playback and writing untested.

2006-05-10

Sony

Vaio VGN-A117S

Yes

Sony function keys don't work. DVD eject button does not work. Power off on shutdown does not work. Restart on shutdown does not work.

v5.10 (Breezy)

Most things work fine on install, including wireless networking and 1920x1200 display. Suggestion: graphics driver should default to accellerated version, and DVD should use DMA as default. Had to install a soft-button for ejecting the DVD. Suspend/hibernate not tested.

2006-04-30

Sony

Vaio PCG-GR300P

Yes

v5.10 (Breezy)

Peachy. Everything works. Initially used sjog for jogdial and lineakd for keys, but no longer neccessary . modified lid event to be a screen blank instead of suspend

2006-06-08

Sony

Vaio PCG-GR300P

Yes

Ati's fglx driver. Mesa's ati driver freezes machine randomly

v6.06 (Dapper)

Use standard vesa driver with xorg.

2006-06-08

Sony

Vaio VGN-FE21B

Yes

Some special buttons, brightness, battery status, standby+sound, standby+nvidia only with manual fixes

v6.06 (Dapper)

With a better sonypi , this would be THE ubuntu notebook Wink ;)

2006-06-09

Sony

Vaio VGN-FE21H

Yes

buttons S1 and S2, brightness change from Fn keys, battery status, standby make some problems with sound , Hibernate don't work at all.

v6.06 (Dapper)

Integradted camera , wifi , bluetooth ,... all the other works graet.

2007-02-19

Details

Sony Vaio PCG-GR370

  • This is for Ubuntu Warty
  • Synaptics touchpad is working fine, however it seems to do extra things (back/fwd in the browser using the bottom of the pad) that I would prefer it not. No idea how to change this as yet.
  • Basic graphics work. The fxglr module does not load by default, although it's possible that tweaking would permit it. I personally don't care.
  • Sound works.
  • With the addition of sonypid the fn-keys work as I want them to, although in order to have brightness control with them, I had to modify the source code of the daemon slightly.
  • Onboard networking worked.
  • Haven't tested the modem, firewire, or memory stick.
  • DVD drive does not play CD Audio, however this is a known problem with Vaio laptops under Linux.
  • To play CD Audio download the xmms-cdread plugin. This allows for digital audio extraction for xmms.

Sony Vaio PCG-K13Q

  • Everything seems to work out of the box, including internal wireless card (Atheros, using madwifi driver), hibernate (suspend to disk), ethernet, usb etc. However, battery monitoring and modem need these special tweaks:
  • Modem: The modem is an ALI M5457 AC-Link/Intel 537. It works under Linux with the SmartLink driver (http://www.smlink.com/content.aspx?id=132). For installation, I just had to do an "apt-get install sl-modem-daemon", then edit /etc/default/sl-modem-daemon to specify the device since "auto" appeared to failed, by replacing "SLMODEMD_DEVICE=auto" line by "SLMODEMD_DEVICE=hw:0 #(or hw:1depends on your soundcard, I guess)". That's it! You don't need to compile the module provided by the sl-modem-source package, since this modem is integrated on the sound card and share the same driver (that's what I understand anyway).

  • Battey monitoring: battery monotoring doesn't work unless you unload and reload the "battery" module. Before unloading the battery module, you have to unload the smart battery module, listed as "acpi_usb", with the "sudo rmmmod acpi_usb" command. You can automize this process with some init scripts for bootup and resume. See this thread: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=167440&highlight=persistent

  • Other info: for a slightly outdated (and badly formated!) overview of using this laptop with Debian sid, see this page: http://www.linux-laptop.net/hosted/Debian-Linux-on-Sony-PCG-k13Q.html

Sony Vaio PCG-V505P

  • Most things seem to work out of the box (wireless, ethernet, usb etc)
  • Additional network configuration needed once installed
  • PCMCIA, modem, firewire and sleep/suspend untested
  • install 'spicctrl' package and load 'sonypi' module to control screen brightness (cpu throttling works out of the box)

Sony Vaio VGN-FE21B

  • Battery Status does not work. On AC disconnect, laptop gets critical battery signal
  • brightness control does not work
  • Most things just work, even card reader, wlan, speedstepping ...
  • 'sonypi' doesnt work right, so most notebook keys dont work, except, volume mute (hardware) and volume up/down
  • PCMCIA, firewire untested
  • standby + nvidia needs a common manual fix, but works right then
  • standby + sound gives only a hanging looping sound, might be the intel_hda module ?

From unknown Fri Apr 29 00:35:13 +0100 2005 From: Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 00:35:13 +0100 Subject: Sony Vaio VNG-S1XP Message-ID: <20050429003513+0100@https://www.ubuntulinux.org>

Everything works very well (Hoary). Wifi works very well in WEP (but it was not possible to start during initial installation I dont know why) Screen resolution and ATI drivers works ok Hibernate works well but a bit on the slow. Suspend does not allow wake up but I suspect I have no configuration on HotKeys. (In windows suspend does not work very well also - after some time it also does not wake-up). I install everything faultless even Openoffice 2 (1.9.96 debian version). But Ubuntu might have Gnome Menu editor enabled by default. It is the first time I have a near perfect Linux package for desktop. The only snag is that WPA wifi is yet dificult to configure (and while Ubuntu has good instructions the Howto does not recommend all the kernel options and basic compiling tools needed to make ipw2200). Localization could download directly localised (portuguese) versions of OpenOffice and Firefox but nevertheless it is very easy to download them afterwords.

From bartonl.phillips Tue May 3 02:34:59 +0100 2005 From: barton l. phillips Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 02:34:59 +0100 Subject: PCG GR390 Message-ID: <20050503023459+0100@https://www.ubuntulinux.org>

I Installed 5.04 on the PCG GR390 and it seems to work just fine.

CategoryLaptop


Note for Sony Vaio VGN-FS215M All is ok, just sony_pi and Fn keys are not working. Sound is good, no psaturation. Wireless Ok. Just wpa_supplicant can't set encryption for this ipw2200. I tried with new firmware or with another driver, but it was all the same. Graphics are good (hehe, nvidia)

HardwareSupportMachinesLaptopsSony (last edited 2008-08-06 16:23:23 by localhost)