I decided to take the plunge and upgrade to FC6. I was pretty happy with my FC5 setup that I'd hacked up to include XGL and compiz, but since AIGLX is supported by default in FC6 and there are repositories with Beryl for FC6 but not FC5, I figured there might be some benefit to an upgrade (plus I wanted to reorganize my partitioning scheme, so it seemed like a good time).

Anyway, here's a short list of the good and the bad:

The good: 1) AIGLX support built in. Well, sort of. If you have an nVidia or Intel video card, you may well be set. If you have ATI you have to use XGL, not AIGLX and you probably have a lot of work to do (and chances are it's fruitless work, but you knew that when you bought ATI anyway). 2) Okay. There is no 2.

The bad: 1) XFS retains its place as a second-class citizen on Fedora. Worse, something has broken since FC5 and if you use "linux xfs" to install the end result will be a corrupt FS when you are done. If you want to use XFS you need to partition and format prior to doing the install (I usually just ctrl+alt+F2 after booting the install CD and do it there). I can't help but note the irony that XFS is the sole reason I started using RedHat (back around 7.0) because SGI offered a modified version of RH7 with XFS support. Yet despite this and the fact that it's the second-oldest journaled FS for Linux, the first to offer features such as ACL support and just basically rocks, RedHat/Fedora continues to pretend it's still beta and not worthy of first-class support. Pretty sad. Frankly if I had to choose between Fedora and XFS it'd be goodbye Fedora. 2) It's a bit flaky. Some of this flakiness I can directly attribute to the beta-quality of several components that I'm responsible for installing (beta nVidia driver for AIGLX support, Beryl), but some other things have simply gone downhill a bit since FC5. NetworkManager is flakier. Sometimes it simply refuses to connect to an access point I was just using a moment before, instead choosing to connect to the neighbor's. Other times it simply crashes. 3) Speaking of NetworkManager, why the hell isn't this daemon turned on by default? It's the best thing happening for dynamic networking on Linux, giving an experience similar to what Mac and Windows users are used to. RedHat wrote it, Fedora ships it, but it's off by default. I played with several half-ass solutions before a damn Ubuntu user told me about it. WTF. Note to RedHat/Fedora: when you write really great software, let people know so that your fine work doesn't go to waste. 4) For some reason, the installer chose an i586 kernel. This became an issue when I found I couldn't load the nVidia drivers (my kernel-devel RPM was for i686). Worse, because the kernel version was right, it took me a while to notice what the issue was. Reinstalling the correct architecture fixed it quite easily but it left me scratching my head for a while. 5) Still shipping Firefox 1.5. I've been using 2.0 release candidates for several weeks and FF2.0 is improved in numerous subtle but readily apparent ways. The overall feel is noticeably smoother. Sure, including 2.0 would have meant delaying FC6 for another couple weeks, but frankly I think that would have been a good idea anyway. FC6 feels like it was rushed for some reason which makes little sense given that the most noticeable improvements (from a desktop perspective) are all centered around AIGLX and compiz. Waiting for FF2.0 would have brought a pretty significant feature to FC6.

Anyway, my overall impression is that FC5 with XGL was actually a bit smoother and quite a bit more stable than my current FC6 install. AIGLX may be the future but XGL works a lot better today (it even felt a bit faster than AIGLX which I found surprising). If you've got a nice FC5 install I'd suggest you stick with it for at least another couple months. FC6 should be considered beta software for the near future.

After all the work I'd put into getting suspend to work, I thought I was done at last. However, in grand fresh-Linux-install tradition, I discovered that my backlight dimming was no longer working. This seemed odd as it's always worked without any special attention from me.

Lots of googling later, I found a solution, even if it wasn't exactly what was working before:

# smart install fnfx
# service fnfxd start
# chkconfig --levels 345 fnfxd on

Not only does this let me use the Toshiba function keys, it also allows me to reprogram them =)

You can read the fine manual for fnfx here.

In FC7 and earlier, it appeared that HAL/pm-utils was managing the LCD backlight (GNOME brightness-applet worked, Toshiba function keys caused a little dialog to appear showing the brightness level, etc). This is no longer the case (applet doesn't do anything, no info dialog, etc), but it works, so I'm not going to complain too much.

