Sony Vaio X - An Ubuntu installation experience - Westhoffswelt - Welcome to the real world

Sony Vaio X - An Ubuntu installation experience

Recently DPD had an express delivery for me. They delivered the Sony Vaio X I pre-ordered the day it became available. Vaio X is Sonys newest development in the ultra portable market. Even though it has an Intel Atom processor and therefore seems to belong into the netbook category of products it is much more. It is bleeding edge technology in an ultra slim and nearly weightless carbon shell. I bloody love this thing. Unfortunately it came preinstalled with Microsofts new Windows 7 operating system, which is an absolute no go for me ;). One of the first things I did was installing Ubuntu Karmic Koala on it.

Black Sony Vaio X (Source: Flickr user nDevilTV, Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)Black Sony Vaio X (Source: Flickr user nDevilTV, Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

Short overview about working components

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get every hardware component in this machine to work with Ubuntu. But most of the available features and hardware does play nicely along with Karmic Koala. The following list provides a summary of the working and non working features.

Working:

  • 2D/3D graphics acceleration (using the poulsbo driver)

  • Compositing effects with Compiz

  • Intel HD Audio device

  • Wireless LAN (Atheros AR9285) (using madwifi)

  • Suspend/Hibernate (see below)

  • External VGA with XRandR 1.2 support

  • Bluetooth

Non-working:

  • WWAN HSDPA modem

  • Multitouch functionality of the touchpad (The touchpad itself works flawlessly, though)

My installation log

I will give an overview about the things I did to install Karmic Koala on the Vaio X and get its hardware to work properly. I will describe in detail the pitfalls I encountered and provide solutions for them, where possible.

Downloading and preparing the install media

I installed the Karmic port for the LPIA architecture. LPIA is a special architectural port named "Low Power Intel Architecture". It is a normal x86 32bit based platform, which simply utilizes some special compileflags to optimize for battery life on Intel Atom systems.

The LPIA port can be retrieved as alternate install image from the ports subtree of the Ubuntu cdimage server:

http://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/ports/daily/current/

If you prefer to install the normal x86 architecture version you can get the Desktop version providing a graphical installer at the usual Ubuntu download page. Everything in this guide, though not tested with it, should work with this as well.

After you download either one of the iso images you need to create a bootable usb stick containing their files. As you may have realized the Vaio X does understandably have no disc drive.

Ubuntus USB Startup Disc CreatorUbuntus USB Startup Disc Creator

Ubuntu provides a nice little application for this called "USB Startup disc creator", which I used on one of my workstations to prepare the needed usb pen drive.

If you do not have an installed Ubuntu on another machine, you may read here about UNetbootin an independent tool for the task, which is available for Linux as well as windows.

Installing from USB

With the usb drive containing all the needed installation files you are ready to boot from it in order to install Ubuntu.

Unfortunately the Vaio X is configured to only boot from internal devices by default. To be able to boot from the usb drive you need to enter the bios at boot enabling the bootoption for external devices.

The bios can be entered by pressing the F2 key during the Sony Vaio logo is on screen, right after powering up the machine. This can be a little tricky, as the time period the bios accepts this key is very small. Try pushing the button multiple times, to capture the right time frame.

After you have entered the bios selected the Boot tab using the left/right cursor keys. Seeing the boot configuration you will need to change two different things. First enable the option named External Device Boot.

Secondly the boot order needs to be changed to prefer booting from external devices. Select the External Device entry in the Boot priority section of the page and press F5 as many times as needed to move it to the first position in the list. After that exit the bios saving your made changes and you are ready to boot from the created usb drive. Just insert it into one of the free usb ports and reboot the Vaio X.

After some time the ubuntu desktop with the installer icon on it will appear (or in case you used the LPIA install image the a text based installer screen will appear).

Just follow the instructions the installer provides and choose all configurations to your likings. When it comes to partitioning you need to decide for yourself what to do with the installed Windows 7. Keep it for a dual boot solution or completely remove it in favor of having more space for your Ubuntu. I did the latter one, as I do not use windows for anything during my daily work.

After the installation finished remove the usb stick and reboot the Vaio X. The following components should just work out of the box: WLAN, Bluetooth, Sound.

