sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Philipp Blanke <philipp.blanke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Stefan,

welcome to the list. I own the same model and you can get everything
working (distro doesn't really matter). The only thing that's not going
to be happening soon is "dynamic switching", i.e., changing the active
graphics card while the system is running. But "static switching" works,
i.e., shut down - switch - start up. Only thing I have done to get that
to work is to flash a hacked BIOS, adding "static switching" as a BIOS
setting:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/473226-insyde-hacking-new-vaio-z-advanced-menu-bios-37.html

but you could also do this another way, as explained here:
http://feature-enable.blogspot.com/2009/07/enable-vt-on-insydeh2o-based-sony-vaio.html

For Ubuntu (and i guess also Mint) look at Raphael's page:
http://global-social.net/sony-VGN-Zseries

Good instructions for the setup. He also has a script that does most of
it for you (sony-VGN-Zseries-janitor).

Myself, I have Arch Linux installed and cobbled together my own
solution.

Viele Grüße,
Philipp


On Tue, 2011-12-20 at 14:35 +0000, Stephan Mielke wrote:
> Hello all of you! :)
> 
> I'm new here and I hope I can get some information using that in subject
> mentioned notebook (Sony Vaio VGN-Z11MN) under Linux Ubuntu, Mint, or
> whatever.
> 
> I know it's quite an old model, but for the "normal use" still quite
> good.
> 
> I bought this used notebook after my old netbook seemd to slow for me
> and my needs, and was very excited when it arrived. I didn't checked
> before if there would be some issues with that notebook, so i tried to
> install ubuntu 11.10 and that was the start of an odyssey.
> 
> To make a long speech short, I was not able to get the installed Nvidida
> Card (GeForce 9300M GS) set to run. I tried a lot of things only
> reinstall the Linux again.
> 
> Now I use Linux Mint 12 with gnome 3.2 and the intel on borad graphic-
> chip works not so bad, but it's kind unsatisfying when you got such a
> "strong" graphic card and didn't know how to use it.
> 
> Can anyone can give me some advice or/and help? What operation software
> do you use? Does it work properly. Can I run an Linux Distro run as OS
> alone or do I always need Windows to get the complete possibilities?
> 
> Thank you all in advance.
> 
> Cheers,
> Stephan