Linux on my Vaio?

i just got a new vaio off ebay and i think it'd be fun to run linux on it since the only reason i would run windows is for games and i dont plan to play anything too elaborate on this thing. i'm not sure which distro i should run, i was thinking slackware, debian, maybe even lfs, the only problems i forsee currently involve power management, i've heard of some people complain about battery life loss after switching from windows to linux at www.linux-laptop.net. i plan on setting it up for power management using a guide such asthis, but i'm not sure if it will be enough. i want my battery life to at least match my battery life in windows. any tips or good sites concerning running linux on a laptop or linux power optimization would be appreciated.

i also have a couple of questions:

is it possible to set it up to do things like, go into sleep when i close the screen?

some of the drives recommend spinning the hard drive down, but could spinning the hard drives up and down too much waste battery or damage the hard drive?

does suspend(sleep/hibernate) spin the disk down? i remember a laptop that i had about a year ago stopped going into sleep mode when i closed the screen and the drive broke within a week.

will using supspend to disk(hibernate, i guess) fragment my disk badly?

I tried instaling SuSE 8.2 home a while ago and found it didnt support my graphics card / modem and soundcard. However when I installed SUSE 9 it went without a hitch first time and I was very pleased with it.

There probably was drivers out there for 8.2 (before Gore pipes up!) but i didnt have the time to sort the problem out, it was eaiser and quicker for me to just run v9.

As for most of your questions:

"is it possible to set it up to do things like, go into sleep when i close the screen?"

Yes, what model Vaio do you have?

"some of the drives recommend spinning the hard drive down, but could spinning the hard drives up and down too much waste battery or damage the hard drive"

Obviously it wil use battery power but wouldnt damage the hard drive if done properly.

"does suspend(sleep/hibernate) spin the disk down? i remember a laptop that i had about a year ago stopped going into sleep mode when i closed the screen and the drive broke within a week.

Yes

"will using supspend to disk(hibernate, i guess) fragment my disk badly?"

Not really and certainly no more than any other program /application.


Hope it helped

im using a VGN-B100

Same as me!

"is it possible to set it up to do things like, go into sleep when i close the screen?"

Go to your Control Pannel > Power options > Advanced then under "When I close the lid of my portable computer" Select Hibernate.


In the power options menus it is possible to set all the peramerters you asked earlier about hibernatation, powering down your hard disc etc.

Post back if you need any more info!

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Originally posted here by Nokia
I tried instaling SuSE 8.2 home a while ago and found it didnt support my graphics card / modem and soundcard. However when I installed SUSE 9 it went without a hitch first time and I was very pleased with it.

There probably was drivers out there for 8.2 (before Gore pipes up!) but i didnt have the time to sort the problem out, it was eaiser and quicker for me to just run v9.

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Awww come on man I'm not that bad. 8.2 is pretty old it's not going to find brand new laptop hardware every time. Even though my Dell Inspiron 5150 brand new laptop, is completely working without any configuration under 8.2 but hey that's me and a different laptop.

I'm not goign to bitch you said it didn't work, like I said older hardware is going to be likely to work better and if it doesn't, try a new version of Linux. 9.2 finds all hardware on all machines, 9.1 does as well, and 8.2 does as well, and 8.1 I haven't tested on my laptop yet

http://opensuse.org/index.php/Package_Wishlist

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Go to your Control Pannel > Power options > Advanced then under "When I close the lid of my portable computer" Select Hibernate.

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i meant with linux.

actually tho, i havent been able to figure out how to change my screen brightness in windows without the fn+sun keys. the volume hotkeys just interact with windows to raise, lower, mute the volume, but i've been digging around the control panels to find out what's changing my brightness when i hit those fn keys. is the screen only configurable through the OS? most of my comps use real monitors that have menus to set up things like brightness independantly from the os.

If i read that right, you want to be able to change your brightness without using the function keys?

To do that i find the eaisest way is to right click on your desktop > Properties > Settings > Advanced > Then on the tabs on the top of the menu select your graphics card, i think it is a GFORCE FX Go5600,( I have changed mine so cant quite remember but it will be somthing similar) > Then select color correction on the pop out menu on the left - You can adjust all your brightness, contrast, color etc settings from here.

This and the function key way is the only way to do it but as you prob know with the onyx black screen tilting them to different angles also alters the viewing brightness.

Are you having trouble with the brigtness or is it just out of interest?

Hope it helped you!!

man. u hould totally go with slackware. Ive been running slackware on my compaq presario 2100 for say two years with no issues. All my devices were supported natively( maybe not all but most) and as for power management, its pretty decent and the issues you'll have will probably be with hibernation and standby which r still not production ready as at linux 2.6.8( see kernel docs). Otherwise i think it'll fly.

Ubuntu has pretty good laptop support as well. Everything on my brand new IBM T41 worked out of the box. If you prefer KDE over Gnome, you can try Kubuntu, but I think you'll be happier with Ubuntu, and then install the KDE packages.

Ubuntu is debian based, including the apt repository system and everything. Good stuff there.

I installed Ubuntu on a Dell Latatitude ? About 5 years old with 128 MB. Used the linksys "WINDOWS" driver for the wireless card.

I don't know how, but sound card worked on the first reboot - after the install.

I'm still playing with the thing, but Ubuntu was farily painless to install on that laptop.

nokia, my gfx card is an onboard intel gme something or other and it doesnt have anything like that in it's desktop > Properties > Settings > Advanced > gfx card menu. however, my desktop does happen to have an nvidia fx card and following that path does bring up a dropdown menu where i can adjust brightness, contrast, etc. but it's the video card output brightness, i want to actually be able to turn the screen's physical brightness down i.e. the backlight to save power. now that i think about it though, i cant really be sure that the function+sun keys arent just adjusting my video card brigntness output instead of my physical monitor brightness.