The following is what I did to get Ubuntu 10.04 x86(32-bit) running properly on a Sony VAIO VPCF121GX PCG-81114L. This laptop is currently sold at Costco but shares the same body with many other VPCF12***X models. Sony has an annoying way of putting two model numbers on their laptops. I had more luck once I used the one on the bottom (PCG) rather than the one on the screen bezel(VPC).

I’m not sure if these instructions will work for other models but please comment if it works for you. When booting from a 10.04.1 livecd or a default install I wasn’t hearing any sound, couldn’t use the touchpad, could not resume from suspend. I’ve solved 2.5 of 3 problems so far(mic still doesn’t work).

Sound

To fix the sound not working, alsa needs to be updated via a backported package. This package is for my current kernel of 2.6.32-24 though you’ll want to make sure you get the corresponding version for your kernel.

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-alsa-`uname -r`

I wrote mostly above because the microphone still doesn’t work on the laptop. I’ve not tried any external mics or usb headsets yet but will update this article if I do find a solution.

Touchpad

This laptop uses and Alps Synaptics touchpad which is fairly common so I don’t really understand why Ubuntu doesn’t support it. The problem appears to be with the auto-detection of the touchpad(lots of Macintosh messages show in the /var/log/Xorg.0.log). To get the touchpad working:

1. Run: sudo vi /etc/default/grub and modify it so the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line looks like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”i8042.nopnp”
2. Run: sudo update-grub
3. Reboot.

Suspend

I wasn’t able to resume from suspend until I loaded the latest Nvidia driver. This laptop has an Nvidia GeForce 310M and I found the driver on a forum post. I still cannot switch to other consoles with Ctrl-Alt-F[1-6] so hopefully a future version of their driver will fix that. You can get the driver via ftp from:

ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/256.44/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.44.run

This is a shell script(a 24mb one at that) so you’ll need to open a terminal and cd to wherever you save it and then:

chmod a+x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.44.run

At this point you need to switch to root at runlevel 3. As root at the console I did this by typing:

init 3

Then I was able to login, sudo su to root again and run the driver installation script with:

./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.44.run

Now my suspend works!

In the quest for mobility and to be a more useful computer guy, I signed up for Verizon’s BroadbandAccess program. I got a USB EVDO modem that I’ve got running in either of two laptops. One of which runs Windows XP and the other that runs Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.

Before I went ahead and signed up, I went looking for data on the speeds I could expect from either Verizon or AT&T. I didn’t find much for the local area but one forum post did mention >1 megabit download speeds very near me using Verizon.

Now that I have the service, I decided to start testing and map my results. The product is here in the form of a Google Map. At each test point, I ran Speakeasy’s Speedtest (http://speakeasy.net/speedtest) and recorded the download and upload speed. The markers are color coded for download speed only with Green > 1 Mbit, Yellow > 0.3 Mbit and Red < .3Mbit. If you click on a marker you’ll see the download speed in kbps in the title and the upload speed in kbps below that. All testing was done in Windows XP.
View Verizon EV-DO Speedtests in a larger map

Overall, I’m very pleased with the service but I would like to see something similar done with AT&T’s 3G in the same area.

Generally, I like to write about things that work on my blog but I’ve seen how just asking a question can sometimes bring a solution together. So here’s my current problem:

I am attempting to connect to a Windows 2003 Server via the Ubuntu Hardy Heron default Terminal Services Client and when I click connect the window just goes away. I’ve tried again and then that window goes away again. About 2-5 minutes later an error window will popup giving some sort of error. The last error message I got complained about talking to the sound card in some way.

I tried again by disabling the sounds in the client before trying to connect but it didn’t help. If you’ve experienced this problem please post a comment whether you’ve found a solution or not. I’d like to help raise the profile of bugs like this that get in the way of living in Ubuntu full time. Thanks.

Ever since I ripped my music collection to MP3 format and began collecting MP3s online, I’ve been struggling with managing and listening to all this music. In the past I’ve used WinAmp and iTunes on Windows XP to manage music locally. I’ve used Edna(a python script) to serve the music using its built in web server. Finally, I’ve copied this 30GB library a few times only to delete parts of it as I need the space on various machines.

Each of those setups feels like a kludge compared to my current Rhythmbox setup. I’m running Ubuntu and Windows XP on my computers at home and have found using Rhythmbox to store and serve my music has been the best experience so far.

To share music, start Rhythmbox on the computer that’s storing it all. Go to Edit -> Plugins and check the box next to DAAP Music Sharing. Then click Configure on the right and check the box next to “Share my music”.

Then if you want to listen to the music on any other computer, start Rhythmbox and go to File -> Connect to DAAP share and enter the name of your music server. Right away it’ll pull down a list of files and you can begin searching, playing, and queuing up songs right away.

One tweak I’d recommend is on your server to have Rhythmbox watch your music folders. This helps when you have a program like bashpodder downloading your podcasts for you on a daily basis. Go to Edit -> Preferences and the Music tab and check the box to “Watch my library for new files”.

If you use iTunes, stop. If you can’t stop using iTunes, you’ll be pleased that it’ll auto-detect these DAAP shares so you can play it all from machines upon which you don’t have Rhythmbox.

In theory you could even share this music to your computer wherever you are by opening a port on your router and using dyndns but I’ve not tried this. I would suggest setting a password on the DAAP share if you do.

One thing I might like to do is to connect remotely via ssh for increased security. If you have any ideas on that, please leave a comment. Also if you know of other free software audio clients that connect to DAAP shares I’d like to hear about those as well so people on Windows or OS X can enjoy more freedom in their software. Above all, enjoy your audio where you want, when you want!