If you look at the current package list:

• x264
• ffmpeg
• mplayer
• ffmpeg-mt
• mplayer-mt
• mpd
• netembryo
• rxvt-unicode

you might be wondering why I provide these packages. All but three can be found in the official repositories after all. In short: I either upgrade them much more frequently, they differ much from the official packages, they are not available in the official repsitories or all of the above. Now I will go more in depth for each package.

x264, ffmpeg and mplayer

These 3 packages are being actively developed. Many new changes are made even in the scope of just a week. Understandably, the arch packagers can’t rebuild these packages whenever changes are made. I repackage them on a monthly base which makes my packages usually a lot more up to date than the official ones.

This, however, is not the main reason I make these 3 packages available. The official arch mplayer build incorporates its own internal static version of ffmpeg (as recommended by the mplayer devs), ignoring the already available ffmpeg on most systems. This approach results in duplication of code and bigger packages. In the programming community, duplication of code is something that one tries to avoid at all cost, as this usually implies a bad design. I apply the same principle to my packages: compile once and use them everyone else.

Some less commonly used options in mplayer and ffmpeg are also disabled:

• No image support in mplayer.
• Many exotic audio/video ouputs and audio/video codecs are disabled.
• No tv or radio support
• …

I also include features not available in the official mplayer package such as pulseaudio support. I’m a huge fan of pulseaudio and support it in all the packages that can handle it.

ffmpeg-mt and mplayer-mt

ffmpeg-mt and mplayer-mt are the multithreaded versions of ffmpeg and mplayer respectively. They have the same feature set as mentioned in the topic on their single threaded versions. If you have no graphics card that supports hardware accelerated video playback, then this is what you want to playback high definition movies.

mpd

In this package, I mainly strip away less commonly used options and only add 1 new feature:

• no http output
• no last.fm support
• no oss output
• no ipv6
• pulseaudio support

netembryo and libnemesi

I maintain both netembryo and libnemesi in AUR and might as well just make a binary version available as well.

rxvt-unicode

This build contains a particular patch that fixes the resizing of this terminal in tiling window managers. Otherwise there always black borders surrounding each terminal window which is just plain annoying

Since my last XMonad desktop, I’ve changed my wallpaper to something brighter to lighten things up (I usually don’t like dark colors or wallpapers) and adapted the text colors to match with everything else:

System Info:

• Operating System: Arch Linux
• Window Manager: XMonad
• GTK: Customized Ubuntu Human (not visible)
• Icons: Human Icon Set (not visible)
• Wallpaper: Napke
• Various: mpd & ncmpcpp, dzen2, conky, emesene, vim, urxvt

If there is anything else you would like to know, feel free to ask.

Hower, AUR has its limitations. For one, its sole function is to host pkgbuilds. So when you want to install something from AUR, you still have to go through the compile & build process. Depending on the software, this can be very cumbersome and time consuming. Instead you more likely want to install a package that has already been build, much like the regular Arch Linux repositories such as [core], [extra] and [community]. This is where the Unofficial User Repositories come in play. A user can easily set up its own repository with the repo-add script that comes with the package manager pacman. Generally, the user still needs to be very cautious with installing unofficial packages because of the potential dangers it may pose such as malicious software. It is recommended to verify the source of these packages or inspect the packages before installing.

Personally, there a few programs I frequently update myself, i.e. more frequently than then the official repositories, because of new functionality or bug fixes. Therefore I decided to share my efforts and make them available in my own unnoficial user repository. The repository can be accessed at http://www.nepherte.be/repo. To use my repository, add the following lines in /etc/pacman.conf:

[nepherte]
Server = http://www.nepherte.be/repo

The packages are for 64bit systems only as I don’t have a 32bit version of Arch installed. All packages are built in a clean chroot environment to avoid library linking problems. If you are interested in the pkgbuilds, you can find them  on my svn repo. To access my svn repo, you will have to authenticate yourself with username guest and password guest.

The packages I currently maintain are:

• x264
• ffmpeg
• mplayer
• netembryo

The first three are rebuilt on a monthly base at the very least and whenever there is audio involved, pulseaudio is supported. More packages will be added in the future.

I was surprised to see there was no fitting packaged mercury compiler available in any of the Arch Linux repositories. Arch has many compilers available but apparantly not the mercury compiler. I admit that mercury is perhaps not the most popular language, considering it is a) declarative and b) not backed by a major company like Microsoft, but I was suprised nonetheless. It may be worth mentioning that compiling mercury takes a little while (depending on your computer a few hours) so make sure you have the time if you’re building it.

