edwards block

As I have previously described, I bought this laptop intending to install Linux on it. Thanks to the annoying Sony Corporation, this wasn’t as simple as it might have been. Sony’s business model apparently assumes that no one who buys a computer is any more interested in customising to their own tastes that they would if they had been buying a toaster. I’m sure this is in no small part due to the questionable business practises of the manuafacturer of the operating system with whom they partner, and whose product one is almost forced to buy with a computer, whether you want it or not. Sony does not provide Windows disks with a new computer – the user is expected to burn his own disks once he has the machine home. Unfortunately, the Windows you get is not the same one that you get if you buy the program separately, and it is not possible to re-partition the hard drive in any meaningful way.

Anyway, after I bought the machine, I erased the hard drive and then re-installed Windows without the wasted five meg recovery partition (and without the umpteen gigs of useless shit, like AOL, that they give you no choice but to install, only to waste time uninstalling later). Then I installed Red Hat’s ‘Fedora’ with a dual boot menu. The install process itself went OK, but because Sony brilliantly made a number of features OS controlled, like the volume control and the LCD brightness control, as well as a few other accessory buttons, getting these buttons to work turned out to be a chore I had not time to do before I took off on my bike trip. Grudgingly, I was forced to revert back to Windows, postponing my Linux conversion to when I had more time.

‘More time’ turned out not to arrive until this month. My course load is a bit lighter this semester, but I also wanted to get it done before I leave for Costa Rica. This time, I just installed Windows as is, except without the recovery partition. Then I booted with Debian’s consumer Linux distro Ubuntu 6.06, which comes on a disk that lets you try the OS before you install it, which is nice. Of course, it’s free, being open source, and it comes with the open source suite of office applications known as Open Office. (If you’re not the type to try Linux, but still like the free office suite idea, they also make a Windows version). These applications can open or ‘save-as’ most of their Windows equivalents. The mail program, similar in style to Outlook, still needs work, but is quite functional. If you’re tired of “stealing” from Microsoft and don’t trade a lot of files with dedicated MS Office users, you might want to try it out.

Anyway (I say “anyway” a lot, I think), I booted Ubuntu, reduced the size of the Windows partition, and then created my Linux partitions. Here’s how I split up my 80 gig drive:

• hda1 (primary) – Windows XP – 12,000 mb
• hda2 (primary) – Linux boot – 500 mb
• hda 3 (primary) – Linux swap – 2,500 mb
• hda4 (extended)
• hda5 (logical) – Linux root – 43,950 mb
• hda6 (logical) – Linux home – 15,430

I don’t know if that’s the best config, but so ar so good.

The best thing about installing Ubuntu, compared to my previous experience with Fedora, is that almost everything worked, right out of the box. I’m not criticising Fedora, necessarily – their subsequent releases may be more compatible than the release I tried in 2005. But I was impressed with the ease of the Ubuntu install. Even my volume and screen brightness buttons work. Wireless networking worked by default, although I had to install and additional app to get it to work with my WPA-encrypted router. By default it would only connect with an unencrypted router. This was not too difficult, though. I have yet to get my USB jump drive to work, but I haven’t really tried either. I barely ever use the thing, so I haven’t been in any big rush. My Maxtor 300gb external USB drive not was only recognised, but all three partitions on it were monted automatically. The same was true for my new Nikon D-80. I’m pretty happy with things.

I might also mention that whenever I tried to network my two Windows machines together, it was a nightmare of trial and error. Ubuntu, on the other hand, connected instantly with the other machine running Windows with no configuration required on my part.

Have you ever tried to get help from Microsoft? Their built in Help functions are awful, in the OS and in Apps. One of the things I like about using Linux is that there is a whole community of users who have posted information to help each other, and if you run into problems it’s often fairly simple to find the answers you need just by searching the web (that’s part of my motivation for posting the details of my own experiences). Here are just a sampling of sites that I found helpful during the install:

General:

• http://www.beginningubuntu.com/dapper_tips.html
• http://monkeyblog.org/ubuntu/installing/
• http://fredericiana.com/2006/06/11/ubuntu-dapper-drake-and-wpa-encrypted-wireless/

Sony Vaio-specific:

• http://sgowtham.net/linux/rhel4/installation.html
• http://rootsmith.ca/vaio-linux.html
• http://www.domesticatedonion.net/blog/wiki/doku.php?id=s360plinux

Perhaps the most difficult tasks was the conversion of my Outlook e-mail and contacts to Evolution, the Open Office mail program. I needed to install Mozilla Thunderbird under Windows, import the messages into it from Outlook’s PST file, and then copy the new .mbx files into the Evolution mail folder. It sounds simpler now than it did while I was doing it, but at the time it seemed rather cumbersome.

****** Technical support information under this category is provided without any guarantees that it will work as described. Use any advice here at your own risk. ******

In preparation for an extended period of travel, which will be followed by a return to school, I decided to buy a notebook computer, despite my suspicion that the notebook market is largely a marketing scam to boost lagging PC sales – a scam with growth potential, since notebooks are difficult and expensive (or impossible) to upgrade and generally won’t last as long as a desktop.

Nonetheless, I spent a couple of months reading product reviews, trying to find the machine that met my four most important criteria: Long battery life; lightweight, but a decent sized screen & keyboard; sufficiently Linux-compatible; affordable.

The one I eventually settled on, despite the fact that I didn’t stick entirely to the affordability criterion, is the Sony VGN-S360. It’s got a couple of drawbacks: No OS disks (system files are found on a hidden 5 gig partition) – you have to burn your own disks; a lot of crap software installed (besides Windows) like AOL; awful documentation (though from experience, I did not have high expectations).

However, two of the other criteria were met: only 1.9 kilos, and (allegedly) 4-6 hours of battery life. I thought I could live with the drawbacks.

Naturally, the first thing I did was burn my own OS CDs, and then erase the hard drive, so that I could recover the wasted 5 hidden gigs. Once that was done, I used my CDs to re-install Windows (I planned to have a dual boot system, with Windows present as a backup), but you only have two choices – install everything, or nothing. No custom install option. So, after spending a couple of hours at it, all I ended up with was the same setup, but without the hidden partition, and I had to start removing the crap that was just wasting space (AOL, come on down!).

This is what bugs me about modern capitalism – they take a piece of advanced technology and dumb it down to the point that it’s a glorified television, and try to get extra money by forcing other, and partner, crap in front of consumers. It won’t be long before a new computer will only play endless “entertainment” content, such as “Survivor” or “American Idiot”.

Now for the Linux installation…