Installing the poulsbo driver

Even though after the installation you get a working X session, neither 2D nor 3D acceleration do work at all. The brightness of the display can't be controlled either.

Therefore my first goal was to get the graphics card driver up and running. The Vaio X uses a Intel GMA 500 graphics chip, which does unfortunately have quite poor Linux support. As Intel mainly bought the technology of this chip at PowerVR they are not allowed to release the driver under some open source license. A badly maintained proprietary binary driver does exist however.

Even though the driver situation sounds quite bad, I had no real problems with the driver once it was installed. I have working 2D acceleration as well as 3D acceleration (including Compiz) and XRandR 1.2 support. A simple test playing a video did as well work like a charm. (Video playing is not important for me on my portable, therefore I did not test it in detail)

To retrieve and install all the needed driver components I followed this guide in the Ubuntu wiki:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsbo

After having installed the driver X did unfortunately not come up after reboot. The Xorg.log listed some sort of memory mapping and allocation error. After some googling and thinking about the problem the solution was easy. If you supply a manual memory amount to the Linux kernel at boot time taking less memory, than is actually available it starts working again.

To do so the grub configuration needs to be changed. Since Grub2 is used with Karmic Koala the grub configuration is auto-generated by some scripts stored under /etc/grub.d. The script which needs some tweaking is /etc/grub.d/10_linux. Open this script in your favorite editor and search for the following line:

linux ${rel_dirname}/${basename} root=${linux_root_device_thisversion} ro $2

Append a mem=2000MB to it and by this change it to:

linux ${rel_dirname}/${basename} root=${linux_root_device_thisversion} ro $2 mem=2000MB

After the this script has been changed the grub configuration needs to be updated. Just call update-grub on the commandline, to do just that.

Reboot your Vaio X and enjoy a 2D/3D accelerated desktop. The brightness control keys, which did not work before, are magically working now, as well.

Suspend/Resume

After having working graphics I started playing around with suspend and hibernate. Unfortunately resuming always crashed the graphics completely leaving me in front of a black screen, without chance of recovering.

I discovered that this was only the case if compositing aka. Compiz had been active active. Therefore I disabled Compiz and tried again. This time the netbook wakeup again, but the display brightness was below the minimum and the picture looked distorted somehow. Nevertheless having the system back up accepting my commands and at least display something was a reason for hope. I tried a few more things until I discovered, that a switch to one of the text consoles (Strg+Alt+F1) and back restored the brightness as well as corrected the image distortion problems.

Even though I do not completely understand what the problem is in details, I wrote a little pm-suspend script to automatically switch to the text console and back on resume, This solution makes wakeups take about 1-2 seconds more time, but they work at least ;).

Copy the script below and paste it to the following file: /etc/pm/sleep.d/99_psb_fix:

#!/bin/sh ACTION=$1 case "$ACTION" in suspend|hibernate) fgconsole >/tmp/xconsole.pm-sleep.tmp ;; resume|thaw) chvt 1 chvt `cat /tmp/xconsole.pm-sleep.tmp` ;; esac

If you know what is going on after the wakeup and can provide a less hackish fix, I would be glad to hear about it :). Until then I think this one will do.

WLAN after wakeup

I had some strange problems with my wlan connectivity after wakeups from suspend. The wlan connection had been reestablished without problems, but a great amount of network packets got lost on their way to the AP and back. I tested this behavior after a clean reboot and compared it to the one after a wakeup, discovering that it only appeared after a wakeup.

Just removing the madwifi modules from the kernel and reloading them to reinitialize the device seems to do the job. By the creation of another simple pm-suspend script I got this under control as well:

#!/bin/sh ACTION=$1 case "$ACTION" in resume|thaw) for i in `lsmod|grep ath9k|awk '{print $1}'`; do rmmod $i done sleep 1; modprobe ath9k ;; esac

Just save this script as /etc/pm/sleep.d/99_ath9k_reload and you are ready to go.

WWAN HSDPA modem

I ordered my Vaio X with a WWAN HSDPA modem hoping I might be able to get it to work under Linux. Even though I knew the chances would be quite low. Unfortunately until know I wasn't able to even access the hardware of it.