CSRFTester is a whole different application. It is used for testing Cross Site Request Forgeries in web applications. It sits in between your browser and the internet and logs your http requests. Based on those logs, it can generate sample code to exploit possible csrf vurnerabilities. As the name suggests, it’s just for testing purposes and logging. Don’t expect any out of the box exploits.

The first problem is related to GDM and is not that much of a problem but rather a matter of getting used to it. The GNOME login screen has had a major overhaul compared to 2.20, the version I previously had installed. It now blends in  more with the user’s desktop and includes a panel with  session, keyboard and language settings. GDM also doesn’t include a graphical configuration tool. No problem there, I’m “Mister Console” anyways.

The second problem is a little more inconvenient and related to GDM as well. GDM uses its own configuration for the keyboard layout and ignores the hal keyboard layout settings. It always default to the usa keyboard layout. Once you’ve selected your user, it will remember what layout you may have chosen from the gnome panel widget but in the mean while it will stick to the usa layout in the previous user selection prompt. Luckily there’s a patch available. A bug report can be found here and a patch here.

The third problem can be found in gnome-keyring. When logging out of GNOME, there is a 10 to 15 seconds delay before it finally takes effect. This problem was fixed in gnome-keyring 2.28.1.

But enough with the problems. What is new in GNOME 2.28? Most of the changes are made behind the scene. Many efforts were made to remove deprecated libraries from GNOME 2.28. For instance, there is no program anymore that depends on esound,  libgnomevfs, libgnomeprint, or libgnomeprintui. Further efforts were made to remove depenency of libglade, libbonoboui, libgnome and many more. The most visible changes are annotion support for evince, improved bluetooth integration and extra features in Cheese. Webkit has also finally made it in Epiphany after many false announcements since GNOME 2.24. All in all, it’s another fine version of GNOME

Here’s the output of my Nvidia Geforce 8400M GS:

display: :0.0   screen: 0
API version: 0
Information string: NVIDIA VDPAU Driver Shared Library  190.36  Wed Sep 23 06:55:52 PDT 2009
 
Video surface:
 
name   width height types
-------------------------------------------
420     4096  4096  NV12 YV12
422     4096  4096  UYVY YUYV 
 
Decoder capabilities:
 
name               level macbs width height
-------------------------------------------
MPEG1                 0  8192  2048  2048
MPEG2_SIMPLE          3  8192  2048  2048
MPEG2_MAIN            3  8192  2048  2048
H264_MAIN            41  8192  2048  2048
H264_HIGH            41  8192  2048  2048
VC1_SIMPLE            1  8190  2048  2048
VC1_MAIN              2  8190  2048  2048
VC1_ADVANCED          4  8190  2048  2048
 
Output surface:
 
name              width height nat types
----------------------------------------------------
B8G8R8A8          8192  8192    y  Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8
R10G10B10A2       8192  8192    y  Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8 
 
Bitmap surface:
 
name              width height
------------------------------
B8G8R8A8          8192  8192
R8G8B8A8          8192  8192
R10G10B10A2       8192  8192
B10G10R10A2       8192  8192
A8                8192  8192
 
Video mixer:
 
feature name                    sup
------------------------------------
DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL             y
DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL_SPATIAL     y
INVERSE_TELECINE                 y
NOISE_REDUCTION                  y
SHARPNESS                        y
LUMA_KEY                         y
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L1        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L2        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L3        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L4        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L5        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L6        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L7        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L8        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L9        -
 
parameter name                  sup      min      max
-----------------------------------------------------
VIDEO_SURFACE_WIDTH              y         1     4096
VIDEO_SURFACE_HEIGHT             y         1     4096
CHROMA_TYPE                      y
LAYERS                           y         0        4
 
attribute name                  sup      min      max
-----------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND_COLOR                 y
CSC_MATRIX                       y
NOISE_REDUCTION_LEVEL            y      0.00     1.00
SHARPNESS_LEVEL                  y     -1.00     1.00
LUMA_KEY_MIN_LUMA                y
LUMA_KEY_MAX_LUMA                y

In case you’re wondering, vdpau is an api that allows video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing to the GPU video-hardware, resulting in less cpu load.

