sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Zithras <Zithras@xxxxxxxxx>]

I was out of town last week, so didn't get a chance to send in an update
until today.

Following thunderbee's recent invaluable guide, I was able to get
Kubuntu 10.4 installed on the VPCZ1190X.

As expected, I have to boot an older kernel each time to get the speed
switch set, and I used the xorg.conf file at the end of the document
(works great!)

A couple points of note (quite obvious to most linux users, but still
useful toward the intended goal of creating a guide for the 'new' linux
user:

for the commands:
wget -nd http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.34-lucid
/linux-image-2.6.34-020634-generic_2.6.34-020634_i386.deb
wget -nd http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.34-lucid
/linux-headers-2.6.34-020634_2.6.34-020634_all.deb
wget -nd http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.34-lucid
/linux-headers-2.6.34-020634-generic_2.6.34-020634_i386.deb
dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.34-020634-generic_2.6.34-020634_i386.deb linux-
headers-2.6.34-020634_2.6.34-020634_all.deb linux-
headers-2.6.34-020634-generic_2.6.34-020634_i386.deb

in the guide, replace all instances of 'i386' with your processor
architecture ('amd64' for mine, and I think most new Z series laptops,
or any 64 bit processor)

if you are sshing into the computer to install Kubuntu as recommended,
remember that you'll have to login as the main system account (not root
like in the recovery console), and use 'sudo' before most commands.
Remember to either make a strong password or disable ssh password
authentication after you're done installing Kubuntu and have a GUI.

if you need to copy/paste the xorg.conf file from the guide (i.e. you
don't have one from a previous install), you'll also need to get a
commandline text editor - vim works:
copy file text, then in terminal (minus the 's)
'sudo apt-get install vim'
'sudo vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf'
'i' #enter text insert mode
#(paste text)
'esc' #back to command mode
':wq' #save and quit

I now have Kubuntu working fine with the nVidia card!

And a couple of questions I still have:
1) Other than the graphics card quirks, what's still not working (almost
nothing is still broken, as far as I can tell; not sure if the
fingerprint reader and webcam are working yet though?)

2) What's the best way to get the Kubuntu to see the 'fake' RAID?  (Do I
just need to install the dmraid package?)  I can see the drives Windows
and Kubuntu are installed on just fine (they're not in RAID), but I
RAIDed the other two drives together for storage, and I can't see them
in Kubuntu yet.  I don't need to boot from them (which seems to be the
major problem with the fake raid), but it would be nice to be able to
use them for file storage once Kubuntu is booted and running

3) any solution on the hardware graphics switch for the new Z series?
(not really, as far as I can tell)

4) Has anyone gotten the Intel graphics adapter working on the new Z
series models yet (I'm REALLY confused on this one.  Reading through the
email archives, it looks like there's a possible bugfix out there, but
I'm not really sure how to install and use it, if it works at all (or
mostly, but with a few problems), or if it even applies to this computer
model (the bug report mentions it fixing 'blurry' or 'incorrect' colors,
rather than the black screen most of us are running into for the intel
graphics)

Thanks to everyone on the forums who's helped out, especially thunderbee
and Frederick!
I'll start installing programs, configuring, tweaking, and testing
tomorrow!
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