Hello,

I have a Sony VAIO VGN-AR41L and I want to wipe out the preinstalled Windows Vista entirely. I have used Linux distributions before like (openSuSE, Linux Mint, Slackware 12 others) but none of them had a permanent place on my laptop because I was doing dual boot I didn't care if some characteristic wasn't perfect. But now that I have decided that Linux deserves to be my one and only main operating system I want a distribution which supports all the functions of my laptop with little or no configuration. So I want someone who have the specific model or a model from the same series if he/she had found a good distribution for this specific laptop. For example in openSuSE 11.2 the following are playing out-of-the-box:

• touchpad
• wireless lan
• ethernet
• internal microphone
• sound
• the button that mutes the sound
• the button that adjusts the sound

Some others like suspend to ram play only with the nvidia drivers or the built-in camera which plays using a specific firmware. Others like hibernate do not play at all etc. In Fedora 12 the Fn keys are enabled by default. In openSuSE 12 this doesn't happen.

Do you have to suggest a distribution which has more support for this laptop?

Hi

i have tried Ubuntu netbook remix and desktop on asus and acer laptop with great success.

everything works out of the box, wifi, mousepad, all FN keys (turning off monitor volume etc.)

im pretty sure it should work on the sony just as well since your laptop is not too old. So what i would recommend to you is ubuntu 9.10 or anything based (eg. linux mint 8)

ive tried afew other distros but this one was the easiest amongst the majority of them.
the others i had to connect a external wifi usb dongle in order to run updates to get many features working.

I was going to suggest openSUSE 11.2, but you've already tried it. I'm using it now on my CS110, and the only thing that doesn't work, is my internal mic. Not a big deal, though...but marginally irritating. Everything else came right up and worked without a hitch.

If you've used openSUSE before, I'd stick with it, especially if you've had good luck with it on your hardware.

oh yes with ubuntu the camera does also work and so does the mic with the original install