Re: Re: linux on a vaio (John S. Andersen)

On Tue, 2003-07-22 at 09:36, Indurain wrote:
> On 21 Jul 2003 at 8:45, Jack Coates wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2003-07-21 at 07:50, Tom Pendergast wrote:
> > > Hey Folks,
> > > I was thinking about picking up a vaio sometime this month.
> Although
> > > the deciding factor is whether or not linux will run ok on it. I
> > > would probably be putting suse 8.2 pro on it, but I would also
> > > consider having a dual boot with XP. Can anyone advise as to
> whether
> > > this is a good idea or not.. Thanks for your time.
> > >
> > > -t-
> >
> > Linux generally works well on new Vaios, with the exception of
> > suspension. For some people it works okay, for some it works with
> > occasional major filesystem corruption, for others (like me) it
> > doesn't work at all.
> >
> > Everything else works fine once you get ACPI enabled.
> > --
> > Jack Coates
> 
> I disagree...though I haven't tried suspension, I have found getting
> sound to work on a sony vaio laptop is a major, MAJOR pain.  I have
> tried SuSE 8.0, 8.1, and Mandrake 9.1 and all lock my systems when I
> try to use the alsa sound system with the via686 soundcard in the
> vaio.  I recently tried 4front tech. drivers to no avail either.
> 
> Jay Freyensee
> 

something ain't right there. http://www.monkeynoodle.org/comp/vx88 and
scroll down to sound. Basically I had a little trouble, dug up the old
sndconfig program, edited the /etc/modules.conf that it gave me for the
new module names, and that was that. Haven't had to touch sound since.
Linux sound is more complicated than any other, so here's some
troubleshooting procedure:

modules: play /path/to/somesoundfile. If that hangs or spits back an
error, your problem is in modules or /dev/* permissions (could be
devfs-related).

sound manager: look at the process list (treeps is a nice tool for this)
and see if you've got artsd or esd running.  You'll need one of them to
mux sounds into the hardware, handy to have. Note that while arts is
associated with KDE and esd is associated with GNOME, neither is tied to
either environment. I run artsd with XFce4 and it doesn't load any KDE
components. In my experience, KDE with artsd will sometimes get wedged
on something stupid, so I go to the KDE control center > Sound Server
and jiggle the driver (select something else, click apply, then select
the right driver and click apply again).
-- 
Jack Coates
Monkeynoodle: A Scientific Venture...