I created a little page with a ghetto walkthru for Gentoo on a Sony VGN-S260 laptop as I had trouble finding one. Hopefully it will help someone in the future. Here's the link...and sorry if its in the wrong forum.

http://www.adventure-today.com/vaio/

Thanks for the advice, KePSuX.

I'll probably be picking one of these up tomorrow. :-D
Yes, it's expensive, but it seems to be the right mixture of size and power, screen resolution, 3D, and linux compatability.
Plus, it looks pretty cool

--Shade

Thank you man It's a pretty good page (I was thinking about doing one by myself as well, but then I put only an entry in HCL and simply forgot about doing a page...).

Good work!

I get the message that my LCD screen on my Vaio VGN-S260 doesn't report my X - Y Dimensions. So I am having resolution issues. How do I know what my X - Y dimension of a 13.3 1280x800 screen? Also is there a Linux OS distro that would best support my Vaio? I am using SUSE 9.1 but no support on sounds, WLan, 3d, modem which is really a bummer. I am not Linux knowledged enough to follow the example Howto to set up my laptop in Gentoo, but would love too

I'm betting Wlan dosent work out of the box on any distro. If you follow the Wireless Lan guide on my page it should work for more than just Gentoo. As far as sound, check alsamixer to see if the external amp output is MUTED. The audio chipset is supported by the 2.6 kernel, just wont give anything until this is done. I have no idea with the modem as I have no need for it to work.

X.org figured out the resolution of my system on its own, and so does a new version of knoppix. Im not sure if SUSE uses xfree86 or x.org, but xfree86 wasn't as good at auto detection in my experience.

Thank you for replying. This has been very helpful. I have gone over the howto from KePSuX
and it is awesome.

I am fairly new working with Linux and so it would be helpful to me to have more step by step procedure. I will work on getting my laptop working.

Thanks

which touchpad is on this machine.. alps or synaptics. I am running FC3 not gentoo but I am having a problem trying to get the touchpad working in something other then generic mouse mode. Any hints appreciated.

I have a Alps ran from automatic config in Suse 9.1. I plan to use a dif disto soon, perhaps Gentoo. I just need a little help installing everything to get all my perfs. working.

hmm interesting that FC 3 didn't catch it.. I was thinking of trying Suse again though.. heh.

btw, how did it deal with your wireless, or did it?

No Wlan working on my s260 and no sound also no 3d. If I could just get these working I could move to linux 100%. Oh ya, no modem either, which I use for fax. I will always have to bounce between windows and linux. Kind of sucks.

I still have not had any luck with my sound. Alsamixer is ok, mute is not checked. It configures and finds the sound card, but no sound???

I'm running Ubuntu, and in order to get the sound working, I had to mute the external amplifier option.

Give it a try, hope this works!

Hez

Could someone who has a working xorg.conf post it here? I'm installing Arch linux on this laptop but I'm having troubles getting Xorg.conf working.

Thanks, Corey

I uploaded a tar.gz with the 3 xorg.conf files I use (xorg driver, ATI driver, and Xinerama).

http://truegeek.net/twiki/bin/view/M...nyLinuxVGNS260

I hope they are of some use. They are taken from my system, which is running Ubuntu Hoary with xorg 6.8.x.

Thanks! Turns out the problem was actually with my touchpad (i am using udev, so my touchpad device is /dev/pointers/mouse0 not /dev/mouse0.

Couple more questions. Has anyone been able to change the lamp brightness? my function key works for the num pad, but not for the volume and brightness buttons. I'm find with this as long as I can change the brightness through a program or something.

Another little oddity of my system, is my wireless works (VERY easy to setup which suprised me!) but sometimes its eth1 and other times its eth2, and once in a greatwhile it seems to switch during the same session. Don't know what the deal is here.

Thanks for the xorg.confs they were a big help!