Skype is strictly 32bit and my Arch Linux installation is 64bit. While this should only be a matter of installing the necessary 32bit libraries, I’m not very keen on doing so because I just don’t like mixing 32bit and 64bit on a single installation. Why would I otherwise want 64bit, right? This once, for testing purposes, I figured I could put my personal considerations aside.

Another conflict is pulseaudio, which, until this latest release, was not supported by Skype. I’m glad they did as pulseaudio will be used a lot more now that gnome uses it by default. Oddly enough, they dropped oss support. This doesn’t affect me but certainly a lot of other people.

Video (webcam) support is also a usual area of conflict. Handling webcams is not done in a unified way on linux and hence causes a lot of conflicts. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to do a thing other than installing the driver for my webcam.

So after installing the necessary 32bit libraries (including pulseaudio) and installing the driver for my webcam, Skype worked without any problem for the first time. Now it is simply a matter of crowding my skype contact list.

I can easily squeeze a respectable 3 hours out of my battery with 100% brightness. This can be increased to at least 4 hours when working on a lower, but still workable brightness. I hope developers will continue to work on power management so that I can get to work 5 hours without plugging in the cord as in Windows. I believe work points are automation of powering down/off usb devices, hard disks, sound card and wireless network card, things that can be done manually in the console if you have the expertise.

Looking forward to the next stable gnome release 2.28 with hopefully some new power management features.

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.

This brings me one step closer to a perfect compatible linux setup. Last obstacle is the fingerprint reader I never use. The device itself is supported by libfprint, the library responsible for fingerprint authentication, but Sony modified the firmware to prevent any non-sony software to communicate with it. So far, they succeeded. Let’s hope not for long.