I have a sony vaio PCG-FRV26 and recently ordered the Suse 9 Bible. I heard its one of the best. I am New to linux. I have used it before but probably 3 years ago and wanted to get back into it. I was wondering if anyone has had any luck with a sony vaio PCG-FRV26 or similar model. I emailed sony support and they said that the Vaio line is designed for Windows which doesn't make me to enthusiastic about trying an install.

hi there,

and welcome to LQ!

don't worry about what they recommend. take a look around. you have a lot of ressources that can help you setting up your vaio with linux.
1. http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php
2. http://www.tuxmobil.org

etc..

give it a try. suse is a good start.

regards

slackie1000

Thanks for the reply. I have decided to go with the suse but when I ordered the book I didnt notice it comes on in the middle of January so I will have to wait. I have bookmarked your links and will check them out later.

Hello,

I have the same laptop (sony pcg frv26) with a windows XP / suse 9 dual boot. Suse is a good start for this laptop. Initially I had tried Red hat 9 but had problems with the graphical interface (startx). Though I could make it functional (check the site http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/sony.html) I later on switched to suse 9. Suse 9 works pretty well.

There are:

No problems with basal level functioning.

Sound card and graphic card (radeon) is autodetected. However I could not get the 3D acceleration work.

You will have to install the modem drivers from linuxant.com. I could not get the kinternet (default dial up tool) work but I could connect the dialup with kppp.

mplayer work pretty well. I have not yet tried the CD player. But I think it should not be a problem. I had to install xmms (some libraries) separately. But it works fine now. A googling would give you the details on that.

Function keys do not work. Neither hibernation or suspend. If you configure the kernel (2.4) with suspend, they say that you can suspend to disk. But I have not tried it. Suse 9.1 uses the 2.6 kernel and everyone tells me that the function keys and hibernation work there.

Functions like battery charge indicator, etc work fine.

I could configure an external wireless card (netgear wg511) once I got the driver from linuxant. People say that you can make it work with prism54 but I could not find out how to make it functional. You can get the driver from linuxant for $20. Suse 9.1 onwards seems to have the prism54 driver preinstalled. I basically feel that it would be better if you try suse 9.1 or 9.2

If you have any specific doubts, please feel to contact me.

With best regards,
Dileep

Thanks for the reply. I had decided to go with Suse 9.1. Everything went perfect I couldnt have ask for a easy install. The only thing that was trouble was the boot loader. I thought everyone said you were not supposed to put the bootloader in the MBR. But it wouldnt boot unless i put it there. But that was easy. Everything seems to be working fine but unfortunately I am unable to get online. I use the free aol disk for internet because im home from college right now. Apparently you cant connect to AOL with linux right now.

Have you updated to suse 9.2 yet? I was wondering if there were anything special in it.

I also had a problem with the 3D graphics. Im not sure if this has anything to do with the graphics but i was playing one of the 3D games that was based on tron and I could not quit the game, I even tried to kill the process and it kept on running. I had to logout.

Thanks for the reply

Hello,

That is good. I do not remember if I had any problem with the boot loader. But I do vaguely remember that I also had some problems to get the booting functional.

I am still using suse 9.0. I did not want to upgrade from the net. I am thinking of getting a 9.1 or 9.2. I do not think that there is much difference between 9.1 and 9.2 but as far as I know there is a good difference between 9.0 and 9.1.

How is 9.1? Could you make the function keys and hibernate functional? That is one of the major problems that I am facing with suse 9. And, what about wireless stuffs? People say that 9.1 support wireless better.

If possible, try to post an article in linux on laptops.

Regards,
Dileep

Im not too sure about the function keys. I havent had too much time to fool around with it. Im not really to familiar with linux at this point.

As for wireless communication i hear its really good with 9.1. I myself dont have a wireless card but Ive been looking into getting a bluetooth enabled wireless card if I do get a card. Im not sure about 9.0 but 9.1 has bluetooth connectivity, I think they might have added it in this version.

Hello,

As I mentioned before, I was using suse 9 on my sony pcg frv26. It was much better than Redhat 9 which I tried to run first. But I was not getting 3D acceleration with my radeon ati card. Now I decided to try Fedora 3 core. The installation went very smooth. Most of the devices were autodetected. I think that for this laptop, fedora 3 is a much better distribution than suse 9. I could get the 3D acceleration. The only problem was that I could not my netgear WG511 wireless card functional with the prism54 drivers. My card was a made in china version and I found that many others have faced similar problems with a made in china card. I got the driver from driverloader (linuxant ) and now it is working fine.

Regards,

Dileep