Alternative OS for Sony VAIO P-series

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quest_for_silence
Posts: 5275
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
Location: ITALY

Alternative OS for Sony VAIO P-series

Post by quest_for_silence » Wed Jun 04, 2014 10:21 pm

My favourite silent pocketable device was (is) the Sony VAIO P.

I bought mine some years ago with 1.6GHz Atom and 128Gb SSD, and then downgraded the installed OS from Vista to XP: now I'm looking for an alternative OS (if any).

So, is there anyone which still use it satisfactorily with any OS than Vista?

Thanks in advance for any useful hint.

washu
Posts: 571
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2009 10:20 am
Location: Ottawa

Re: Alternative OS for Sony VAIO P-series

Post by washu » Thu Jun 05, 2014 10:57 am

Due to the GMA 500 on the VAIO P series Linux is not a good choice. It's not impossible, but the video drivers will be a pain. The proprietary driver has not been updated for recent kernels and the open source ones only have very basic 2D acceleration and no 3D or video decoding. If you go that route then a lighter weight distro like XUbuntu, LUbuntu or similar would do well.

Your best bet is Windows 7. It should run reasonably well with the SSD, especially if you have a model with 2 GB of RAM. There is an official Win 7 32 bit driver for the GMA 500 which will let you use it to it's fullest. I've run 7 on several older Atoms and while it is not fast, it's quite usable.

Windows 8/8.1 should also run just as well as 7 if you want to go that route. There is no official video driver, but the Win 7 should work.

quest_for_silence
Posts: 5275
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
Location: ITALY

Re: Alternative OS for Sony VAIO P-series

Post by quest_for_silence » Fri Jun 06, 2014 12:58 am

washu wrote:Due to the GMA 500 on the VAIO P series Linux is not a good choice. It's not impossible, but the video drivers will be a pain. The proprietary driver has not been updated for recent kernels and the open source ones only have very basic 2D acceleration and no 3D or video decoding. If you go that route then a lighter weight distro like XUbuntu, LUbuntu or similar would do well.


Thanks for your advice, washu.

Actually I've given a try to several live distro, more or less they all have some weird issues (with graphics, but more often with audio, and awakening from sleep too): broadly speaking, the newer the version, the more likely you're running into problems with the Vaio P, right out of the box (I don't know whether installing an older but rolling release may be better: what do you think about?): up to now the "best" (less issues to address) candidates are LuninuxOS 12, Elive Topaz, and openSUSE 12.2 (I was not able to force 13.1 to recognize Intel HDAudio), even if I loose the ability to run decently flash videos, even with the "infamous" Google Chrome; still broadly speaking, usually Xfce desktops gave me the worst experience (OOBE), and I'm not talking about "eye-candys".

washu wrote:Your best bet is Windows 7. It should run reasonably well with the SSD, especially if you have a model with 2 GB of RAM. There is an official Win 7 32 bit driver for the GMA 500 which will let you use it to it's fullest. I've run 7 on several older Atoms and while it is not fast, it's quite usable.


I will give a try to W7*32, even if Vista*32 was just awful then.

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