Red Hat 8.0 came with kernel 2.4.18, but only with kernel 2.4.19 all devices I needed were available. A good resource for patching and compiling that kernel was [1].
Installation had been a bit tricky, as I could boot, but not install from the external DVD drive. Since I had no local network, I had to install from hard disk, which was occupied by two NTFS partitions the Linux installer could not detect. The solution I found that time was to boot from an old Windows98 CD, that (after failing to install) gave me access to FDISK, which I used to delete the second empty NTFS partition and to create a smaller VFAT partition. You might also try the partitioning tool included in preinstalled WindowsXP or boot from a recent Knoppix CD and use QtParted instead. Under Windows I formatted the VFAT partition and placed the Red Hat images therein. Then I booted from the first Red Hat CD, typed "linux askmethod" at the boot prompt, selected "install from hard disk" (or something like that) and entered the VFAT partition, i.e. /dev/hda5. As far as I remember the installation process didn't give me a headache from that point onwards.
Red Hat 8.0 came with kernel 2.4.18, but only with kernel 2.4.19 all devices I needed were available. A good resource for patching and compiling that kernel was [1].
[1] http://bremford.org/vaio/index.html
Author: Olaf Bauer
e-mail: obauer at freenet dot de
Last modified: July 2004