Here are some (old) notes regarding the installation of Kubuntu on my Sony Vaio VPC-S12C5E.
First I have to tell you that everything is working fine and out of the box with Kubuntu 10.10. This include: Bluetooth, HDMI out (tested with a Full-HD monitor), Sound out, VGA, USB, CD Burning, WiFi, Networking, Keyboard backlight & SD Card reader.
The only annoying thing in 10.10 is the non-responding touchpad. But a fix can be found on Ubuntu forums:
Edit /etc/default/grub to include GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”i8042.nopnp”
Run sudo update-grub
Reboot
Now about the laptop itself: construction quality is below my previous MacBook (cheap plastic instead of aluminum) and battery autonomy is not impressive. A bios update seems to address the latter. Haven’t done it yet as it requires to re-install Windows (sigh). But overall that’s a good lightweight machine to get things done, especially with its 8 Gb of RAM, 4 cores and a SSD! :)