Installation report for a Sony Vaio SRX51P

with Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 - written by Franko30

I'm using gedit in this report, but often nano is nice, too.

A lot of time has passed since I first did this installation report, in fact it was done for Ubuntu 5.10. I guess, nobody wants to use this anymore - especially since the laptop works fine with 7.04. Therefore I changed this report to represent the 7.04, Feisty version of Ubuntu.

This laptop works great with Ubuntu: WLAN, display 1024x768, graphics driver, CPU speedstep, LAN, PCMCIA slot, modem, USB, Firewire, touchpad, sound, Bluetooth and even the Memory Stick Reader work "out of the box" or can be configured as described in the following report. An external monitor needs to be connected on startup for having a clone of the Display available. Standby and hibernate work fine.

Most hotkeys work right away, but some not in the way printed on them: Standy/Hibernate (Fn+F12), Print (Print key, saves a screen snapshot), Display brightness (Fn+F5 for darker, Fn+F6 brighter), mute (uses Fn+F2 instead of Fn+F3), volume up (Fn+F3), volume down (Fn+F4), Page up/down (Fn+arrow up or down), Pos1 (Fn+arrow left), End (Fn+arrow right). The Windows key can be configured to open the panel menu via Gnome System Settings.

The SRX51P uses BIOS R0221U2 (how can I turn off the link for the number?), now has a 60GB harddisc, an 800 MHz speedstep PIII M low voltage CPU and 256MB RAM.

I completely removed Windows from the harddisc and made a 7 GB primary partition for the Ubuntu system. A swap-partition with 1 GB is used and the rest of the harddisc was used for the /home partition. Thus it is quite easy and possible to make a clean install of another Ubuntu version without losing the personal data. When using Ubuntu and Windows in a dual-boot setup, bear in mind that you can only have 4 primary partitions on the harddisc (and no logical volumes after that) or you just use 3 primary ones and then several logical volumes.

1. Display and graphics controller

Standard installation of Ubuntu 7.04 was used and everything turned out to be OK.

glxinfo

returns that direct rendering is enabled and

glxgears

runs fine (without stuttering) but slow - this is not a gaming notebook

2. Automatix

Go to http://getautomatix.com, install Automatix and then automatically install Java, Acrobat Reader, multimedia codecs and other stuff.

3.Synaptics Touchpad

The touchpad works fine after Ubuntu 7.04 installation. The little mouselike wheel is usable, as is the touchpad feature 'scrolling using a sliding finger on the right side'. The 'back' button of the touchpad has no function in Ubuntu 7.04, but it can be configured via System -> Settings to act as a key shortcut (don't know the correct menu name, as I use German desktop settings).

4. PCMCIA Slot

The PCMCIA seems to be installed correctly, but I don't have a PCMCIA card anymore to verify it. As this was working in 5.10, I guess it does so in 7.04.

5. WLAN

The standard driver with the new and shiny NetworkManager works fine. Only WEP, no WPA.

6. Hibernate/Suspend

Suspend (to RAM) an hibernate work fine.

To finetune the behaviour and the settings for the keys use a terminal, type gconf-editor and edit the gnome-power-manager settings.

7. Modem

to be tested

8. Powernowd

It's installed and working - now also controlled via the gnome-power-manager as explained above

9. Memory Stick Slot

Working out of the box - but obviously without MagicGate support.

10. Bluetooth

I didn't test this, as I don't have the devices to do it (and I'm too lazy to borrow stuff and learn how to setup Bluetooth devices). The hardware was recognized and the corresponding modules seem to be loaded.

That's it.

Hopefully everything works out alright with your SRX51P and feel free to edit this page in case I wrote something stupid!

Thanks to

all the fine people and webpages that laid the foundations of this installation report, mainly the Ubuntu Forums and Wiki pages.

CategoryLaptop CategoryHardware