Lumberjack
Premium
join:2003-01-18
Newport News, VA
| Vaio Z1 w/NetBSD
A month or so ago I took my wife's (well, she stole it from me ok) laptop that we use downstairs and slapped NetBSD on it (I'll not go into my why NetBSD discussion here).
I didn't even research anything up front about the laptop with a non-Windows OS, I just used my existing experience and threw NetBSD on there. Installed fine and through the packages collection I also installed powerd, KDE (my fav manager) and a few other things.
Sadly, Sony implemented the brightness and volume controls through drivers and the Sony support via sony_laptop (or another, don't remember) doesn't work with my Z1. However, I was able to set things like disc suspend, speed-step, etc..
The only remaining hurdle I have is that while it can be forced to sleep it won't suspend or wake-up from sleep properly. So for now if you push the power button or close the lid I have my powerd scripts just shut it down. I used to have it hibernate when Windows was on it on lid close and power off on power button.
Overall I'm happy to have NetBSD/KDE on it even though, as you've found with Linux it does consume more power. I could poke at it more with a stick but we rarely used it while it's not plugged in anyway and the battery was showing its age long before NetBSD was installed. It lasts plenty long, though I'm sure I could squeeze a lot more time out of it if I could control the contrast.
Besides the power issues and Sony hardware interaction via FN keys, I've got all of it "working". I still need to fight with NetBSD's emulation, Java and Flash to have a better web experience. Though, the only one this hurts is my 2 year old wanting to watch her favorite digger construction videos.
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