I watched a quite interesting behavior of the modem. During my initial Ubuntu installation, which I did right after a soft reset out of the original Windows 7 I found some Qualcomm device in the output of lsusb. However after powering down the laptop completely and rebooting Ubuntu directly the device can not be found any longer on the usb bus. This effect is reproducible. If Windows is booted first, the UMTS modem activated in it and then Ubuntu is booted directly afterwards the device is found. Without using windows to activate the device it isn't even found on the bus using Linux.

This is quite a strange behavior, which leads me to the suspicion, that there is some sort activation which needs to be done on the Sony hardware for the modem to even appear. Maybe it is done to save power, in case the modem is not used. I honestly don't know.

If anyone of you has the slightest idea what this might be, or how it could be fixed, please contact me by mail, comment, or any other way. I would really love to get this modem working :).

Conclusion

After having worked with the Vaio X for about 3 days now, I can only say: I love this thing. It has a great display, a great keyboard, an incredibly small form factor and the battery life is great. I haven't really timed the battery yet, but I would make the educated guess it lasts at least 5 hours, based on my current real-life tests.

I have already ordered the long-life battery Sony offers as an additional component for the machine. It has twice the power than the one I actually have. When it arrives I will might do a proper timing of it and post a follow up.

Trackbacks

  • Getting Sony Vaio X WWAN to work under Ubuntu Linux on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:35:45 +0100 in Westhoffswelt - Welcome to the real world

    Three month ago I bought a Sony Vaio X netbook. The Windows 7 which was preinstalled on the system was no option for me. I installed Ubuntu on it and got mostly all of the hardware working. Read my Ubuntu Installation experience article for more details. One piece of hardware did however refuse to work: The WWAN modem. Finally the offline times are over. The modem is now working like a charm.

Comments

  • lapistano on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:42:09 +0100

    I fortunately had the chance to get a detailed look at this beautiful peace of hardware last weekend and I loved it right away!
    Thanks for the great article which will come handy, if I will go for a Vario X as well.

  • Halldór Rúnarsson on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:28:19 +0100

    I've got a EeePC 1101HA with the same GMA 500/Poulsbo architecture and I have problems with sound, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
    Haven't you experienced anything like that?

  • Jakob on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:01:02 +0100

    @Halldór: Until now, I do not have any problems with the sound hardware at all. The Vaio X does not have speakers build in, but connected headphones worked flawlessly every time I needed/used them. Sorry I could not help with your problem.

    greetings
    Jakob

  • eljacob on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:11:32 +0100

    Thanks a lot Jakob! I was really frustrated with the performance, but didn't have the expertise to fix it. I followed your instructions and it is working fine.

    I would like to leave 2 comments that may help others:

    1) I was unable to make it work with the daily build of LPIA (maybe I downloaded on a bad day ;) ). I downloaded the final LPIA build for Karmic and it worked fine

    2) my system is not recognizing the Bluetooth adapter, and the WIFI performance is quite unstable. I didn't order the version with WWAN, and maybe my machine was built with a different wireless chipset (Foxconn T77H126.00 I guess). I don't really need Bluetooth on this machine, but now I will focus on solving the WIFI performance.

    Thank you again!

  • Olaf on Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:30:52 +0100

    Re WWAN: It sounds like the device needs to have (binary only) firmware uploaded before you can get it to show up or work. I've had this case with the webcam on my Vaio TZ.

    Would be great if you could update your post in case you get it to work.

  • Jakob on Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:54:44 +0100

    As soon as I get WWAN to work I will update the post. But currently I seem to be out of ideas/options concerning this piece of hardware :(.

    If it is a binary firmware problem someone with more kernel insight might be able to isolate the firmware from the windows driver create a loader for Linux.

    If anyone has an idea to get this working I would really appreciate it.

    greetings
    Jakob

  • smoo on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:19:47 +0100

    I don't have sound in my Vaio X. I use Ubuntu 9.10 as you. Could you tell me your alsabase.conf details about options snd-hda-intel ? What is model you are using? Thank you.

