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I have a Sony Vaio FE31M and after a false start it works perfectly with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (Ubuntu 7.04) 

 

General specifications :  

Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 1.83 Ghz 

1 Gb DDR2 SDRAM (533 Mhz) 

160 Gb hd 

15.4” LCD screen 

 

INSTALLATION 

The first installation failed : x-server crashed and I couldn't get it started.

Instead of going to the command line and trying to configure it manually I just restared the installation, and then everything worked fine.

HARDWARE 

 

Graphics : NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 

 

In Feisty, all you have to do to get the correct drivers is go to System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Manager and type in the password you entered during the installation proces. There you will see the “NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver”, just click on enable and apply. 

 

Network : PRO/100 VE Network Connection 

 

Works out of the box. 

 

Network : Intel Pro Wireless 3945 ABG 

 

Same as with the graphics card -> just go to the restricted drivers manager and click enable. Works fine. 

I haven't tested WEP en WPA encryption yet, so I can't answer that one just yet. 

 

DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM Drive : Works fine. But reading DVD does require installing the needed packages (Ubuntu does not come with DVD-support pre-installed because of legal issues. Easily solved from the add/remove tool by clicking the right software).

Touchpad : Worked out of the box.

Keyboard : Choosing the right lay-out (Belgium in this case) during installation and you are fine. The only that will not work are the fn-keys. Maybe there is a sollution for this, I do not care, I don't use them.

Sound : Only problem was recording, but that was because Ubuntu has the recording volume (“capture”) disabled (“mute”) in the sound settings. It took me a while to discover this. Skype for example works perfect.

Built-in Motion Eye Camera : Works. Used aMSN and Camorama Webcam Viewer to test. Apperantly there are some people that need to here : http://mxhaard.free.fr/download.html

OTHER

Power management : Seems to be working fine.

Sleep mode : works.

The Gnome NetworkManager Applet 0.6.4 sometimes doesn't refresh the wireless network list. Just do the following in command line instead :

watch -n1 'iwlist eth1 scanning | grep -E “Cell |ESSID|Channel|Quality|IE”' 

This will give a constantly refreshed list of all available wireless networks with their ESSID, the Channel on which they are broadcasting, their quality and security.

Internal 56k Modem : I do not need this, so I haven't even looked at it.

Contact : maxwellrain at gmail dot com

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