To begin with, they’re not replacing the current kernel (2.6.31.5). They’re only adding an extra kernel to the repositories.  Why? Because they want to give users a second choice for the kernel package that suits better in certain situations (servers in particular) and because it can server as a fallback kernel when something is wrong with the primary one.

Second, it’s not “ubuntu’s kernel” they’re adding, it’s the officially supported long time support (lts) kernel from kernel.org, which is currently at version 2.6.27.31. Perhaps they think it’s ubuntu’s because of the term lts, something canonical uses itself, but obviously the term already existed long time before canonical introduced it for their os. This lts kernel that Arch Linux is about to add, doesn’t use any of ubuntu’s patches either as you can see in the pkgbuild for kernel26-lts:

# Maintainer: Andreas Radke 
 
pkgname=kernel26-lts
_kernelname=${pkgname#kernel26}
_basekernel=2.6.27
pkgver=${_basekernel}.31
pkgrel=2
pkgdesc="The Linux Kernel and modules - stable longtime supported kernel package suitable for servers"
arch=('i686' 'x86_64')
license=('GPL2')
url="http://www.kernel.org"
backup=(etc/mkinitcpio.d/${pkgname}.preset)
depends=('coreutils' 'kernel26-firmware>=2.6.27' 'module-init-tools' 'mkinitcpio>=0.5.20')
install=${pkgname}.install
source=(ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-$_basekernel.tar.bz2
        ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/patch-$pkgver.bz2
	# the main kernel config files
        config config.x86_64
        # standard config files for mkinitcpio ramdisk
        ${pkgname}.preset
	# ext4 patches from Fedora
	#http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/rpms/kernel/F-10/?pathrev=kernel-2_6_27_29-170_2_79_fc10
	linux-2.6.27-ext4-rename-ext4dev-to-ext4.patch
	linux-2.6.27.9-ext4-cap-check-delay.patch)
md5sums=('b3e78977aa79d3754cb7f8143d7ddabd'
         'adfb289efee5dce61e532678317c0b4c'
         '04ed4c213100a20056dc8180a8bc7627'
         '2d90dc4f3541c7fdbc2802b7c6be7bdc'
         'a13338958d1b241f8dfd4c6014cad3d4'
         '659953c9c437d311bf93eff505ef8e67'
         '8cd12e9727d9221aacfa52ad9b9a42f9')
 
build() {
...
}

The only 2 patches they use are from the fedora project to backport the ext4 filesystem, which was only introduced after kernel 2.6.27.x.

And last but not least, the current kernel (which remains the main kernel for Arch Linux by the way) is considered stable, as indicated on the official kernel.org site.

Few things have really changed since my latest gnome setup because I’m already pretty satisfied with what I’ve got so far. The major change is the wallpaper and some icons here and there:

What’s you’re seeing:

• Operating System: Arch Linux
• Desktop Environment: Gnome
• Window Managers: Metacity
• GTK: Customized Ubuntu Human
• Icons: Ubuntu Icon Set
• Wallpaper: Tarantula Tree
• Various: ncmpc++ playing music, mencoder dumping a video and uzbl displaying this website

Install & configure ABS

First you will need to install the The Arch Build System (ABS) and the basic development tools:

pacman -Sy abs base-devel

Make sure the core, extra and community repository are enabled in /etc/abs.conf:

REPOS=(core extra community !testing)

Now grab all the PKGBUILDS with:

abs

Install & configure PulseAudio

Install pulseaudio with:

pacman -S pulseaudio

There’s a lot to say about configuring pulseaudio, things I’m not going put here. More info on configuring pulseaudio can be found at The Arch Wiki and The Official PulseAudio site. The must do things are installing alsa-plugins to maintain alsa compatibility, configuring .asoundrc, adding yourself to the pulse-rt and pulse-access groups and configuring gstreamer to use pulse. I also don’t recommend using PulseAudio as a system-wide daemon. Just use the per-user daemon.

Rebuild related Gnome packages

There are a few gnome packages that need to be rebuilt against pulseaudio in this order:

1. gnome-settings-daemon
2. gnome-applets
3. gnome-media

Grab the build files from abs one at the time. They are all located under /var/abs/abs/<packagename>. You can build and install the package with:

makepkg -si

gnome-settings-daemon – Remove the patch line (2nd line right after build) in the PKGBUILD.
gnome-applets – Just needs a rebuild, no need to change anything.
gnome-media – Add –enable-pulse to the ./configure line in the PKGBUILD.

