Ubuntu 8.10 on Sony VGN-AR51E

By on November 5, 2008

After installing Ubuntu 8.10 on my Sony laptop (VGN-AR51E) this is a list of some of the configurations I’ve made:

Fixes

  1. The web-cam (MotionEye – Ricoh USB r5u870) doesn’t work, I think the driver isn’t in the kernel for Ubuntu 8.10. In fact, /dev/video0 is completely missing (see bug 255678). This is how to fix:
    1. lsusb gives: 05ca:1839 Ricoh Co., Ltd
    2. Download the latest driver: svn co http://svn.mediati.org/svn/r5u870/trunk r5u870 ( see http://wiki.mediati.org/b/2008/01/r5u870/ for more info)
    3. Do the following: 
      cd r5u870
sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion
make
make install
Reboot the machine
sudo chmod 777 /dev/video0
    4. Test with gstreamer-properties or xawtv or skype
    5. Cheese still doesn’t work but nevermind.

Configurations

  1. To get DVD playback working: Install the Xine movie player: sudo apt-get install xine-ui
  2. To get youtube working: Go to www.youtube.com, click to play a video and then click on the link to install Flash. Adobe provide a deb file that works fine – just make sure you don’t miss the Firefox “Allow this software to install” notification. Also, sometimes I have restart to see flash work (but other times it worked without a restart?)
  3. Install essential Firefox Add-ons:
    1. Install the British English Dictionary extension and restart Firefox. Once restarted, right- click inside a text field and choose English / British under the Language settings.
    2. Install LastTab (I can’t understand why pressing Ctrl+Tab doesn’t default to your last tab in the base installation of Firefox?)
  4. Edit /etc/hosts and add the names of the other machines on our network
  5. Set up the printer:
    1. Turn the printer on.
    2. Click System->Administration->Printing. There should be 4 Devices, one being “HP Photosmart 3200 series 192.168.0.5”.
    3. Select “HP” in the “Select printer from database”, Then “Photosmart 3200”.
    4. The printer should now work.
  6. Remove the Windows recovery partition from the Grub Boot screen (because confusingly, it has the same name as the real Windows partition and I kept booting into the recover partition instead of the rubbish but game-playing-enabled OS I expected.
    1. sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst. Then comment out the first occurrence of Windows which is at the end of the file.
  7. I like to press “super+d” to see my desktop (i.e. minimise all). To map this keyboard shortcut: System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts. Under “Windows Management” section, click the “Hide all windows and focus desktop” and the press “Super+d”.

Still not working:

  1. Three of the Sony Custom keyboard buttons: DVD eject button and 2 user programmable buttons. None of the methods described in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/HotkeyResearch work.
  2. The Headphones socket.
  3. The card reader works for SD cards but not “Memory Stick Pro” cards (which is unsurprising since it is a Sony proprietary technology).

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