Support for Linux

[wilporta]

I work in the IT industry and - like many people - I prefer to have both Windows and UNIX operating systems on a laptop. The Sony Vaio is a very nice laptop, but it there are a number of problems relating to Linux support. The main one which makes the laptop unpleasant to use is that the brightness of the monitor cannot be controlled. The hot keys do not work and there are a number of posts to NVIDIA, who make the GeForce card, Suse and Ubuntu relating to difficulties in getting the brightness control to work. I am surprised that Sony do not work with NVIDIA and Linux groups to resolve this problem. I am sure that a better support for Linux would be cheap to provide and would result in more sales.

There seem to be a number of half-hearted attempts to fix this problem with sonypi and spicctrl (which don't seem to work and which may apparently damage the laptop hardware). This is unsatisfactory.

I would be interested in knowing whether Sony's plans to support Linux better. Can I look forward to a time when I can use my Sony Vaio in Linux without wearing sunglasses?

Surely all that Sony and NVIDIA need to do is to make the interface specifications available to the Linux community so that these people can include the support? And this information must already exist because the brightness control works under other platforms like Windows Vista. What are the problems in making this information more widely available?

I quite understand that Sony recommend that Windows Vista be used as an operating system for the VGN-NR21Z. However, it would be useful if basic support were provided for other common platforms as well.

[schmirrwurst]

Bad news again...

now 9.04 is out, and backlight is still not working ! And guess what it is also not working in 9.10 and the chances to have it fixed until release is pretty small !

I've the problem that I've no laptop_panel in lshal, and the changes made by hal team whas using the laptop_panel properties...

Now the next problems :
-hal is being depreciated
-devicekit (that will replace it), won't do any device specific fix (like using smartdimmer to change backlight for sony users)

they say it has to be fixed in the kernel, but the kernel team doesn't seams to react
hal dev, said it could also be fixed in xbacklight (from xorg team)... I've opened a bug, let see if something happens...
Here is one of the bug I've opened in LP for that problem :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/385723

It's really a shame that sony did not provide a minimal support to dev, to get backlight working under linux ! Without backlight a laptop is unusable ! It's the last time I buying a sony

I've also found a petition to bring nvidia release its drivers opensource, so that such issues could easyer be fixed from the community, without having to reverse engeneer the windows driver like nvclock or smartdimmer or snc do... :
http://www.petitiononline.com/nvfoss/

[YorkshireTyke]

I've just got myself a Sony Vaio VPCM11 netbook onto which I plan to install Linux Ubuntu Netbook Edition/remix 10.04 LTS.

So far I've just been booting from a flash drive. Initially my WiFi didn't work but I found a fix for that. I now discover that the headphones and microphone jacks don't work. I think the problem is with the Alsa driver version 1.0.21. However I've yet to try the Alsa driver version 1.0.23.

Has any one else managed to get these jacks working?

[sambiase]

Hi YorkshireTyke,

     I've got myself my first Sony laptop which is a Vaio S VPCS125CE. I installed openSuse 11.3 + Win 7 on it. I use mainly linux and just boot into Win when I want to play some games. I got evertyhing to work but the LCD brightness. Below is my alsa description:

kernel 2.6.34-12-desktop

alsa-oss-32bit-1.0.17-29.2.x86_64
alsa-1.0.23-2.12.x86_64
alsa-utils-1.0.23-1.8.x86_64
alsa-oss-1.0.17-29.2.x86_64
alsa-devel-1.0.23-2.12.x86_64
alsa-plugins-1.0.23-1.9.x86_64
alsa-plugins-32bit-1.0.23-1.9.x86_64

     Just after installing Suse I had to make several updates since many things were not working out of the box. Do you have brightness working?

/Sambiase