That’s pretty much it. Next time you login using gnome, it will use pulseaudio. By default it adds a rather ugly volume slider to the panel (you can prevent it from starting by removing it under system > preferences > startup applications. You can add a better one by right clicking on the panel and adding the volume applet.

I’ve completely moved to the tiling window manager XMonad now to fully profit from my new 24″ monitor. It took me a while to get used to a tiling window manager but now that I got the hang of it, it’s not likely I’ll ever go back a regular floating desktop.

What you are seeing:

• Operating System: Arch Linux
• Window Manager: XMonad
• GTK: Customized Ubunt Human
• Icons: Human Icon set
• Wallpaper: Spy vs. Spy (deviantart)
• Various: Trayer for docking icons, Conky for displaying statistics, mpd song info and date/time, Irssi, MPlayer, ncmpc++

MPlayer has initial support for libnemesi to handle rtsp stream, as an alternative for live555 and that would be the only reason I wanted to try it out. MPlayer should automatically detect libnemesi. Otherwise you will have to append the –extra-cflags option to the ./configure statement.

While netembryo is getting more and more stable, libnemesi is still in early development and  no official release exists as of yet. In fact, many libnemesi revisions don’t even want to compile so it can be a real drag to find one that does. I’ll save you some time: the public git version of 20090501 works.

I found the packaging itself pretty complicated. Brother made the driver only available for debian and red hat based systems. Arch Linux is none of the two. This isn’t a big issue, it’s pretty much an archive of the necessary files. The main problem was that it doesn’t adhere to the packaging standards of Arch Linux. It uses /usr/local paths and arch doesn’t. I had to write a patch that adjusted the paths in all the files that used them. Third problem was that I used it on a 64bit system. It took me a while to realize I had to install a lib32 library. The last problem is that Brother pretty much assumed you used usb to connect the printer. I used the network. In the end it worked out well so I can finally print on it.

• Operating System: Arch Linux
• GTK: Customized Ubuntu Human
• Window Manager: XMonad
• Icons: Ubuntu Human Icon Set
• Wallpaper: Rey Del Mundo

For starters, I fell in love with this wallpaper. I  got rid of metacity and finally switched to something moreproductive:  XMonad. Give me a hallelluja for tiling window managers. The only thing I’m still not happy with, are the font colors. I still have to find a matching color palette. Suggestions are always welcome. For those interested in my XMonad configuration file, feel free to ask. I’ll probably post it in upcoming article on XMonad as well.

Change Log

21-02-2010:

• Added nouveau driver as alternative to official nvidia driver
• Mention the use of KMS

27-06-2009:

• Added ftp install disk to installation notes
• Mention the use of module auto-detection
• Arch now uses /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf
• Had a change to test the mic, it works
• No need to add dbus if hal is specified
• Brightness works as is now
• Added FN-keys section

Table of Content:

1. Hardware Specifications
2. Installation
3. Arch Linux
4. Processor
5. Wired Network
6. Wireless Network
7. Sound Card
8. Graphic Cards
9. Keyboard
10. Touchpad
11. Bluetooth
12. Webcam
13. Brightness
14. Modem
15. Card Reader
16. Suspend & Hibernate
17. FN Keys

Appendix:

A. CPU Info
B. Intel X Configuration File
C. Nvidia X Configuration File
D. Keyboard Configuration File
E. Touchpad Configuration File
F. Lspci Output
G. Lsusb Output

Hardware Specifications

Here are the relevant hardware specifications for the Sony Vaio SZ61 XN/C:

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz
• Memory: 2048MB @ 533Mhz DDR2
• Hard Disk: 160GB 5400rpm
• Graphics: nVidia GeForce 8400M GS + Intel GM965 Integrated Graphics
• Sound Card: Sigmatel CXD9872 Intel High Definition Audio Codec
• Wireless Network: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
• Wired Network: Marvel 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet
• Bluetooth: Cambridge Silicon Radio
• Webcam: Ricoh r5u870 (05ca:183a)
• Touchpad: AlpsPS/2 ALPS Touchpad

Installation

The installation is pretty straight forward following the Arch Linux Beginner’s Guide. You shouldn’t encounter any problems if you read the guide’s instructions carefully. I recommend using the Intel GM965 graphic card during the installation and a wired network if it’s at your disposal. You can then configure the other graphic card and the wireless network afterwards. Nevertheless, the installation should work with whatever you chose to use but it might require some extra steps. From now on I will be assuming you followed my recommendation. For the record, I’ve used both the 2008.06 x86_64 core and ftp install disk with success. In the end they aren’t any different from eachother. When using the ftp install disk, you’ll end up with the most recent packages available in the repositories at once. When using the core cd, you need to issue a system wide update to acquire the same result.

