Sony PCG-FX190 laptop install - success

[Morgan Collett]

I installed warty on my Sony PCG-FX190 laptop - it was a breeze. I 
haven't done a full installation with anything newer than woody before, 
so I was very impressed by how much was handled during the installation. 
I was running sid, originally installed via woody and then upgraded via 
sarge when I needed newer packages to get my hardware working.

Ubuntu asked me one thing about my video setup - the resolution. I 
selected 1400x1050 which is full screen for this laptop, and so I had 
full screen video with no further tweaking - originally about 18 months 
ago I had to get somebody's X config and put the relevant bits in mine 
to get it to work.

Kernel 2.6 works like a charm. Under sid I didn't have the patience to 
get all the relevant 2.6 modules working so I stuck with 2.4. However I 
have a USB 2.0 Cardbus interface that never worked under 2.4 and it now 
works perfectly in Ubuntu. Finally I can use a USB mouse (since my 
on-board USB ports are borked).

Sounds works fine - I did have to open the mixer and select the Alsa 
device (had 3 OSS devices also present that didn't do anything) - once I 
turned up the right bits it works great.

The only problem I've had is time zone related - which I found is in 
bugzilla (bug 415 and 1332 are both related) - Ubuntu sets the time to 
UTC and when I boot into WinXP the time is out by 2 hours (I'm in 
GMT+2). I agree with the comments logged against those bugs... if a 
Windows OS is detected on the disk then local time should be used rather 
than UTC.

The packages in the default install seem like a good mix. In the past 
I've always started with a barebones install and apt-getted only the 
packages I needed - this is the first time I'm using a distro which has 
a default bundle of packages. I think for most users it will be a good 
starting place. I added the universe apt source and now I'm away...

Morgan