  • Jakob on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:19:06 +0100

    @smoo: The headphone jack should work out of the box with ubuntu karmic. I assumed the Vaio X didn't have a speaker because it did not work with the default configuration. I didn't really care about this as I was quite happy with having no speaker which could make noise ;).

    A fellow reader informed me by mail, that the speaker could be activated by setting the following option in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

    options snd-hda-intel model=basic

    Furthermore Mono output has to be enabled in the mixer settings. I hope this solves your problem.

    greetings,
    Jakob

  • Tiago Caldeira on Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:25:28 +0100

    Great tutorial. I've found it after install Ubuntu, but was great to add some extra things on my vaio x.

    On my case, i can allways found the Qualcomm with lsusb...
    I will try to see if it works.

    The Vaio got some speakers inside (the sound works on Seven, so...)

    Thanks for this,

    Tiago Caldeira
    (Portugal)

  • Lazycow on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:47:33 +0100

    Hi, some additional hints: you can query the temperature with...
    cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/ATF0/temperature | tail -c5

    There's a noticeable speedup by using UXA drivers. Just replace the line in the xorg.conf by...
    Option "AccellMethod" "UXA"
    (it had one single freeze with this setting, but his has been weeks ago. Seems to be stable. At least with Xubuntu)

    As I am using Xubuntu, I had to disable compositing before the notebook goes to sleep and reenabling it after sleep (by altering Jakob's 99_psb_fix script from above)...
    #!/bin/sh
    ACTION=$1
    case "$ACTION" in suspend|hibernate)
    xfwm4 --compositor=off --daemon --replace
    fgconsole >/tmp/xconsole.pm-sleep.tmp
    ;;
    resume|thaw)
    chvt 1
    chvt `cat /tmp/xconsole.pm-sleep.tmp`
    xfwm4 --compositor=on --daemon --replace
    ;;
    esac

    One major problem for me is the backlight. It resets to full brightness after some events. Seems like the Xubuntu power manager does not call any scripts :-( Any hints?

  • Richard Perez on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:28:31 +0100

    I'm trying to make the wwan card working and i found this site, i hope this will help some of you.

    http://marc.info/?l=linux-usb&m=123874553630076&w=2

  • jakob on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:33:23 +0100

    Unfortunately the "HP un2400 Modem" which is described in the mail you linked to uses the "Gobi 1000" chipset, whereas the Vaio X uses the "Gobi 2000" chipset, which is not even recognized by the qcserial driver by now.

    I think one can only wait for some developer to create a driver providing the serial interfaces for the modem. After that has been done one could sniff the data transfered to the device in windows, to determine the correct communication and firware uploading protocol. It is definetly not the same as with the Gobi 1000, as there are 3 firmware files now and not 2 as before.

    Cheers,
    Jakob

  • Jeff on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:38:28 +0100

    I have a fresh install of Karmic on my Sony X, although the touchpad works, it's not detected as a touchpad, instead as a "Macintosh mouse button emulation". The x11 synaptic driver is not loaded at all, so all those options for Synaptics driver not work. I think this is the reason why those multi-touch feature wouldn't show up.

  • Angel on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:07:55 +0100

    Thanks for sharing your experience installing ubuntu with the rest of us. I haven't seen it mentioned in any post above: did you have any luck configuring the function buttons for sound volume up/down, screen brightness up/down, etc.? I have an older vaio and it is a pain in the neck to configure those.

    Also, is the integrated webcam usable under ubuntu?

    Thanks very much for your help.

  • Jakob on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:02:41 +0100

    @Angel:

    The brightness keys worked out of the box, after I had installed the poulsbo video drivers. I am not really using the Vaio as a music- or soundplayer much, therefore I did not really investigate how to get the volume keys working.

    I don't use the webcam either, therefore I can't help here as well. Sorry. I know the webcam is correctly listed in a lsusb call. But I do not know if working drivers exist for it.

    Cheers,
    Jakob

  • Angel on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:54:47 +0100

    Thanks very much for your reply Jakob,

    if the webcam is listed by lsusb, chances are it will work sooner or later. Also, if brightness buttons work, it is very likely sound ones will do too.

