Mandrake 8.0 :(
Initially I tried installing Mandrake 8.0, no go. The PCMCIA detection hung the computer. From what I've read this is a problem with the Sony BIOS, it may be possible to disable pcmcia in the kernel when you boot from the CD. Read the pcmcia-cs documentation. Tell me if you get this working.Mandrake 8.2 & 8.3 :)Update: Carsten Rose sent me a note saying that you can install this version by disabling the serial and parallel ports in the BIOS during installation. Then once the install completes edit /etc/pcmcia/config to forbid the pcmcia drivers from using irqs 4 & 7, probably just uncomment the lines that say first serial port and first printer. Now re-enable the ports. I would install a newer version of Mandrake, but this may help with some other distribution with the same problem.
I had no problems installing these.RedHat 7.2
I am successfully running this distribution right now on a FX150.Problems: The Cisco airo_cs.o driver and the SyncByAir prism2_cs.o drivers do not play nice together, only one functions at a time. Olitec makes a modem driver for the modem, but only for kernels 2.2.14-2.2.17, I haven't tried this. There were problems with i815 drivers in the kernel, and sound drivers. I suggest you compile with my kernel config and then after testing it make any modifications you require. I don't have ACPI included, with a stock kernel it will crash the laptop on boot. There is a patch to fix this, but I don't need ACPI with the battery & bright utilities. The Ximian install crashed. I manually installed the packages it downloaded (they are in the /var/cache/redcarpet directory). Then I re-ran the install for any configuration it does.
The modifications I've made are as follows
- Installed pcmcia-cs-3.1.28. I compiled from the source with kernel based pcmcia support.
- Compiled my own 2.4.14 kernel, the configuration is here.
- Installed the Cisco airo drivers for their 350 series 802.11b pcmcia card.
- These had to be manually copied from their driver directory to /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/wireless, then the kernel compiled and installed.
- The drivers that ship with the kernel crash on card insertion and on removal(on removal only if you don't do a /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia stop first).
- Installed linux-wlan-ng-0.1.8-pre13 for my SyncByAir 802.11b pcmcia card.
- Installed XFree86 4.1.0. Unfortunately the shipped XFree86 4.0 needs a kernel driver available from Intel which I never got working. If you want to try the Intel kernel driver look for 815 downloads on their site.
- Installed Vaio utilities from triadge@linuxcare.com, I've packaged these up into a tar with a makefile here. The utilities are battery, which tells me how much battery power I have. And bright, which sets the screen brightness (0-100%). He has different names, but my version fixes some core dumps so your better off using it.
- Installed Xine for DVD playing. There is a problem here in where the legality of using DeCSS is unknown. IANAL but it will probably be held to be legal in most countries with the notable exception of the USA. But this is far from resolved. In anycase, Xine will play your non-encoded DVD's if you don't install a DeCSS library.
- Installed everythintg Ximian.
Note: The airo & prism2 drivers are for 802.11b networking and you probably have different needs. If you are using these you may want to change the line source *.conf in your /etc/pcmcia/config file to a source line for each .conf file, the source *.conf doesn't seem to work. Also I had to add my SyncByAir manually to the wlan.conf file and remove its entry in the /etc/pcmcia/config file (which told it to use a different driver).
Sony Vaio website
Vaio howto (bit dated)
Vaio Picturebook howto
Intel 810/815 Graphics Chipset driver (This didn't work for me)
Vaio C1XS howto
Vaio FX170K howto
Vaio FX209K howto (Explains ACPI stuff I didn't bother with)
Viao FX101 howto