Re: Opinions of Sony Vaio VGN-A417S for Debian

[charlie <aries-tao@bigpond.com>]

On Mon, 05 Sep 2005 22:08:09 +0100
James used the keyboard to craft this:

  >|Iain Georgeson wrote:
  >|> It's not. I've got Debian on my A417M, but it took a considerable
  >|> amount of surgery, and I'm still missing support for some fairly
handy
  >|> bits like suspend and soft keys.
  >|
  >|Could you shed some light on what was difficult please? Which
version of 
  >|Debian did you use?
  >|
  >|> 
  >|>>I have seen posts claiming "Sony make the least Linux-friendly"
laptops 
  >|>>and others where people couldn't get the install CD to recognise
the 
  >|>>harddisk in a similar Vaio model.
  >|> 
  >|> 
  >|> Indeedy. If you want an easy install, don't get it. The display is
  >|> excellent, but you may well decide you don't want the hassle.
  >|> 
  >|
  >|Do you think Debian support for the VGN A series will improve over
time 
  >|and maybe a future release will be much easier to install?
  >|
  >|Anyone know of other laptops with a 17" screen?
  >|
  >|Thank you everyone for your time.
  >|Regards,
  >|
  >|James.
  

I have an Acer Aspire 1355LC with that size screen and I would be
reluctant to recommend it because I had trouble with it when I never
usually had trouble with any other machine, though this is my first
lappy. YMMV

Partly my fault as i should have made sure it had a serial port for an
external modem, because am on dial up due to isolated area. So use a USB
to RS232 cable to use the modem. Which works fine, but only in Debian.
In Mandrake 10.O it would connect but the pppd daemon would die. Later
Mandrivers 10.1, 10.2 would not install. Only Debian Sarge installs with
a 2.6.xx kernel of any flavour. But I use the 2.4.xx because it allows
my touchpad to tap. The 2.6.xx kernels work with the touchpad, but
certainly not allow it to tap, no matter what way I write the
XF86config-4 file.

I did run an experimental Debian Sarge system making certain that
everything worked, and to test things out on this machine, before I made
it the main O/S. BUt so far it works a treat.

But all in all Debian Sarge seems to work well enough on it. I have left
it as a dual boot for the moment, but seeing I'm not using windows it
will soon become native. I think that many of my problems might be due
to my own lack of Linux knowledge. So I wouldn't like to bag Acer too
much.

Hope this helps.
Charlie


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Really starting to enjoy Linux Debian Sarge
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