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This page documents my experience running OpenBSD on the Sony Vaio P sub notebook computer.

OpenBSD on the Vaio P11Z

What Works

I have to say I am very impressed with the state of OpenBSD on this machine 'out of the box' with 4.8 -release.

All of the devices I would consider to be necessary work without any configuration, tweaks or diffs. Here's a quick and dirty list of some of the stuff I found to be working:

  • Keyboard
  • On keyboard (nub) mouse
  • ACPI suspend (first Intel Atom for me that's worked!)
  • Xenocara at native 1600x768 rez
  • Wifi
  • USB
  • SD
  • Solid State Drive
And some of the bonus stuff works:
  • LCD Bezel mouse controls
  • MemoryStick Pro slot
  • Bluetooth

What doesn't work

Keep in mind, this is a list with almost zero configuration done. I basically took an out of the box install to test against. It's quite likely these issues can be resolved with a little effort. With that said, some things do not work:

Changing LCD brightness - 4.7 caused core dumps, 4.8 doesn't work, but doesn't halt the system

Audio output - Sound from the speakers (and also headphones) is unbearable by default. The sound is very staticy; it seems like the sound data for each frame never gets cleared, which causes a really weird static echo over time. I discovered through experimentation that there is a way to address the issue, though it is a very 'hackish' interim solution. Basically, write a little script to clear the screen while audio is glitching up, looks like: 

	
	#!/bin/sh
	while true; do
	echo "something, anything to play mp3s!"
	sleep .05
	clear
	done
For whatever reason, writing to a terminal clears the audio frame. I have no idea why this works, but it does at least help a little bit. There is still occasional popping while this script is running but for the most part audio is at least enjoyable. I have tried a snapshot ( 2011-02-16 ) and the behavior was the same. I'll have to test 4.9 and see what that gives me.

VGA / LAN adapter - I have yet to get this to work with OpenBSD. There are some times when I'd like to have a hard wired connection, but it seems the Marvell LAN interface is not recognized as a network device.

Final Thoughts

The Vaio works well with OpenBSD installed on it. With the extended battery, it runs for 5 plus hours, even though I can't dim the screen brightness. The Vaio is great for work that needs to be done at the console; I don't think there is another computer out right now that maximizes the keyboard deck while keeping the total computer footprint as small as the Vaio. The deck is comfortable for typing, and the screen not running Xenocara (console) is easy on the eyes.

The Vaio has some other stuff like a gyro ( it rotates the screen based on orientation ), but really the only things that would make this machine better for me are better working sound and LCD brightness changing.