Ubuntu 9.04 and Sony Vaio notebooks

I had an earlier post asking if anyone had any ideas about getting the Fn keys working on my Vaio TT under Ubuntu with a very helpful post from jas to set me on my way. Unfortunately the empkernel from Emperor Linux does not fare too well OOB with a Vaio TT - failed to recognize CPU scaling, the fan was on high all the time (on a normally cool 'n' quiet notebook!) and the Fn keys did not work, despite claims at Emperor Linux of the opposite (and there was no way I was sending my TT to the US for them to install their kernel either - which they offer as a paid service)

So in case anyone else out there wants to run Ubuntu 9.04 on their Sony Vaio TT (specifically) here is the patch for the current kernel (2.6.28):

http://ta.iki.fi/ubuntu/

There is also information here: http://www.pharscape.org/forum/index.php?topic=696.0 for people who have the WWAN module on their TT, which is also the linkage to the original patch source.

I am not too sure but this patch might be for all Vaio's as it is part of the kernel module sony_laptop, so it might be worth trying for those who haven't had any luck running your Vaio Fn keys under Ubuntu.

Credit for finding this goes to: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7171913&postcount=21 as without his superior Googling skills I would still be stuffing around with keymapping lol

And full credit to the guys who extracted the patch and created the fix in the first place

This patch will be incorporated into Ubuntu kernel release 2.6.30, so if you don't like compiling and patching your own kernel (I was all "how do I do this?!" when I first saw it, but its not that scary fortunately with some helpful people to guide you!) or you can wait until the kernel is released to the mainstream, or download the latest RC version of the kernel from the Ubuntu kernel mainline here: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/