    One final question (sorry for bugging you again): what's the size/weight of the ac adapter of this netbook. I had a very bad experience with my last vaio: the ac adapter weighted 850 gr. (for real, I used a scale!). I certainly hope that's not the case for the X series :-)

    Thanks again for your help...

  • Syl on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:06:08 +0100

    Some news regarding futur of LPIA in Ubuntu:
    Retirement of the lpia architecture
    https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-November/000643.html

  • vvvv on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 06:16:55 +0100

    Thank you very much for your guidance.

    I could install Ubuntu into my vaio x. It seems that my vaio x is very slow. I know that the processor in it is not excellent. But, I do not feel slow response when I use windows. I would like to know whether you feel so.

    Thank you.

  • Jakob on Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:38:37 +0100

    @Angel:
    The ac-adapter of the Vaio X is one of the smallest I have ever seen for a laptop. It measures about 90mmx35mmx25mm, which is really small :)

    @Syl:
    I read that as well. However the information stated above is still valid, even if you install the normal desktop version of ubuntu on it. I have replaced my lpia installation with a simple desktop version without any problems on the device.

    @vvvv:
    The system is very response here. It is fast and works like it is supposed to. Did you install and load the poulsbo graphic drivers? The system is really slow and unresponsive with default vesa drivers. It is nearly unbearable without the accelerated drivers.

    Cheers,
    Jakob

  • Richard Perez on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:29:41 +0100

    Hi everybody,

    I'm still trying to find a way to make 3G Gobi 2000 Chipset work under Linux.

    I have found this ebook :
    http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Irex-DR800SG/

    It seems that it is working under linux and use a gobi 2000 chipset.

  • Syl on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:26:33 +0100

    @Richard
    Good stuff, did you by change get it working?

    cheers!

  • Richard PEREZ on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:45:09 +0100

    I'm not able to find a driver package on the website. (If somebody want to try... please do not hesitate). So i'm stuck.

    May be we can ask this company for a support or try to get one of this ebook to download the driver...

  • Victor on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:07:12 +0100

    Hi,

    Been having the same problem with gobi and found:
    http://www.madox.net/blog/2010/01/06/hp5310m-un2420-wireless-gobi2000-module-in-ubuntu/

    Can't try it at the moment, but if someone can give it a go, that would be great.

  • Jako on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:18:18 +0100

    That looks promising.

    The Vaio X Modem however has different device ids to the ones patched into qcserial.

    Even though I haven't tested it yet, (Hopefully I will find the time for this tonight) the ids 0×9224 and 0×9225 would need to be added to the qcserial.c to even try this out. I will report after I tested it.

  • Richard PEREZ on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:01:46 +0100

    I will try this week end.

  • Victor on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:42:06 +0100

    It seems to work. At least I can see "05c6:9225 Qualcomm, Inc." in lsusb

  • Victor on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:21:23 +0100

    Confirmed - it's working.
    Quick overview of what have I done. Follow the steps from the link I have provided above. This are specific settings for Sony Vaio VPCX11:
    1. added
    {USB_DEVICE(0×05c6, 0×9224)}, /* SONY VAIO VPC-X11 QDL device*/
    {USB_DEVICE(0×05c6, 0×9225)}, /* SONY VAIO VPC-X11 Modem device */
    into qcserial.c
    2. added
    ATTRS{idVendor}=="05c6", ATTRS{idProduct}=="9224", RUN+="gobi_loader $env{DEVNAME} /lib/firmware/gobi"

    into /etc/udev/rules.d/60-gobi.rules

    3. created /etc/modprobe.d/usbserial.conf
    with one line:
    options usbserial vendor=0x05c6 product=0x9225

    4. Network Manager 0.8 should recognize this usb modem without any extra tweaking.

    HTH.

  • dfong63 on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:43:06 +0100

    could you answer a question for me? the pictures i've seen show that the X's touchpad was located weirdly. it seems not to be centered wrt the spacebar as was done on other vaio models. it is shifted to the right. i'm afraid if i got one of these machines my right hand would be accidentally hitting the touchpad all the time as i type. have you found this to be an issue at all?

    is there any advantage to the X's placement of the touchpad?