Arch Linux

This tutorial is written while using a snapshot of Arch Linux, dated on 28 february 2009. This snapshot includes the following versions of important packages:

• Arch Linux 64 bit fully updated
• Kernel 2.6.28.7 SMP PREEMPT
• X.org 7.4 (xorg-server 1.5.3-4)
• Alsa 1.0.19
• Nvidia driver 180.22
• XF86-video-intel 2.4.3-1

As you may have noticed, I’m using a 64 bit operating system. Some people are afraid of it, thinking it is somehow more difficult or that it is missing some important software packages. Others are just opposed to 64 bit. I can tell you there is no reason not to use 64 bit. There is no important software missing (there is a native 64 bit version for both java, its browser plugin and flash) and in few specific scenarios you’ll get a significant performance increase.

Processor

The dual core processor is, obviously, recognized out of the box. By installing cpufrequtils, you can enable cpu frequency scaling:

sudo pacman -S cpufrequtils

To start the cpu frequency scaling daemon on startup, add cpufreq to the DAEMON array in /etc/rc.conf:

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng @cpufreq ... )

The available scaling governor is cpufreq_ondemand. You will have to load this module together with acpi-cpufreq on startup by adding it to the MODULES array in /etc/rc.conf:

MODULES=(acpi-cpufreq cpufreq_ondemand ... )

You can set the desired governer (ondemand) in /etc/conf.d/cpufreq along with the minimum and maximum cpu frequency:

governor="ondemand"
min_freq="0.8GHz"
max_freq="2.2GHz"

The full output of /proc/cpuinfo can be found in Appendix A. More information about cpu frequency scaling can be found on the Arch Linux CPU Frequency Scaling and Cpufrequtils page.

Wired Network

The Marvel 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet network card should have been detected during the installation, together with the appropriate module. It uses the sky2 module. Add it to the MODULES array:

MODULES=(sky2)

For a while now, Arch Linux is able to auto-detect the required modules by setting

MOD_AUTOLOAD="yes"

in /etc/rc.conf. There is no need to specify all the modules in the MODULES array anymore. Only to explicity prohibit something from loading, the MODULES array is useful. In a limited number of cases, it doesn’t detect the modules like the ones from cpu scaling. I simply list the modules for reference.

Wireless Network

First, you will need the wireless_tools package. If you have a wired network connection available, it’s as easy as:

sudo pacman -S wireless_tools

The package is also included in the Arch Linux install disc. If you want to use the wireless network during the setup, don’t forget to install it.

Apart from wireless_tools, you will also need the firmware for the wireless network card, in our case the Intel 3945/ABG. Install iwlwifi-3945-ucode:

sudo pacman -S iwlwifi-3945-ucode

Now add the iwl3945 module to the modules array. I also recommend blacklisting the older propriatary module ipw3945 to avoid any conflicts:

MODULES=(!ipw3945 iwl3945 ... )

For more information on setting up a wireless network card, especially during the installation, see the Arch Linux Wireless page.

Sound Card

The sound card should be detected during the installation, together with the necessary modules. In case something goes wrong, here are the modules you have to load:

MODULES=(!snd_pcsp snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm-oss snd-hwdep snd-page-alloc snd-pcm snd-timer snd snd-hda-intel soundcore ..)

I also disabled the pc speaker (!snd_pcsp and !pcspkr) because it really irritates me and probably you as well. The headphone jack doesn’t work without an extra line in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf:

options snd-hda-intel model=vaio

Recording sound using the microphone input works out of the box.

Graphic Cards

As mentioned before, this laptop comes with 2 graphic cards: one on board Intel card and one dedicated Nvidia card. You can get each single one to work without ever using the other. You can also set up Arch Linux to use both, but only one will be active at the time of course. You should already have one card working with the Arch Linux installation. I’ll explain how to get both working. Apart from installing xorg and mesa, you need a libgl implementation. Open source drivers use the libgl package from the repositories, propriatary drivers come with their own libgl implemenation. Now here’s the bad news: when installing both drivers from the repositories, these two libgl implementations will conflict and pacman will refuse to install both. We’ll install the Intel driver first if you haven’t already done that during the installation:

sudo pacman -S xorg mesa libgl xf86-video-intel

That shouldn’t give you any problems since the Nvidia driver is not installed yet. My xorg.conf file for the Intel card can be found in Appendix B.

