This page will keep my notes regarding the Sony Vaio VGN CR-31 S/W (link in portuguese as the specs are not exactly the same on all countries).
A full hardware listing will come later.
Some pictures of my previous CR-21 and of the CR-31 here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/s3phiroth/tags/vaio
I first installed Hardy Heron Alpha 5 (and have been keeping it updated) because on the CR-21 I had before some things were not working correctly. I had to use the alternate install cd as the regular live cds won't boot the graphic mode (tried Hardy and Feisty live cd's).
Graphics
Installed the official ATI drivers with envy. Composite is off as it becomes very slow on the terminal and Gnome Do. Direct rendering is currently not working (so no compiz) but I don't care much about that either.
I also have to ignore the upgrades that aptitude wants to do on the fglrx related packages. I can't let those install over the envy packages, otherwise it'll break:
aptitude hold xorg-driver-fglrx xorg-driver-fglrx-dev fglrx-kernel-source fglrx-control fglrx-amdcccle
Restricted modules need to be installed for envy to install the drivers correctly.
Suspend/Hibernate
This might change until Hardy is final, but according to a tip on Ubuntu forums, rmmod uvcvideo solves the problem. It works. More info on the configs for blacklisting will be posted later.
Webcam
Currently there isn't any module for this on Linux's kernel, so you need to compile it as described in this page.
For my own reference:
download and compile http://www.palmix.org/download/r5u870-0.11.2.tar.gz (for 2.6.24).
- add the following modules to /etc/modules
- r5u870
- videodev
- video-buf (This module is mentioned on the Ricoh module page but it wouldn't load. The camera works without it but maybe some apps can't access it).
- v4l1-compat
- v4l2-common
I've tried using it with the following apps:
- Ekiga - works perfectly
- Cheese - doesn't work
- Skype 2.0 - works perfectly