The 8 years old notebook (Vaio R505TLK) desperately needed some system refresh. The original Windows 2000 was more or less fine but up to date it become cluttered and quite unstable. I do have some sentimental feelings for the thing as it was working for me for quite a long time and helped to learn and achieve a lot. Now it is mostly a backup notebook for sudden guests without computers on them.
After a bit of research and pre/re/over/install parties with some other Linux distributions I stopped with #!CrunchBang Linux. A nicely put together slimmed down xubuntu version with OpenBox as window manager. It's quite a minimalist eye-candy for me as a designer, and most importantly it has great, very active community. And well... it works quite fast on Celeron 650 with 192RAM.
A tip about installing (it may apply to a range of old computers, especially Sony's):
You'll most probably will not be able to install #!CrunchBang from live CD. Stupid Sony PCMCIA CDROM (which has "recovery" switch on the back) would be lost by LiveCD (or installer? or casper? or...?) in the middle of #! boot. What to do: just make a copy of everything on #! CD to USB drive and insert it before first boot. #! is smart enough to search for alternative file locations automatically if CD fails. Cool! Everything installed. Slow enough, but hey, it's USB1.
Almost all the hardware recognized fine out of the box. Sound, fn key, touch pad scrolling (nice!), screen brightness, power / battery functions, num lock, Sony's PCMCIA CD/RW/ROM, LAN, PCMCIA WLAN (SMC G card would not blink LEDs though, such a gift!), etc. Now I have to find a way to program JogDial (it was perfectly recognized as well) and fn+volume control button.
The only nasty problem which took some time to figure out how to deal with was video. After install it would only introduce 800x600 and 640x480 modes which look odd on 1024x768 screen. Interestingly enough the i815 chip was perfectly recognized by the system but it would produce "Capabilities: access denied" with fspci -nnv. Same goes to monitor capabilities. This issue was common to Debian/Ubuntu based distributions such as Xubuntu or LinuxMint. Slackware based ZenWalk was absolutely fine recognizing video but failed with CDROM and a few other things.
Some investigation helped to modify xorg.conf file and it worked perfectly.
sudo pico /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "LCD Panel 1024x768"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 31.5-48.5
VertRefresh 40-70
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Configured Video Device"
Monitor "LCD Panel 1024x768"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection
You can also put Depth 24 if you wish. Both worked perfectly in my case but some guys would complain it would not work on their systems.
Big thanks to my cousin Kerill for hands-on linux geekry course.
Just got #!CrunchBang working at about the same Sony laptop. Thanks for install boot tips, really a time saver.
Thanks for the tips. I know a friend of mine who might find this useful. I'll pass it on! Cheers. Business Minder
Hi,
I might be wrong but fspci -nnv does not work in Crunchbang 9.04. Could this be a typo and in fact should read lspci -nnv which does work.
Otherwise great post.
thanks
markofealing
The post was about Crunchbang 8.10 where fspci -nnv worked just fine.
So folks with Crunchbang 9.04 should go with lspci -nnv
Thanks for this hint!
This worked great! Countless days and night trying to get it right. Awesome! Thank you. Worked on my desktop P4 2.8 800Fsb Nvidia GeForce 5200 Dual vga Kogi 17" LCD Linux Mint 8 KDE.
Nice! Then we could assume this tip will work on much more Ubuntu based distributions then I thought (like Linux Mint, Xubuntu and so on).
It also worked with arch linux, thank you