The Intel card and its driver fully support kernel mode setting (KMS) and with a more recent kernel and Intel driver, KMS is required. The most noteworthy features of KMS are full resolution virtual terminals and fast switching between virtual terminals. For more information about KMS, see the Arch Linux KMS page.

Now we move on to the Nvidia card. Reboot your laptop and use the speed mode switch on the laptop. The X server will refuse to start. No problem, login using the console after you cancelled the X server messages. Instead of installing the Nvidia drivers with pacman, we’re going to install it manually to avoid pacman conflicts. It won’t harm the system. Open up a terminal, make sure you’re in the home directory and get the driver from the Nvidia website:

cd ~/
wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/180.22/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-180.22-pkg2.run

You can always change the version number if you want an older or more recent driver.

Switch to run level 3 to make sure X isn’t running:

sudo telinit 3

Go back to where we downloaded the driver (home directory) and launch the installer:

cd ~/
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-180.22-pkg2.run

From now on, simply follow the installer’s instructions. Afterwards you’ll have the Nvidia driver installed. You can find my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for the Nvidia card in Appendix C. You can already start X to see if it’s also working with your Nvidia card:

startx

Now it’s simply a matter of using the right xorg.conf configuration file for each graphic card. To automatically use the correct one on boot, you can use this script:

#!/bin/bash
VIDEO=`/usr/sbin/lspci | grep -c nVidia`
if [ "$VIDEO" = 1 ]; then
cp -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf.nvidia /etc/X11/xorg.conf
echo "Nvidia Card Detected"
else
cp -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf.intel /etc/X11/xorg.conf
echo "Intel Card Detected"
fi

Make sure you have /etc/X11/xorg.conf.nvidia and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.intel or change the paths in the script to the correct ones. Save the script somewhere and make it executable. Now add the path of the script to /etc/rc.local:

/path/to/xorg/switch/script

One downside of this method is that you can only use the 3D mode with one graphic card, in this case the nvidia card. I figured you’d want the better card of the two to be able to use the 3D mode. Another downside is that you won’t be able to change the brightness of your screen (maybe you can but I didn’t look into it). Changing the brightness does work when you only use the Intel card. You’ll have to decide for yourself if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

An interesting alternative to the official binary NVIDIA driver is the open-source nouveau driver. It has excellent 2D support and supports KMS. If you don’t need 3D support (which is still in development), I even recommend nouveau over the official driver. To install the nouveau driver:

sudo pacman -S xf86-video-nouveau nouveau-firmware

Keyboard

Since X.org 7.4, hal takes care of your keyboard/mouse/touchpad, also known as hot-plugging. Therefore you don’t have to put a keyboard input device section in your xorg.conf file as you can see in the one I provided (see Appendix B or Appendix C). Make sure you have the xf86-input-evdev package installed and that you have the hal service running. Then you can use my file found in Appendix D. Save it to /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-keymap.fdi and restart the hal service.

More information on hot-pluggable input devices can be found on the Arch Linux Xorg Input Hotplugging page.

Touchpad

The touchpad is similar to the keyboard: you will need a fdi file to get it to work. Tapping, right mouse click in the corner, horizontal and vertical scrolling, … it all works. My fdi file can be found in Appendix E. Save it to /etc/hal/fdi/policy/11–x11-synaptic.fdi and restart the hal service.

Bluetooth

You need the linux bluetooth protocol stack. To install, run

sudo pacman -S bluez

You need to start dbus and bluetooth in that order. You could add it to the DAEMONS array:

DAEMONS=(dbus bluetooth ... )

but I only start the bluetooth service when needed. That way I save some battery time. Note that hal already starts the dbus daemon by itself so if you have hal listed in the DAEMONS array, you don’t need to add dbus anymore. Gnome also has a nice applet you can load for bluetooth. I also strongly recommend blueman, a GTK+ bluetooth management utility. For more information, again see the Arch Linux Bluetooth page.

