Sony Vaio VGN-SZ640 Ubuntu Maverick

04 Nov 2010 20:21

Recently I updated the Ubuntu I'm using on my laptop to version 10.10 (codename Maverick).

Although things work pretty good, I had to do some tricks to make it work in specific areas.

Broken suspend

It seems tpm* modules (who knows what they are for?) break this. Putting file like this:

# With these modules loaded suspend doesn't work
blacklist tpm
blacklist tpm_bios
blacklist tpm_tis
blacklist tpm_infineon

to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-tpm.conf (and rebooting) solves the problem for me.

Brightness buttons not working

Run this code in terminal:

while true; do
    line=`acpi_listen | head -n 1`;
    if echo "$line" | grep 'sony/hotkey SPIC 00000001 00000010'; then
        xbacklight -dec 25 -time 0 -steps 1
        smartdimmer -d
    fi
    if echo "$line" | grep 'sony/hotkey SPIC 00000001 00000011'; then
        xbacklight -inc 25 -time 0 -steps 1
        smartdimmer -i
    fi
done

You need to have smartdimmer and xbacklight package. The keys kind of work now (but quite lamely).

Other stuff

The Ubuntu font is great. I love it. It seems nouveaux driver (for nVidia card) is really good. It supports multi-monitor configuration via xrandr and other standard stuff. Unfortunately you won't get 3D effects (Compiz) with it and you'll need to install nVidia commercial drivers for it.

Consult Sony Vaio SZ Series And Linux for more (mostly old) information.

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