How to install Linux on a Sony Vaio P-Series “NetBook”
25Feb2009 Filed under: geek Author: MikeI switched my primary workstation from Linux to Mac OS X a long time ago, but there’s still a soft spot in my heart for Linux. There’s also a softer spot for ultra-tiny mobile gadgets … combine the two, and I can’t resist!
Fedora 10 running on my Sony Vaio-P
I picked up a Sony Vaio P-Series “Lifestyle PC” (er, netbook) a little while ago, and thought I’d try installing Linux on it. The standard Ubuntu 8.10 distro didn’t want to install. Then I tried Fedora. Also no luck. I began to lose hope.
Then I came across AdamW’s blog, where he described in general terms how he was able to do a network install of Fedora 10 on his Vaio-P. Determined to make it work, I followed in his footsteps and documented the process. The result? Fedora 10 running quite nicely on my Vaio-P. A lot of the onboard hardware just works out of the box (with the exception of the graphics chipset, which requires some tweaking).
Actually, I’m really quite surprised: ethernet, wireless, audio, bluetooth, webcam, cpu scaling, and power management (including suspend/resume!) just plain works.
Now if someone will only get around to fixing up the Intel GMA500/Poulson X drivers.
Update: Ubuntu 9.04 went on without any difficulty (and I also got 8.10 working – not sure why it gave me trouble the first time around). VESA video is working at the Vaio’s native resolution. Still no word on GMA500/Poulson native drivers yet. But overall, the Vaio-P makes a good little Linux netbook.
16 Responses to “How to install Linux on a Sony Vaio P-Series “NetBook””
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My name is Mike Kelly. I'm a Vancouver-based technologist and non-practicing physicist. strangely entangled is my home base on the internet. If you look hard enough you'll find some blog postings, articles, photos and other stuff I thought might be interesting
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s
February 27th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
if payment and software freedom is absolutely necessary is there a way to commission the GMA500/Poulson X driver?
mike
February 28th, 2009 at 12:33 am
That’s a good question. I know of several open source projects that offer “bounties” as an incentive for people to address/fix deficiencies in their code bases. Maybe something like that could be applied here?
The question is, just how easy would it be for a 3rd party to write the driver? The existing (broken) driver relies on a binary object file in order to work – ideally someone would rewrite the driver without that dependency. The problem is, what does that binary blob actually do, and how difficult would it be to reverse engineer it?
I started a thread on this over at the Pocketables.net forums, and there is an interesting comment “xyzreloaded”, suggesting a possible codebase that a viable Linux driver could be developed from.
The thead is here: http://forum.pocketables.net/showthread.php?t=2071
Matt
September 9th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Does the built in 3g device work under linux too (Ubuntu or Fedora)..?
Mike
October 5th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Hi Matt,
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t know for certain. Sony decided to drop the 3G modem from the Canadian version of the Vaio-P, so I have no way of testing it myself. I’ve heard that it does work though.
Matt
October 15th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Hi Mike,
Another question for you… are you dual booting Ubuntu 9.04 with Vista or did you have to overwrite the Windows OS..? and what method did you use to install it, USB, network install..?
Irwin
November 17th, 2009 at 3:33 am
Hi Mike
So ubuntu is working perfectly? Mic. graphic, and cam?
I have installed ubuntu 9.10, and the wireless is disabled? Did you have this problem yours ?
the 3G works on Ubuntu 9.10. it works on mine
Mike
November 17th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Hi Irwin,
I haven’t tried 9.10. 9.04 worked for me. It’s been awhile since I’ve played with Linux on it, but if I get a chance I’ll try 9.10 and let you know.
I’m in Canada – we didn’t get the 3G option up here, so I can’t tell you about that.
Mike
November 30th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Irwin: I just installed Ubuntu 9.10 on my Vaio-P and wifi worked “out of the box”. No tweaking required. Video was unaccelerated, but easy to fix following the 9.10 instructions here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsbo
Audio output works, haven’t tried the mic input yet.
Webcam is functional (again, no tweaks required, just worked)
tracey pooh
December 8th, 2009 at 1:24 am
hi mike,
ok, i’m starting to froth at a much better version of my very old picturebook from sony!
so just to be clear/explicit, with 9.10/karmic, between an “out of the box” install and the video acceleration steps mentioned above, is it the case that you have your P (it is a recent “mark 2″ model?) doing the following:
- wifi working
- have all 1600×768 pixels working
- can suspend/resume
do its hotkey work (just curious)?
does anything *not* work that you can enumerate?
it’s not crashing or locking up, too, right?
i gave up on windoze due mostly to vista, but cygwin just started driving me nuts. between mac and ubuntu having unix-style “developer’s dream” terminals/shells, i’d like to never have to subject myself to windows again
(but of course the lure of the shiny P(enny) is hard to not notice!)
thanks for any more info
Mike
December 8th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Hi Tracey,
Hey, I used to have a Sony Picturebook too. I loved that thing. I have a love/hate relationship with the Vaio P right now (more below)… I used to be a Linux dev/sysadmin, but ever since Apple went Unix, I’ve been relying more and more on OS X. Windows 7 is bearable, but nothing beats a Unix command prompt. I actually had OS X running on the Sony P for a little while, but the graphics were completely non-accelerated (1600×768 though!)
