Sunday 9 February 2014

Debian Wheezy on a Sony Vaio Z (SVZ1311C5E)

Realising that 99% of what I use is both open source and Linux native nowadays, I figure it makes sense to shift my laptop over to something free. Debian's always my weapon of choice, so here goes.
  1. Had real trouble getting UEFI going (no surprise, it was a nightmare getting Win 7 to do the same), so I'm running using Legacy boot set in the BIOS.
  2. Configured the SSD drives as Linux software raid with LVM on top. Possible to set up encryption but this requires a non-encrypted boot partition, and I was fed up with this kind of setup from the UEFI attempts.
  3. Using OpenBox. I'd like to have used Gnome but Unity is terrible and I don't want to have non-debian sources if I can help it - so once Mate/Cinnamon make it in proper I might give them a shot. Enjoying OpenBox, wish the fonts were a bit nicer, but it's ludicrously fast (inkscape loads in under a second. Gimp takes about 1.5)
  4. /etc/apt/sources.list:
    deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free
    deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ stable-updates main contrib non-free
    deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free
    deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
    deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
  5. /etc/apt/preferences:
    Package: *
    Pin: release a=stable
    Pin-Priority: 700
    
    Package: *
    Pin: release a=testing
    Pin-Priority: 650
    
    Package: *
    Pin: release a=unstable
    Pin-Priority: 600
  6. Packages installed: cron-apt laptop-mode-tools hal iucode-tool gobi-loader firmware-iwlwifi firmware-realtek wicd-curses xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-evdev xserver-xorg-input-mouse xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-intel xbacklight wicd-gtk slim openbox obmenu tint2 nitrogen xcompmgr conky-std alsa-utils volumeicon-alsa gtk-chtheme virtualbox iceweasel xul-ext-adblockplus xul-ext-downthemall xul-ext-noscript inkscape gimp pcmanfm samba tango-icon-theme gnome-icon-theme-symbolic xarchiver openjdk-7-jre libreoffice libreoffice-style-tango libreoffice-gtk
  7. Packages for compiling MAME: build-essential pkg-config automoc libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libfontconfig1-dev libxinerama-dev
  8. Non-free firmware required: iwlwifi-6000g2b and rtl8168e-3. Ethernet works perfectly for installation without the latter however.
  9. Power savings:
    1. /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/ethernet.conf
      1. DISABLE_ETHERNET_ON_BATTERY=1
    2. /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/intel-hda-powersave.conf
      1. INTEL_HDA_DEVICE_CONTROLLER=1
  10. Screen DPI (1920x1080 13.1"). Measures 290x163mm (168dpi). Set in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-monitor.conf
    1. Section "Monitor"
      Identifier "VaioZMonitor"
      DisplaySize 290 163   # In millimeters
      EndSection
  11. Xterm font in ~/.Xresources:
    xterm*font: *-fixed-*-*-*-18-*
  12. Unable to get right click going with the ClickPad, so I've disabled that function and enabled 2 and 3 finger right and middle click. The touchpad works far better than it ever did in Windows, albeit palm detection doesn't want to do anything no matter how much messing around I've tried. Setup in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf
    1. Section "InputClass"
      Identifier "VaioZTouchPad"
      MatchDriver "synaptics"
      #Uncomment when tweaking with synclient
      #Option "SHMConfig" "true"
      Option "ClickPad" "false"
      # Left click with one finger
      Option "TapButton1" "1"
      # Middle click with three fingers
      Option "TapButton2" "3"
      # Right click with two fingers
      Option "TapButton3" "2"
      Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
      Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "0"
      Option "PalmDetect" "1"
      # Vastly reduce sensitivity!
      Option "PressureMotionMinZ" "65"
      Option "HorizHysteresis" "50"
      Option "VertHysteresis" "50"
      EndSection
  13. Automount USB devices
    1. /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/55-storage.pkla
      1. [Storage Permissions]
        Identity=unix-group:plugdev
        Action=org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-eject;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-detach;org.freedesktop.udisks.luks-unlock;org.freedesktop.udisks.inhibit-polling;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-set-spindown
        ResultAny=yes
        ResultActive=yes
        ResultInactive=no
    2. usermod -a -G plugdev YOUR-USER-ID
  14. Install CrashPlan, then sort it to work:
    echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=1048576 >  /etc/sysctl.conf
    update-rc.d crashplan defaults

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