I've found a couple articles where others have converted these little half-screen notebooks to Linux and wanted to give it a try. But I can't get the little beast to boot off the USB CDROM. Tried setting the boot order in the bios but it keeps going to the Windows OS selector (it has Win2K and Win98 on it).

What other options do I have to get it to boot the Linux CD? It doesn't have a floppy. I've got the Mandrake 9.0 CD's, ALT Linux and Knoppix 3.2 lying around. Thought about letting Mandrake take care of the partitioning, if I can get it to boot.

Any ideas? Sheez, I hate windoze.

Try Linux-on-Laptops. They have listings for a large number of Vaios, you can see how others have done it.