Linux on Sony Vaio Z?

[chong67]

I run mother earth Vista Biz x64 and I have put OpenSuse11 and Solaris 10 Desktop and Ubuntu 8.04 on my Z.

How?

I use VMware.

[djlooka]

[...] It also seems like when booting Ubuntu it powers both, the Intel and the nVidia card.

It's true. THE problem is that we lack kernel support to dual gpu (as for Fn keys, brightness, etc).
Hopefully someone is working on it right now, so, just be patient

Did you get the nVidia card accelerated djlooka?

Yes, follow this guide:
h t t p://neotokyo.sytes.net/vgn-z11/Ubuntu8.10_vaio_vgn_z11.html

As it is in Spanish, Google translate may help

I use VMware.

VMware is not a real solution IMO.
You can't fully take advantage of your hw.

[munsell]

Thanks to everyone for the great feedback!

This really has me worried =(

... but there's appearently no way to set the backlight (not even using the specifical sony brightness acpi interface, which instead works on the vaio SR11M, with the x4500). It's stuck to the maximum level, so it's very annoying, and not suitable for real use.

djlooka - While you are using the nvidia chipset, would you please try the following?

$ nvidia-settings --assign RedBrightness=0.5
$ nvidia-settings --assign GreenBrightness=0.5
$ nvidia-settings --assign BlueBrightness=0.5

More information can be found here:
w w w .linux.it/~malattia/wiki/index.php/Sony-laptop

[djlooka]

djlooka - While you are using the nvidia chipset, would you please try the following?

$ nvidia-settings --assign RedBrightness=0.5
$ nvidia-settings --assign GreenBrightness=0.5
$ nvidia-settings --assign BlueBrightness=0.5

luca@z:~$ nvidia-settings --assign RedBrightness=0.5

ERROR: Error parsing assignment 'RedBrigtness=0.5' (Trailing garbage).

[sector]

on saturday ill try to install gentoo linux on my z. I want to have linux as my main OS, so i cant imagine my vaio without linux :|

anyway, so the main problem is that so far there is no kerner with 2 gpu card support, yes?

[dhfriedman]

the main problem is that apparently the wireless driver in recent kernels fudges up the firmware of the wifi card

[sector]

which kernel/s should i avoid? *.27 AND *.25 ? and what kernel should i install then?

[djlooka]

on saturday ill try to install gentoo linux on my z. I want to have linux as my main OS, so i cant imagine my vaio without linux :|

anyway, so the main problem is that so far there is no kerner with 2 gpu card support, yes?

THE problem is the brightness: it's stuck to the maximum, you can't use it on google for more than 3 seconds .
You can install both drivers today, but it's a tricky procedure (see link some posts above), and you'll have to boot up Windows XP (Vista is not compatible with the procedure) everytime you want to switch between the gpus.
I think today's a bit early to have linux as main OS, but I'm hopeful that in a few kernel releases the problems will be solved.

the main problem is that apparently the wireless driver in recent kernels fudges up the firmware of the wifi card

It was only involving the .27 kernel, and has now been solved.
I have both .26 and .29 on mine, and As far as I know there's no problem.

[munsell]

luca@z:~$ nvidia-settings --assign RedBrightness=0.5

ERROR: Error parsing assignment 'RedBrigtness=0.5' (Trailing garbage).

Doh, sorry about that! I found and old laptop with an Nvidia chipset, slapped linux on it and was able to reduce the brightness by using the nvidia-settings utility. The syntax that I posted earlier is apparently incorrect (as you discovered). The following method may be an eaiser way to reduce the brightness.

On my distro, after I installed the nvidia driver, an "nvidia-settings" utility was also installed:

$ which nvidia-settings 
/usr/bin/nvidia-settings

$ sudo nvidia-settings

The last command should start an Nvidia GUI program. Under the "X Screen 0" tab (left side), select "X Server Color Correction". There should be a brightness slider bar that you can adjust to reduce the brigthess.

Please note there are numerous ways to set the brightness value. The correct command line syntax is:

$ sudo nvidia-settings --assign :0.0/RedBrightness=0.0 <--- repeat for other channels

[S.Prime]

THE problem is the brightness: it's stuck to the maximum, you can't use it on google for more than 3 seconds

can you adjust default brightness in the bios? my last laptop I could do that.