SuSE 10.0 on the Sony Vaio VGN-B3VP
Since there are many excellent step-by-step tutorials describing how to install SuSE, so I'm just going to quickly explain the install and then explain in more detail how it works on this laptop.I tried a few other linux distros on this laptop to make sure I got the one that would work best on this hardware, and I settled for SuSE, which has been my distro of choice for a few years already. Other distros that I have tested on it include Mandriva 2006, Kubuntu and a few live CDs, but I was most impressed by SuSE.
The basic steps taken on this page will of course work with any kind of hardware.
Installation
Installation is really simple, download the DVD from Novell, burn it and boot. In the boot menu, choose install and follow the instructions. The default values should be fine, the only thing to look out for is the partitioning. If you're unsure how to do this, google it as it is outside the scope of this article but very important.Here are some screenshots of the installation:
Boot menu, choose install here.
Choose desktop manager. I use KDE and all my articles will be assuming that you use KDE, but you may ofcourse choose your own favourite.
Review settings and change them to fit your needs.
Setup your network settings
Check that your hardware is set up correctly.
Done, now you should be up and running, easy huh?
Adding installation sources
The first thing to do with a new system is always to update it and install nessecary programs. It's incredibly annoying to spend a lot of time trying to fix something thats already fixed in an updated version of the program, trust me.So, next we're going to install some extra installation sources so we get the newest programs and also programs that aren't by default included in the distro.
The process is really simple, Novell has an excellent tutorial on adding installation sources, be sure to check it out.
Open the KDE menu, System, Control Center (YaST) and enter your root password. Once you have YaST open click on Installation Source and you should get the following screen:
Select Add:
Add all the installation sources you want in the same way. I have all the above installation sources installed since I like my programs fresh and plenty.
SUSE Wiki has some more mirrors for the sites.
When done, exit the Installation Source and open Software Management. In the filter select Package Groups and then all the way down "zzz All". Right click in the right panel and select "All in This List", "Update if newer version available".
Click Accept, accept all the packages YaST wants to install to satisfy dependencies and wait for it to finish installing.
Well what about the Vaio?
I've heard many horror stories concerning linux on laptops, but I can assure you this is not one of them.SuSE recognizes automatically the battery and reports it's level correctly. The screen works fine, and I can have it automatically adjust the brightness depending on if it's plugged in or not. Also, processor frequency scaling works like a charm and helps extend battery life.
The wireless card is automatically detected by YaST and works fine with the provided ipw2200 driver.
Most of the Fn-keys work out of the box.
Update: I forgot to mention that you need to run
modprobe sonypi
as root to enable the keys.
I still haven't got the brightness buttons to do anything, but as a workaround I wrote an alias in ~./bashrc
alias bright="powersave -k"Which I use simply by writing "bright 9" in a console, where the number is an integer between 1 and 9, 9 being the brightest.
Hibernating and suspending to ram work, but I'm hesitant to use them. I used hibernate before I formatted my drive the last time, and it resulted in a corrupt filesystem twice and had to be manually fsck'd. And to be honest, the time you win by hibernating isn't that much, you could easily save the same amount of time just by disabling unneeded services in startup.
Next I installed Windows on a Vmware player so that I wouldn't have to boot into windows anymore, but thats another tutorial.