OK, to answer your questions (all “out of the box” on Ubuntu 9.10, unless otherwise noted)
1. Wifi working on my Sony Vaio P (Canadian model: VGN-P530CH)
Accelerated graphics required a few command line incantations.
2. All 1600×768 pixels working. I know this because my eyes are killing me.
3. Can suspend and resume. Once or twice WiFi did not come back after the resume. The solution was to toggle the wifi on/off switch, no need to power down/reboot the machine or reload the wifi module.
4. Not sure about the hotkeys. (Well, volume works, and I believe that brightness did too after the accelerated drivers were installed)
5. Built-in webcam works.
6. Audio out via speakers works.
I have not tried audio input, nor have I tried headphones, so I can’t really give you an idea about those two.
As for crashing/locking up – not that I’ve seen. I *did* notice WiFi slowing down a couple times on a really large file xfer on my own network, but it seemed to recover on its own after ~20 seconds.
Now, those are the positives. Here are the negatives:
The CPU is underpowered. It also can’t really drive the 1600×768 screen effectively. Forget about watching video on the device, unless it’s in a very, very tiny window. Even with the 2D acceleration enabled.
Also, the 1600×768 screen is just *too* high-res. I have excellent eyesight, but it’s hard to look at for a long time. Upping font sizes helps, but isn’t perfect across all apps.
The included battery is not very good. In general, you’re looking at 2 hours or less of battery life on the device. So if you do get one, I suggest splurging for the extended battery.
At this point, I’m probably going to sell my Vaio P – it’s a neat little toy but I haven’t been able to do much real work with it. I find the CPU to be very underpowered compared to other netbooks, and the onboard HD is horribly slow. That said, it does run Ubuntu 9.10 fairly well now.
tracey pooh
December 12th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Hi Mike,
(although win7 first look i saw this week in person seemed pretty uninspiring to me). also, after years of cygwin and its flaws, once i saw leopard terminal, i was like O M G 
Thanks for all that wonderful info — SUPER helpful!
I guess now I’m leaning to go find one at a store down here (bay area, CA) and play with it a bit. I’m glad the newer ones don’t have Vista (which is what made me change over 10 years of fidelity at work and home, running to Mac.
so anyway, thrilled there seems to be a modern take on the picturebook. i just pulled my old slow picturebook out and was like “why can’t someone make this similar keyboard size and form factor, but now smaller & lighter even with something slow like a smartphone chipset! i spent hours going over netbook specs and only after all that, did i happen to find the P!
my work hackers (some w/ netbooks) were all super impressed suspend and such seems to work on a karmic P!
thanks for all your help — you have the most comprehensive reviews and information of anywhere else that i can find on the web!
Mike
December 12th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
No problem Tracey, glad I could help out. One of the things I noticed when I bought my Vaio P was how little information there was out there about it, so that’s why I set up the wiki and wrote the blog article.
Sadly, my Vaio P and I parted ways today. I just wasn’t using it enough to justify keeping it around. The good news is that the gentleman I sold it to is planning to give it to his wife as a Christmas present. She works for the UN and travels to a lot of “hotspots”, so it’s nice to know that my Vaio P will be doing some good out there.
tracey pooh
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:16 am
thanks again, mike!
i just plinked down my ccard for a “limited edition” 1.6GHz, 64G SSD, Win7 updated version just out so we’ll see how it goes!
(I brought a SD card of various video formats and complexities and all played fine at demo 1.3GHz 80G HD version at a store here — so that sealed the deal).
Oh, and, um, it’s *pink*! w/ engraving. can hardly wait for it to show up in the mail.
I may leave it win7 and try ‘karmic on a (SD) stick’ and see whichever eats the battery less to mostly go with. we’ll see!
nik
March 17th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Installed 9.10 + poulsbo + updates
Important note———————————————–:
HD 720p (h.264) movies works very nice with smplayer (even on fullscreen)
keyfactors making a huuuuuuge difference:
- visual effects: none
- smplayer:
preferences > performance > h.264 loopfilter: Skip only on HD videos
I love it! Except the less than 2hrs battery life.
Hope they update poulsbo driver soon…
vierx
March 27th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Hi Guys,
Just wonder if somebody tried to make it work for Linux using built in wireless 3G from Verizon?
thx.
tracey pooh
July 10th, 2010 at 2:15 am
ok, so i just setup a
“try ubuntu off USB flashdrive” (lucid 2010/04 netbook release)
(i have a 1.6GHz, 64G SSD, Win7 P788K)
pretty well everything “just worked” with no troubles:
-wifi
-bluetooth (i think — dont use bluetooth but it seems on by default and responds to turning off
-monitor is native resolution: 1600×768 (yes!)
-mouse just seems to work
-the silly photo booth “app” worked w/ the built-in cam
only thing i’ve seen not work so far is:
-once wifi dropped. i restarted it and we moved on
-Suspend option worked, but waking did not turn monitor back on (though the machine stirred/behaved like it was prolly fully awoke — just nothing on screen)
if installing lucid beside my win7 changes anything i can write back.
but otherwise, this is supercool that everything “just worked” pretty much.
(not sure what i’m going to do if there’s no way to hibernate (since sleep eats up too much battery over a day or two) –
maybe i’ll just turn it off/on each time, or stick w/ win7 for light browsing and ubuntu for ssh-ing in and emacs hacking, etc….)