  • Jakob on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:51:19 +0100

    @dfong63:

    The touchpad is located exactly in the center of the laptop body. The spacebar however is not. Therefore it might look like the touchpad has been moved either one of the sides, but it hasn't. I never had any problems accidentally touching it during typing on the keyboard.

    Cheers,
    Jakob

  • Jakob on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:40:24 +0100

    I have just finished installing and configuring all the needed stuff to make the WWAN modem work.

    Thanks guys for all the information.

    I have written down a step by step guide on this topic.

    http://westhoffswelt.de/blog/0041_sony_vaio_x_ubuntu_installation_experience.html

    Cheers,
    Jakob

  • dfong63 on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:28:07 +0100

    Jakob, thanks for sharing your research!

    i'm still worried, though, that if i get one of these, my right hand won't be able to rest without accidentally hitting the touchpad. i think sony had it right on the older vaio's, too bad they changed it.

  • Jeff on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:01:07 +0100

    Has anybody found the way to activate the touchpad's multitouch? Karmic doesn't recognize the touchpad at all, instead it sees it as a Macintosh mouse.

  • Syl on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:04:31 +0100

    Thanks a lot guys for having found out how to get the WWAN modem working :-)
    That's really great !

    So now, i'm sure: i'll get one of this beautiful laptop asap!!

  • Richard PEREZ on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:31:14 +0100

    Hi,

    We are very close to obtain a full compatibility, only one thing is missing.

    Is somebody able to use the integrated Gobi 2000 GPS with Windows or Linux. It has never works for me.

    Best Regards,

  • Konstantin on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:57:29 +0100

    Thank you for /etc/pm/sleep.d/99_psb_fix

  • Ronald on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 04:48:40 +0100

    just did a fresh karmic install on vaio x, and my bluetooth is not working at all.. any ideas?

  • Jakob on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 05:36:55 +0100

    I had never any problems with bluetooth on my Vaio X. It just worked out of the box with karmic. Therefore I don't really have an idea about what might causing your problems. I am sorry.

    Cheers,
    Jakob

  • RichDice on Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:18:19 +0200

    Hi Jakob,

    Thanks very much for writing down your experiences. I am on the cusp of buying an X series Vaio and getting a linux distro on it is of great importance to me.

    A question: did you keep the Windows 7 pre-installed OS? I'm not sure from reading your installation instructions if you kept it or if you completely reformatted the drive and installed Ubuntu from scratch. I would like to repartition the drive, provide some space (30gb?) for Ubuntu and keep Windows 7 on the rest. Even better, eventually I would like to be able to run Ubuntu in a VM using Win7 as the host OS. (This might not work so well on an Atom processor, but I don't really know.)

    Any insights you have on any of this would be appreciated!

    Thanks,
    - Richard

  • xlq on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:37:10 +0200

    I have followed these instructions (in particular the poulsbo instructions from the Ubuntu wiki) on Ubuntu 9.10 on a Vaio VPCX11S1E, but despite using your /etc/pm/sleep.d/99_psb_fix, recovering from hibernation sometimes works perfectly and sometimes hangs with a black screen. I can kill something with alt+sysrq+k and I'm then presented with the gdm login screen.

    Any suggestions?

  • Syl on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:53:40 +0200

    Hi guys,

    for information, i got the inner microphone working using the instruction from http://geekyschmidt.com/2010/03/22/sony-vaio-p788k-ubuntu-9-10-load

    Internal Mic Fix

    * sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-alsa-2.6.31-20-generic
    * sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/unstable
    * sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
    * Edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
    * Add at the bottom of the file
    o options snd-hda-intel model=toshiba-s06 power_save=10 power_save_controller=N
    * On Sound Preferences change Profile to Analog Stereo Duplex
    * Turn speaker volume up HIGH


    HTH someone ...

  • Jakob on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:37:43 +0200

    @xlq:
    Is it hibernation that does not work or suspend?
    I never actually used hibernation. Suspending works flawlessly using the given shell script on my system. Therefore I don't think I will be able to help you with this problem. Sorry.