Webcam

Some time ago, the developper of the drivers for this webcam switched to a userspace tool instead of using kernel modules. This is how you get webcam working:

Get mercurial:

sudo pacman -S mercurial

Set up a directory where we will build the driver:

mkdir ~/r5u870

Get the source:

cd ~/r5u870
hg clone http://bitbucket.org/ahixon/r5u87x/

Build the driver:

cd r5u87x
make

Load the driver with the correct firmware:

cd ucode/
sudo ../loader -f r5u87x-05ca-183a.fw

You will probably have to reload the uvcvideo module to get your webcam working in the current session:

sudo rmmod uvcvideo && sudo modprobe uvcvideo

Every time you want to use the webcam, you have to use loader. A more convenient way is to create an alias for this rather long command. To do so, add the following to your .bashrc file (located in your home directory):

alias webcam='sudo /home/user/r5u870/r5u87x/loader --reload -f /home/user/r5u870/r5u87x/ucode/r5u87x-05ca-183a.fw'

Don’t forget to replace user with your user name. There are sevaral programs you can use for your webcam. The most popular ones are cheese (gnome), xawtv and skype.

Brightness

For a while now, brightness works without any hacks for the intel card. I’ll leave the hack here to get it to work in older arch linux installations: It relies on xbacklight and acpid to change the brightness of the screen. xbacklight is included in the xorg-server-util package. The latter one is probably already installed, but xbacklight might not. Be sure to add acpid to the DAEMONS array:

DAEMONS=(@acpid ... )

Now create a brightness script named sonybright.sh in /etc/acpi/actions containing:

#!/bin/bash
if [ "x$1" = "xdown" ]; then
xbacklight -time 100 -steps 10 -dec 10 2>/tmp/sonybright.log
elif [ "x$1" = "xup" ]; then
xbacklight -time 100 -steps 10 -inc 10 2>/tmp/sonybright.log
else
echo >&2 Unknown argument $1
fi

This script is supposed to be executed whenever you press the brightness up and down key. To do so, you will need to create two more files in /etc/acpi/events: sonybright-up and sonybright-down

sonybright-up:

# /etc/acpi/events/sony-brightness-up
event=sony/hotkey SPIC 00000001 00000011
action=/etc/acpi/actions/sonybright.sh up

sonybright-down:

# /etc/acpi/events/sony-brightness-down
event=sony/hotkey SPIC 00000001 00000010
action=/etc/acpi/actions/sonybright.sh down

the event SPIC key should be the same, however it is best to verify this with the acpi_listen command:

acpi_listen

Modem

Not tested.

Card Reader

Works out of the box. Nothing extra is required.

Suspend & Hibernate

Suspending and hibernating the laptop works hassle free. It only works with the Intel card out of the box though. I take you could also make it work for the Nvidia card by editing some files, but then I assume it wouldn’t work for the Intel card. Since you probably want to use suspension and hibernation for saving power, you’d want to Intel card as it consumes less power to start with.

FN Keys

The most important fn keys are working: volume up/down, mute, brightness up/down, switch monitor. The fn-keys rely on acpi. Make sure acpi and acpid are installed and add acpid to the DAEMONS array:

DAEMONS=(@acpid ... )

You should be able to get other fn keys to work in a way similar to the old brightness hack as listed in the Brightness section.

A. CPU Info

Here‘s the full output of /proc/cpuinfo. You can also verify that cpu frequency scaling is enabled and working (cpu MHz 800.000).

B. Intel X Configuration File

Here‘s my Intel X Configuration File.

C. Nvidia X Configuration File

Here‘s my Nvidia X Configuration File.

D. Keyboard Configuration File

Here‘s my Keyboard Configuration File. Don’t forget the change the keyboard layout to correspond with your language.

E. Touchpad Configuration File

Here‘s my Touchpad Configuration File.

F. Lspci Output

Here‘s the output for lspci. The nvidia card isn’t listed because I’m using the Intel card right now.

G. Lsusb Output

Here‘s the output for lsusb.

wmctrl -d
GLib-ERROR **: gmem.c:156: failed to allocate 1117103813820448 bytes
aborting...

the command wmctrl -l worked for me but someone else reported he experienced problems with that as well. With some help of the Arch Linux forum a patch came up that solved the issue. You can get the patch here. I also created a pkgbuild for Arch Linux to install the patched wmctrl. Other distributions can easily follow the compilation instructions inside if they’re affected by the bug as well.