Linux on VAIO TR

    I just got my Sony Vaio TR3 a week ago and for the whole week, I am struggling with the configurations of Linux on it and I am still way to go. I read whole bunch of articles from different forums asking people's suggestions, eventually I am on my way. Underwent so many hazels I kind of feeling like it is necessary to put something down so that people at least can have something come in handy when dealing their laptops.

    I experimented on both Fedora Core 2 and SUSE 9.1 Professional which I am pleasant with, and my conclusion is definitely SUSE 9.1 Professional. There are so many little things of it make me happy and it is designed to be laptop user friendly. However, SUSE is not free distribution, a lot of times people would go for FC2. That is not a problem there are also possible configurations to make your laptop work on it. I am going to put down configurations for both OS. Just a little note that it is always a good idea to update your Linux before doing any other configuration after installation.

1280x768 Resolution

    Normally the first thing you will want to configure when you have a 1280x768 resolution laptop is the monitor. Current Linux systems work fine on certain wide screen configurations especially for those laptop replacement notebooks. However, neither FC2 nor SUSE come with this config. So you have to get around it. The easiest way is to download the 1280patch. It is a very nice tiny C program that copies the VBIOS into RAM and then adds the missing video mode. (Distributed by Andrew Tipton) All you have to do is the following

Fedora Core 2

% gcc -o 1280patch 1280patch.c

% su

% mv 1280patch /usr/X11R6/bin

% ./1280patch

Then modify the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local by appending a line "1280patch"

Finally modify your /etc/X11/XF86Config file. In the "Monitor" section add the following line

Modeline "1280x768" 80.14 1280 1344 1480 1680 768 769 772 795

Then in the first subseesion of the "Screen" section add "1280x768" before any other current resolutions. Here is a sample XF86Config file distributed by Kurumi Chimari.

You are done, after rebooting your system the resolution is correctly adjusted.

SUSE 9.1

    You can probably do the same thing in SUSE but instead of putting the "1280patch" line in /etc/rc.d/rc.local the line is added in /etc/rc.d/boot.local. However, I don't suggest to do this. Since SUSE has very nice tool in Yast2 called Runlevel Editor why not use it? So the step is as follows:

% gcc -o 1280patch 1280patch.c

% su

% mv 1280patch /etc/X11

% ./1280patch

Modify /etc/X11/XF86Config. The modification is essentially the same as FC2 but instead of adding "1280x768" to your first subsession of the "Screen" section, find the subseesion with your defaultDepth and add it there. Here is my XF86Config file. You can just use it directly.

Next, you need to a script to have the patch start automatically. You can write your own if you are familiar with it or you can just use Richard Eigenmann's videopatch. Save this patch in /etc/init.d.

% chmod a+x videopath

Now, use Runlevel Editor in Yast2 to do the finalization. Switch to Expert Mode, you will see the videopatch there. Set it to be runlevel 3 and in the set/reset box, choose Enable (or you can directly choose runlevel both 3 and 5). Restart your computer and you are done.

Wireless - Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG (miniPCI, IEEE802.11g )

    MiniPCI wireless cards are always headaches for people to figure out. There are a few distributions for this model. The ones I tried on are Madwifi, nidiswrapper and driverloader. There is also another distribution called iwp2002 which I haven't tried on yet, but it seems that it has  pretty good reputations among FC2 users.

    Since Linux looks into the kernel module for drivers, a proper kernel configuration is very important, actually in a lot of occasions, kernel patches are necessary. But be careful while you are playing with the kernel, it is very easy to make it crash by little mistake. It is a better idea to find the corresponding patches from the drivers' distribution sites. 

    The details of installing and using wireless drivers are essentially the same in FC2 and SUSE if you use Command line. If you are a GUI type of person, both OS has very nice tool to help you out configuring your wireless after installation. FC2 uses network utility while SUSE uses the Yast2's network card configuration. They are rather straight forward to use. 

    Among the 3 distributions I tried out, driverloader worked out like a charm to me. It takes minimum configuration and it comes with the right kernel patches so you will never screw yourself up. Madwifi is the most widely used one, but after some trial and error, I found out it didn't work for my adapter though it supports 802.11a/b/g miniPci.  It seems Kurumi Chimari had quite pleasant experience with madwifi on a TR2 machine.  

Installations

Linuxant DriverLoader

    It is developed by Linuxant and is a commercial ware cost about $20US (not a bad deal at all for me) . The company gives out 30 day free trial, so before you purchase it you can first of all find out how nicely it is gonna work out on you. Besides, the website itself has a lot of useful information on configuring wireless, so even you don't want to go for it you can still have something handy for yourself.  My understanding of DriverLoader is that it builds on top of the card's windows driver and patches it to the Linux kernel module to make it work. You can download both the windows driver and the kernel patch from their site. You can also download the WinXP drivers from Vaio's ftp site. The installation instructions are clearly written, so all you have to do just follow the instructions provided there and you are done.

Nidiswrapper

    It is actually the same stuff as driverloader.  It builds on the windows driver of the device and patches it to the corresponding kernel. It is a open source source project written in C, you can find more detailed descriptions in their nidiswrapper sourceforge site. Kernel patches are only available for Redhat / Fedora and Debian there. So if you are running Suse, you better use the patches given out in Linuxant's site.  Now you get the kernel rpm and the nidiswrapper source file, so all you have to do is just simply rpm -ihv the kernel rpm file, tar -xzvf, make and make install the source file. Walla.

Madwifi

    It is another open source project and  mostly used among the 3. In Suse 9.1 professional, it has already come with a older version of it, so for people with wireless 2100BG and others supported types (you can check with the Madwifi site) will have no trouble using their adapter. As I mentioned above, it didn't work for me,  so I am not going into details of it. 

Tips on using wireless

    No matter what drive you pick finally for your wireless, after installation you still have to do some  configurations of it. You can either edit your wireless' icfcg file which located in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 in FC2 (in Suse, it is located in /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-wlan0. Note that if you use madwifi, the device name is not wlan0 but ath0 instead.) or use the iwconfig command. The technique of managing your wireless various on your own situation such as if you go through a gateway or not, if you use WEP or MAC or not, stuff like that. Sometimes it can be very frustrated when you move from one access point to another. If you encounter any problems, my suggestion is always go look up in the forums and google. In a lot of occasions, the driver providers also give a lot of tips to solve your headache. Here are some tips base on my experience:

Tip 1. You will have a problem when you have both eth0 and wlan0 up. So when you want to use wireless, make sure the eth0 is down. You can verify what is in use by % ifconfig and use the command ifup and ifdown to bring up and down the network device. Keep in mind, some devices doesn't work for ifup, ifdown command, so you can use ifconfig wlan0 up to bring it up instead and so forth.

Tip 2: Never put all your network devices in "activated on boot" mode. Think of what you will use most often and use it as the default onboot one, set all the rest to "manage" mode. In Suse, if the default onboot one cannot be connected at boot time, it authomatically activates the next available "manage"  network device, which is quite nice.

Tip 3: