Problems with audio in hardy heron: culprit pulse audio

When i have upgraded to hardy, after that I started to have audio problems. It seems that one application is locking another application from playing. Then I found out that its a problem with flash enabled sites such as youtube. When they play, they prevent other applications such as VLC from playing. So I installed libflashsupport.

#sudo apt-get install libflashsupport

which solved the problem. But then again, when I am listen to youtube, I couldnt start a voice chat in skype. Oh GOD! it turned out to be pulseaudio, the audio server they are using with hardy instead of alsa is the main problem. It is not robust yet and many programs are not comfortable with it. To get rid of all the problems, you can return to alsa and remove pulseaudio. How to remove is told in this wiki.

Sony vaio CR11s webcam not working on ubuntu hardy

My web cam was not working in skype and I found this little solution which worked very well. The essential thing is the module r5u870 which makes the video device to work. We will first bring the latest module from the svn development trunk directly and then install it. Thats all.

1. Remove any r5u870 or the ry5u870 modules you may already have. (command:

   #modprobe -r r5u870

   )
2. Install svn if you dont have it installed already (it should be already installed)
3. Issue the folliowing commands to download, make and install the new module into your karnel.

   svn co http://svn.mediati.org/svn/r5u870/trunk ~/r5u870
   cd ~/r5u870
   sudo make
   sudo make install
   modprobe r5u870

Thats it!! Your webcam should start working now. You can check it out with skype->option->video call or with ekiga. Have fun!!!

ref: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=821343

Suspend / hibernate problem with hardy heron in Sony Vaio VGN CR11s

I think most of us have the problem of suspending the computer with gusty/hardy. I have read so many threads and nobody seems to have an answer to it. Everybody is boasting like "yeah! I know I can do it, but haven't take a look at it yet." funny huh? Why dont you take a look when u know u can do it!!! And some other threads are scary and tells that we really need to recompile kernel and so some other scary stuff. And it was then when I stumbled into a nice little thread where a guy said to issue the command
#sudo rmmod uvcvideo
before suspending the laptop. I did it, and with some doubt slowly close the lid of my vaio. And, magic :) it worked. It went to suspend mode and wake back again :)
ref: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=712331
For other issues with the sony vaio and hardy please take a look at the following thread...
(i lost the address, I will add it as soon as i find it again)