Installing Linux on the Sony Vaio PCG FX-220

I bought this notebook in August 2001. I will never buy a Sony again despite the pros for the following reasons:

• Bad user support. If you have a problem, you have to pay to be able to speak with a Sony representative.
• A memory slot had a problem which prevented it to be used. This is a common issue ([1]) with this series and Sony did nothing to fix that.
• The CD/DVD reader broke in 2007 (I have a Fujitsu notebook from 1996 which is still perfectly working).

Anyways, for the last reason and the fact that I needed to reinstall from scratch recently, I needed to go with boot diskettes and a network installation. Debian 4.0 was the easiest choice from a first overview (I had already installed Debian a few years ago on this notebook).

Installation

1. You need the boot, root and network-drivers-1 diskettes.
2. Start at the boot with: expert hw-detect/start_pcmcia=false
3. After that, installation starts. It might hang (it did with me) but it's a network timeout problem. Retry with a different mirror.
4. At the end of the installation, LILO and Grub won't install. Skip that step.
5. To reboot, use the boot diskette with the following parameters: rescue root=/dev/hda1 (replace with your settings). Load the drivers, networks-drivers-1 and 2 diskettes this time (might not be necessary but it might save your time).
   
6. Log in as root. Install Grub: apt-get install grub.
7. Configure Grub automatically creating its configuration file.
8. Reboot.
9. Start in single user mode because the default X.org configuration file won't work.
10. Edit the X.org configuration file manually removing all references to screen resolutions above 1024x768 and above 16bpp (TODO to be verified, 24bpp might work)
11. Reboot.
12. Check that the network parameters are correctly set.

Components

USB: working out of the box.

Useful Links

• Vaio PCG FX-220 @ Sony
• Debian
  
• Linux laptops