Tuesday 30 March 2010

Fake RAID in Linux: Sony Vaio Z11 series with 4x64 SSD

Some of the laptops in the market, like the Sony Vaio Z-series 2010 (e.g., Z11) come with a RAID hard drive that looks like it's 4x64GB, but it actually behaves more like a 2x128GBs configuration. Sony has engineered its own software layer for this, and this hasn't been implemented in Linux at the time of this writing (20100330). Since Linux cannot recognize this kind of Fake RAID at boot time, it will cause problems when trying to install Ubuntu with default options (other distros may have slightly different behaviours).
https://lists.launchpad.net/sony-vaio-z-series/msg01145.html
The good news is that there *are* workarounds, like the dmraid module, which can be found here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto

But for the Z11 sony-vaio-z-series case, it's been reported that what *does* work is to follow the instructions in this youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x2rZe2Z9as

This will set up an Ubuntu Karmic with a soft RAID 0, with the Fake RAID disabled by the BIOS.

Other users have commented that disabling the onboard RAID is probably the best solution, even once Linux dmraid supports the chipset. The argument is that Linux software will often give at least as good performance as most onboard 'RAID controllers'.

There is a caveat to the RAID0 configuration: losing any drive can potentially destroy all your data. So another suggestion is to use
RAID10 (or RAID5) for speed/redundancy, or alternatively, to add all the drives to a linear LVM volume, giving you access to all the
space. This means you only lose what's on a single drive if it dies.

Sunday 28 March 2010

Updated chart of Ultrathin Linux laptops -- Sony Vaio Y Series Linux makes an entry

We have added the Sony Vaio Y Series Linux launchpad team to the chart of Ultrathin Linux laptops. See below the updated chart:


Linux on Sony Vaio Y series Launchpad Team

The sony-vaio-y-series Launchpad team is a group of Sony Vaio Y series owners and/or developers interested in getting it to work 100% under Linux.


Please subscribe to this team if you are new by clicking on the
"Join Team" link at the right. Also, please participate to the poll
below:

http://www.doodle.com/czz6pcm77kndnnz9


You can check the model and version of you laptop with this command:

sudo dmidecode -s system-product-name

sudo dmidecode -s system-version

lspci -vnnn | perl -lne 'print if /^\d+\:.+(\[\S+\:\S+\])/'



Tuesday 23 March 2010

HOWTO Linux Acer Timeline Suspend

One of the Acer Timeline Linux users has found a solution for successfully suspending in Linux:
https://lists.launchpad.net/acertimeline/msg00277.html

fix:
Change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.reset=1" in
/etc/default/grub.
Run sudo update-grub.<br />Reboot.<br /><br />


Saturday 20 March 2010

Current Ultrathin Linux laptops by category and release date

It's been over a year that we started compiling Linux-specific information about Ultrathin Linux laptops, and there are now about a dozen different laptop models with Launchpad teams. Since we are comparing laptops that have been released during a time lapse of about 15 months, we made a little plot to show when where the different models released and where do they stand in terms of their market segment. We've even included the latest Asus UL30JT, that hasn't been officially released but looks like end of 2010Q1 or beginning of 2010Q2.

This is how it

Acer TimelineX @ www.digitimes.com

Preparing for the debut of the Acer TimelineX updated line, we have updated the Launchpad Acer Timeline website to reflect the existance of the new models. If you have a TimelineX laptop and you use Linux on it, subscribe to the Launchpad group now!

Acer to globally debut Calpella Timeline notebooks March 22

Acer will unveil its Calpella Timeline series notebooks
equipped with Intel Core i3 and Core i5 processors for the global
market on March 22, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

The
series will have display sizes ranging from 13- to 15-inch with a
running time of eight hours, the same as the company's Timeline
ultra-thin models.

Although Acer's Calpella Timeline
notebooks will be as thick as the Timeline models, they will be
slightly heavier due to the cooling modules.

The
Calpella Timeline series will feature a 9-cell battery instead of the
Timeline's 6-cell battery to enable an eight-hour battery life, the
sources noted.

The Calpella Timeline will have three
different display sizes: the 13-inch model is made by Wistron, while
the 14- and 15-inch models are produced by Quanta Computer.

Scott
Lin, president of Acer Taiwan, confirmed that the Calpella Timeline
will be launched by the end of March, while Acer Taiwan will officially
launch the product on March 30.

Lin, citing GfK's
figures, said that Acer surpassed its major competitor Asustek Computer
and became the largest notebook and desktop vendor in Taiwan in terms
of sales in 2009. Acer had 33-34% of the notebook market in Taiwan, and
25% of the desktop segment.

Thursday 18 March 2010

Wednesday 17 March 2010

Current Ultrathin Linux laptops by category and release date

It's been over a year that we started compiling Linux-specific information about Ultrathin Linux laptops, and there are now about a dozen different laptop models with Launchpad teams. Since we are comparing laptops that have been released during a time lapse of about 15 months, we made a little plot to show when where the different models released and where do they stand in terms of their market segment. We've even included the latest Asus UL30JT, that hasn't been officially released but looks like end of 2010Q1 or beginning of 2010Q2.

This is how it looks so far:

Monday 8 March 2010

Asus PL30Jt @ www.engadget.com

ASUS debuts business-minded PL30JT laptop -- Engadget

If there's one company that goes all out at CeBIT
each year, its ASUS, as evidenced by the fact that we're still catching
up with new products from the company the week after CeBIT. This one
slipped under our radar at the show, but the folks at Softpedia
managed to get a bit of hands-on time with the company's new PL30JT
model, which looks more than a little like ASUS' previously announced UL30
series. The big news with this one is the inclusion of NVIDIA GeForce
310M graphics with Optimus technology, which is complemented by a Core
i5-520UM processor, a 13.3-inch 1,336 x 768 display, up to 8GB of RAM,
a max 640GB hard drive, and ASUS' own Turbo33 technology, which
promises to "enhance performance by up to 33%." No word on a price or
release date just yet, but this wasn't one of the models promised in
ASUS' initial batch of Optimus-enabled laptops.

Thursday 4 March 2010

Linux on the Toshiba Satellite T135 (e.g. T135-S1310RD)

Amazon.com: Toshiba Satellite T135-S1310RD TruBrite 13.3-Inch Ultrathin Black/Red Laptop - 9 Hours 22 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium): Computer & Accessories
The Toshiba Satellite T135-S1310RD TruBrite 13.3-Inch Ultrathin Laptop has been in the market for a good 3 months at the time of this writing, and Linux users around th world have been testing its Linux compatibility since then.
The Toshiba Satellite T100/T110/T135 series Laptop Linux Launchpad team has since then grown to 15 members (Mar 4 2010), and apart from some minor needed tweaks to get sound working, everything else work Out of The Box in Linux.

Here is a list of Reported issues and solutions so far (Mar 4 2010):

Realtek wireless drivers. Reported solutions here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8456806&postcount=6

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/401126/comments/208


Screen brightness. Reported solution here:

http://swiss.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8295090&postcount=6


Microphone/audio. Reported solutio here:

https://lists.launchpad.net/toshiba-t100-series/msg00000.html

For more information, go to https://launchpad.net/~toshiba-t100-series