This is a from a posting that I made into google groups.

Groups 
Google Post


I emailed the groups a little over a month ago.  Here's the original
link:

Original 
Post in Google Groups

I wanted to give an update of what i've found (successes & failures)
and see if anybody has any similar experiences on failures.  When I
get another free second I will post this information on
linux-on-laptops.com.

My main concern was that the integrated pci wireless lan would not be
a clean install & work correctly.  I got it to work ( i had to play
around with this since i'd never done it before), it took me a couple
tries and some research. I followed the following steps.

Success: WLAN

the mini-pci adapter is an intersil/harris prism2_pci. so i downloaded
the wlan-ng sources.  First time through I f*d it up.  In the
.Configure script I installed both the native and the other pci
drivers.  That was a no go, so i had to start over and second time
through I just installed the native drivers. There are some other
steps that I had to correct (like moving over the .config from the src
tree) and other quickly fixable errors in compilation.  I followed the
readme, after i installed the sources i picked up at

modprobe prism2_pci
wland-ctl commands in the readme document

I do not have it setup to receive dhcp yet ( manually hardcoding it
works fine for me right now ).  I did not have to alter the /etc/wlan/
scripts at all it picked up my ssid fine.

Success: DUAL BOOT.

Luckily my laptop had two partitions already from sony, and winxp was
all on the first one, so i just whipped the second half during the
linux install.  I used Redhat 9, and I did not experience any problems
during install.

Success: DVD-R/CD-R.

I have burnt a couple data CD's with out to much of a headache.  Just
drop a blank disk in the drive and a Burner window pops right up. 
Talking about awesome.  Just like windows easy to use, but with a real
os.

Success: FIREWIRE

It says it is working properly, I haven't had a need to test it yet.

Success: DISPLAY

x is running without a problem the display is 1400x1050 i believe, I
am just using a generic laptop display.  I couldn't find the specific
lcd screen.  This suits my needs.  and the display is still brilliant
on the 16in screen.

Failure: SOUND

This is pretty disappointing that this is not working, worst than that
if it attempts to make a sound it locks the os & and i have to turn it
off.  i'm thinking this is an IRQ problem but haven't been able to
trace it any further than that ( and don't know what to look for ).  I
found 1 other article on the web where someone has a sony and is
experiencing the same problem however, they have not fixed it either?
so anybody have any ideas what to do?  even playing the sound
detection locks up the box.

Failure: Battery Monitor

I haven't had time to research this, but I do not see the power
battery monitor tool anywhere.  On my Sony Vaio fx220 it was there
(redhat 7.2)?  any ideas?

Failure: USB

On bootup I'm receiving a usb hci irq conflict error - I have no idea
what this is?? I can post a more exact error when I get in front of
the box, if someone would be interested in helping me resolve this?


Well I hope other people find my findings useful, and hopefully I will
be pointed in a resolvable direction for my outstanding failures.