    Cheers,
    Jakob

  • starryalley on Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:30:11 +0200

    Hi, first of all thank you for this info which helps me a lot in deciding to buy this excellent NB. However I have a concern regarding video playback. Can you test 720p video playback for me? Does it work fine? For your reference I found a OS: http://www.jolicloud.com/. It claims to support GMA500 chipset and can play 720p video. But I will stick to Ubuntu when I buy the Vaio X. Thanks.

  • warestoth on Sat, 15 May 2010 15:20:09 +0200

    Hi !
    Thanks for the various tips, especially mem=2000MB ...

    @starryalley : jolicloud'X keeps crashing with framebuffer errors i guess it's the missing mem=...

    Btw it's working fine on lucid (10.04), there is a poulsbo_lucid.sh around for auto install, and the modem is ok too :)

  • TBRT on Mon, 17 May 2010 18:50:59 +0200

    Hi,

    in my VaioX following:
    linux ${rel_dirname}/${basename} root=${linux_root_device_thisversion} ro $2

    reads:
    linux ${rel_dirname}/${basename} root=${linux_root_device_thisversion} ro ${args}

    and indeed appending the proposed 'mem' value does solve the problem!

  • TBRT on Mon, 17 May 2010 18:53:35 +0200

    I did follow the instructions as stated in posting:
    on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:19:06 +0100

    concerning the internal speakers but didn't work! I installed the Netbook remix 386 10.04!

    How do I enable 'mono output'? I couldn't find any setting like this in the mixer!

    Thanks

  • TBRT on Mon, 17 May 2010 20:02:57 +0200

    any experience with the build-in webcam? I didn't try it yet with skype but looks like of a slow response with 'cheese'. Like a 'slow-motion' mode.

  • Thaon Toncien on Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:03:27 +0200

    I use Kubuntu10.04, and I have never successfully start X...

  • Thaon Toncien on Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:40:22 +0200

    And I tried it on Ubuntu9.10alternate, It has not changed even.
    Is that so?:
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/ppa && sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install libdrm-poulsbo1 poulsbo-config poulsbo-driver-2d poulsbo-driver-3d psb-firmware psb-kernel-headers psb-modules xpsb-glx
    sudo apt-get install psb-kernel-source
    sudo dpkg-reconfigure psb-kernel-source
    // I did all the above is.
    I need help!!

  • Thaon Toncien on Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:45:30 +0200

    VPCX138JC
    My Email is tangdongjian@gmail.com

  • Nick on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:23:06 +0200

    Excellent writeup! It has helped me immensely with my Vaio. I have installed 10.4 on mine and out of the box the Wireless and Bluetooth worked. I am having problems with your two scripts that fix the sleep and networking after sleep. Neither of them work. Must I change something in the code to allow it to work for this version of Ubuntu?

    Also, My sound has not worked. Where could I find the drivers for this?

  • Vadim on Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:07:14 +0200

    Thank you very much for the comprehensive guide. This helped a lot!

    I successfully installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my Vaio X from the regular desktop i386 image. USB stick did not boot for some reason, so I had to use external optical drive.

    Installed poulsbo drivers from http://code.google.com/p/gma500/wiki/PPARepository.

    Everything worked fine out-of-the-box except for suspend/resume - it was a blank screen on resume. The problem was solved by removing /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video, as was recommended in some GMA500 -related thread on Ubuntu forum.

  • GS on Sat, 07 Aug 2010 14:02:09 +0200

    Hi, i've 10.04 on my vaio. But no sound by speakers. i put in the line options snd...... in the named directory/ file. i can't find mono so it was not possible to change. can anybody help me. linux is newland for me.

  • Svante on Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:34:35 +0200

    Thanks Jacob!
    GS and others: Internal speakers are fixed simply by upgrading the Alsa driver to latest version (1.0.23). See http://tech-reveal.blogspot.com/ (has to be done for each kernel though).

  • Shi on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 01:47:17 +0200

    Svante, thanks for the pointer. I tried the instructions in the link you provided but encountered error saying that "you have build-in alsa in your kernel". Coming back to your post you mentioned that this "has to be done for each kernel..." Can you be more specific or point me to another resource on this? Thanks.

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