Debian GNU/Linux on a Sony Vaio PCG-F630

Installing Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (or any other Linux dist) on a Sony Vaio PCG-F630

Created: 2001/Feb/10
Updated: 2001/Aug/19

Initial Installation

The BIOS supports booting from the CD / DVD drive so installing the distribution is easy. Choose the packages you want and after a reboot the real fun starts.

Kernel

I compiled the 2.4.1 kernel to get APM and IEEE-1394 support in the kernel. At the moment I have no firewire gadgets or anyone to link to therefore I haven't tested the IEEE-1394 ability. APM mostly works but I was experiencing some lockups which after disabling APM, those lockups stopped happening. I can live without APM. At the moment I'm happily running a 2.4.2 kernel.

X Windows for the Trident Cyberblade i7

I was running XFree86 version 3.3.6 until after months of owning this machine I booted into windows me and realized that the video refresh and acceleration was working great. Under Linux it would take up to a full second to refresh screens when switching from one virtual desktop to another. Scrolling in mozilla was painful. Huge chucks of the page would fold past. It wasn't smooth at all.

Hence, I upgraded to XFree86 version 4.1.0. I was impatiant so I downloaded only the required binaries and followed the installation instruction. That went ok but the auto-configuration didn't build a useable config file for me. When I tested the config it created my screen blanked out and I had to reboot to get the screen back. So I used xf86config but again it didn't work until I added the Monitor modelines from my 3.3.6 config file. The video is amazing now! The mouse was a bit of an oddity. Until I added the SWcursor line to the config (see link below) my mouse was an interesting constellation of about 15 pixel dots. Very hard to see and click accurately.

I'm using xfsft as the font server in addition to the default fonts.

Here's my XF86Config file.
And here's my XF86Config file for XFree86 version 4.3.0

command to execute X (in gdm.conf)
/usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 -depth 16 -screen Screen0

or when attached to my 19 inch Viewsonic

/usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 -depth 16 -screen Screen1

Sound

The sound card / modem is by ESS. The model is the Maestro-3i. I installed the driver that's available from here. Supposedly the ALSA maestro3 driver works too but I didn't bother since the one from zab was the first one I found and it worked.

Networking

I bought an IBM 10/100 etherjet cardbus which needs the tulip driver but that's all done automagically with the PCMCIA package that was installed from the distribution CD.

Email me if you have any questions: vmg at boreal321 dot com


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