Ubuntu On Sony Vaio FW Series

So I have updates to 8.10 completly.

Wifi works out of box.

Fglrx installed from Hardware Drivers works. Compiz works with fglrx (but there is still a scrolling lag in Firefox, so I’m not using Combiz because of that).

Audio works (using ALSA everywhere). When you plugin headphones laptop speakers does not turn off.

I can’t make work a radeonhd driver from repos, I guess I need to compile a new one.

Edu mentioned that we can enable brightness control with radeonhd, I’m going to do that after I make radeonhd works. (checked, xbacklight does not work)

Bluetooth works (my switcher not).

My wireless mouse works (well it works anywhere

Undervolting stops working, need update for new kernel. My CPU is cool enough I guess (41C right now).UPD

I have moved back to powernowd from cpufreqd (cpu is hotter with it, maybe someone saw that too?)

I thought there will be new OpenOffice 3, but there is only 2.4, and old Firefox (3.0.3)

P.S. Tried to update another laptop today, but repos speed is too low, maybe it’s overloaded, seems people update their Ubuntu today too =)

P.P.S. I’ll update post if remember something bad =)

UPD: xbacklight does not work.

Following this comment I have updated my Intrepid installation on another partition to beta.

Well I still have no 3D. Fglrx is working in testing mode (square AMD logo with crossed “3D” in bottom right corner with “Testing use only Unsupported hardware” text on it)

Then I have checked xorg logs and found this:

(WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx
(II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Version Identifier:8.54.3
(II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Release Identifier: UNSUPPORTED-8.543.2
(II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Build Date: Oct 10 2008 21:37:39
(WW) This ATI Proprietary Linux Driver does not guarantee support of video driver ABI higher than 2.0
(WW) Video driver ABI version of the X server is 4.1
(--) Assigning device section with no busID to primary device
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@1:0:1) found
(--) Chipset Supported AMD Graphics Processor (0x95C4) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@1:0:1) found

I guess I should test live cd then.

UPD: ok, I have forgot to install linux-headers for newer kernel, now I have logo in the corner without crossed “3D” with the same text. 3D works, compiz works.. but that annoying logo, and I have only 1000-1300 fps in glxgears, it should be faster.

Hey guys, do you have something specific not working in Hardy? on these laptops, I can investigate and write a solution then.

I will write more material about Intrepid after it’s final release.

I have Mobility Radeon HD 3470 on my FW11ER laptop.

I’m on Ubuntu Intrepid alpha 4 now and while there is new X server, the official drivers from Ati desn’t work (this bug is already reported).

I have luck with installing radeonhd video driver, but it still have no 3D acceleration support with 2D at the same time, but for my work it’s just fine. Anyway it’s better than “ati” driver used by default in Intrepid. You need to compile version from git repository because 1.2.1 is not working, there is a bug with display detection.

You need this packages installed to be able compile it: build-essential, autoconf, autogen, automake, automake1.7, autotools-dev, xorg-dev, x11proto-dri2-dev, x11proto-xf86dri-dev, xserver-xorg-dev, mesa-common-dev and maybe some more =)

There is a guide about compilling and installation of radeonhd on x.org wiki.

Once you checkout git repository, the guide says that you need to configure before compiling with this command: ./autogen.sh, but for Ubuntu you need do it like this:
./autogen.sh --prefix /usr --libdir /usr/lib
make
sudo make install


Thats all at the moment, video is working.

UPD: The list of developer packaged needed before compiling:
libdrm-dev
libgl1-mesa-dev
libgl1-mesa-dri
x11proto-gl-dev
x11proto-xf86dri-dev
xserver-xorg-dev
autotools-dev
xorg-dev
libtool
automake
autoconf
pciutils-dev
libz-dev
zlib1-dev


Ok here is a start. I’m running Ubuntu Interipid Alpha 4 on Sony Vaio VGN-FW11ER laptop.

After clean installation i’ve got:

Video Ati: yes without acceleration (movies are slow)

Audio Realtek:yes

Wireless Atheros: not work at all

Bluetooth: yes

Ethernet: yes

Touchpad: yes

Wireless switch: yes

Keys

S1: doing nothing (dunno work or not)

Vol -/+: yes

Play/Pause, Stop, Rewind: yes

AV Mode: doing nothing

Fn Keys

Fn+F4 (Mute): yes

Fn+F5/F6 (Brightness): no =(

And any others: no