OSX on Vaio P

An enterprising Vaio P user, "DaHarder," seems to have gotten Leopard running on it, though not everything works. This creates a Mac that weighs 1.4 pounds, has a full-size keyboard, and fits in a (large) pocket.

Unfortunately, it's referenced only obliquely, from another thread. DaHarder, if you're reading, tell us how you did it!

Source [Pocketables Forums]

[#1 posted by Camillo Miller , February 23, 2009 2:36 PM]

Photoshop Layers did the magic?

[#2 posted by Rob Beschizza , February 23, 2009 2:51 PM]

Of course, there's always that...

[#3 posted by zuzu , February 23, 2009 3:52 PM]

I've yet to see solid info on getting Linux working with whatever exotic hardware is used in the Vaio P. Let alone it being "normal" enough for OSX to understand (even with extra kexts). This is a Sony product, after all.

Color me skeptical, but I of course hope it runs OSX swimmingly using Boot 132.

[#4 posted by killdeer , February 23, 2009 4:36 PM]

But hows the battree life?

[#5 posted by Anonymous , February 24, 2009 6:06 AM]

before that image turned up on pocketables, i am sure i saw it somewhere else, on a blog with the user wishing he could install it. it seemed an obvious shop. it was the original image, without the jagged border. now it seems to have been replaced.

how would someone have hacked the gma 500 linux driver so quickly anyway? i'm a bit disappointed to see this spreading like wildfire, but hopefully it will motivate more people to give linux installs on the p a try, and _then_ maybe os x will get there eventually...

--cazabache

[#6 posted by Anonymous , February 24, 2009 7:23 AM]

to killdeer: Who cares with battery life, it has MAC OS X :-D

[#7 posted by Anonymous , February 24, 2009 8:42 AM]

actually he probablly used mac os x86. Its the project to install mac os on windows based intel machines since all new macs now run on intel.

[#8 posted by Anonymous , February 24, 2009 9:49 AM]

Wow! Where is the link of the hack page? I want Mac OS X on the Sony Vaio P Series!!!

Thanks.

[#9 posted by Anonymous , February 24, 2009 11:52 AM]

#3:

"This is a Sony product, after all."

I don't understand the significance of that. If you'd said "This is a Sun product and it is the mid 90s" this would have made a lot of sense to me because, fair enough, SPARC is very different to x86. It's not though, a Sony's a regular computer in a nice case.

Vaios aren't one of a kind miracles, they're pretty. They use Intel like nearly everyone else and you shouldn't be surprised to discover that compatible hardware + software = program run, even in small computers.

[#10 posted by elharley , February 24, 2009 12:01 PM]

Come on...
There is nothing here to show that OSX has been installed on a Vaio P.
A reference from a thread is not much to go on.

[#11 posted by zuzu , February 24, 2009 7:32 PM]

I don't understand the significance of that. If you'd said "This is a Sun product and it is the mid 90s" this would have made a lot of sense to me because, fair enough, SPARC is very different to x86. It's not though, a Sony's a regular computer in a nice case.

Um, you know there are many many other ICs in computers besides the CPU, right? And that they're not all equally well supported / developed for in the Linux kernel? Have you really never wrangled with ALSA for a strange sound chip, or with NDISwrapper for a non-Atheros/Broadcom "Wi-Fi" chip? Or even just getting Xorg to properly recognize the GPU and display?

I'm glad that we have advancements such as Genkernel / Knoppix so that users aren't wasting their lives laboring over menuconfig, but Sony does have a reputation for using oddball hardware that precludes smooth automation of support. Usually a dedicated Linux community for the platform is required. (Even with the Asus EeePC this has been true.) So I await the Sony Vaio P Linux users' mediawiki and phpBB forum explaining exactly how to get your favorite Linux distro installed, and with an active community available for when you eventually hit a snag.

[#12 posted by zuzu , February 24, 2009 7:50 PM]

Not to mention ACPI and getting sleep / resume working in Linux, which seems like it's a pain for almost every laptop there is.

[#13 posted by Micheal Kelly , February 24, 2009 10:51 PM]

#11 / #12:

ZUZU: Ask and you shall receive. Within limits, that is (I don't like MediaWiki much).

I've set up a simple Dokuwiki to document Linux installs on the Vaio P-series netbooks (er, "Lifestyle PCs"). You can find it at http://pwiki.soniccat.com

I'm in the process of a Fedora 10 install right now, and will document it on the wiki. I've been using the following blog post as a guide: http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/01/29/vaio-p-linux-update-fedora-10/

[#14 posted by Micheal Kelly , February 24, 2009 10:53 PM]

oh, and for the record ZuZu:

Fedora detected both the onboard wireless and dongle-ethernet without difficulty. I'm doing a network install right now. According to AdamW over at http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/01/29/vaio-p-linux-update-fedora-10/ , VESA graphics are workable and there are Intel GMA 500 / Poulson drivers available (but they need a lot of work).

So far, the P-Series hardware doesn't look *too* esoteric.

[#15 posted by beneditor , February 26, 2009 3:05 AM]

My wallet and my wife are praying this isn't true.....

[#16 posted by Rob Beschizza , March 5, 2009 7:19 PM]

post on vaio p fedora coming, btw

[#17 posted by Nur , March 9, 2009 7:35 PM]

#14

Exactly. The way ZuZu was talking about it it was as if you could open the Sony P up and it would be full of extraterrestrial crystal computing bits or something.

A Sony is a regular computer. This one happens to be very small and very pretty but it's not running on Carebear stares.

I've not wrangled to get sound or networking working in a Linux machine in a good long time simply because support has grown so strong. If it was so strange it wouldn't run Windows either, think about it.

[#18 posted by Anonymous , April 1, 2009 11:46 AM]

so no vaio p and linux article for us? ; (