As an aside, it appears to me that what has changed since FC7 is that HAL no longer recognizes my display (it shows up as "generic LCD" rather than the specific model and "lshal" doesn't list it at all). Not sure how to fix this. I may look into it more later, since having it properly supported would be good. For now just working is satisfactory. Still, if you have any hints, please feel free to drop them here =)

UPDATE: I did an update tonight, and after a reboot things are back to normal. Not sure which package it was that fixed it. I do notice that HAL is once again seeing my lcd though:

# lshal | grep panel
info.capabilities = {'laptop_panel'} (string list)
info.category = 'laptop_panel'  (string)
laptop_panel.access_method = 'general'  (string)
laptop_panel.num_levels = 8  (0x8)  (int)

Todo!

XGL on FC5!

First of all, let me note that I tried to install Foresight 2.0 on this laptop only to find the process too annoying to continue. Fedora, for all its shortcomings, remains one of the best distros for dealing with laptops and less-common hardware.

As expected, the Fedora install went flawlessly. I used the defaults except for filesystem layout (sorry, but I will not use ext3 on my machines).

After installing Fedora, the next item on the list was to change /etc/fstab and add noatime to all the mount options. One day the distros will wake up to what a bad idea access timestamps are. Until then this is requisite, especially on laptops, which tend to have slower disks than servers or desktop machines.

Next, replace Fedora's pathetic package management utilities with SmartPM. You must use the bazaar checkout in order to have Fedora's new mirror system supported. Smart has few dependencies and I can't recall any that aren't included with the base Fedora install.

At this point you have a functional system, but there's still a few things missing:

1. suspend, hibernate and resume
2. Vaio function keys (volume up/down, lcd brightness, etc)

Pretty much everything else should already work, so these two will be the focus for the rest of this article.

The very first thing you'll want to verify is that the sony_laptop kernel module is loaded. Most likely it already is, but you should verify this:

# lsmod | grep sony
sony_laptop            30684  0

If it isn't loaded, you'll need to load it by hand using:

# modprobe sony_laptop

and also add an appropriate line to /etc/modprobe.d/sony.conf or something similar so that it's loaded on boot.

At the time I installed this laptop, gnome-power-manager was at version 2.22. This version will not work properly on a Vaio. You can find the 2.23 version in Rawhide that should work properly.

Next, we need to enable HAL quirks for our model. You can get your exact model string with the following command:

# lshal | grep -i system.hardware.product
system.hardware.product = 'VGN-NR160E'  (string)

You'll need this string when you edit quirks files.

Next, edit /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/30-keymap-module-sony-laptop.fdi and add a section like this:

<match key="/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer:system.hardware.product" string_outof="VGN-NR160E">
  <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">0x06:mute</append>
  <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">0x07:volumedown</append>
  <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">0x08:volumeup</append>
  <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">0x09:brightnessdown</append>
  <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">0x0a:brightnessup</append>
  <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">0x0b:switchvideomode</append>
  <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">0x10:suspend</append>
  <append key="info.capabilities" type="strlist">input.keymap</append>
</match>

You also need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the following:

Section "ServerLayout"
       ...
       InputDevice    "Vaio keys" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

and:

Section "InputDevice"
       Identifier  "Vaio keys"
       Driver      "evdev"
       Option      "Name" "Sony Vaio Keys"
       Option      "XkbLayout" "jp"
       Option      "XkbModel" "jp106"
EndSection

Add this as a new section, do not replace the existing InputDevice section.

This will enable the Vaio function keys. It also enables the lid closed sensor (which, like the function keys, is an ACPI button). They won't actually work until you've restarted the computer, but don't do that yet.

Next up, we need to set the HAL quirks for the Intel G965 video so that the laptop will resume properly from suspend or hibernate.

Edit the file /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/20-video-quirk-pm-sony.fdi and add the following section:

<match key="system.hardware.product" string_outof="VGN-NR160E">
  <merge key="power_management.quirk.s3_bios" type="bool">true</merge>
  <merge key="power_management.quirk.s3_mode" type="bool">true</merge>
</match>

Finally, you'll most likely discover that even though the brightness up/down function key invokes the little onscreen indicator in GNOME, nothing actually happens. To fix this, you must run this command:

$ xrandr --output LVDS --set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL native

Note that this must be run every time X is restarted, so you'll probably want to add it to your session (System->Preferences->Session).

You'll probably need to restart your laptop (I've had mixed results restarting hal-daemon), but at this point you should have a fully functional system.

I'd like to add that the integrated Intel G965 video provides more than adequate performance for a non-gamer and works fine with compiz (I haven't tried compiz-fusion because, well... I just don't care).

References:

1. http://www.pihhan.info/sony/sony-hotkeys.html
2. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=626406&page=2
3. http://www.linux.it/~malattia/wiki/index.php/Vaio_VGN-SZ72B