Sony Vaio Z21 (2011)

Updated on 29. January 2012

I'm using the Sony Vaio Z21 notebook since 23. January 2012. At the moment I'm very pleased with this notebook. It is lightweight, super fast and just looks great!

Web research shows, that this notebook works great since Linux kernel version 3.2. This was finally the reason for me to order this device:

Sony Vaio Z mailing list.
Installation report Ubuntu/Gentoo.
Info at wikispaces.
Installation report before kernel 3.1. This guy really was suffering...
How to install Debian Linux from usb stick.

Now, the notebook - without media dock - really works fine!

Hardware configuration

Just some hardware details:

Intel Core i7
USB 3.0
SD-Card reader and Sony memorystick reader
No media dock

OS: GRML Linux live system "Knecht Rootrecht"

Have a look at GRML's homepage . I booted the live CD and got a nice working notebook able to access the raid system, nice graphics support with monitor hot plugging, ...

Because of the success with GRML I decided to entirely remove Windows (after backup) and to install Debian testing.

OS: Debian testing (squeeze)

I installed Debian testing (squeeze). The downloaded netinstall CD ROM did not work for me. So I used the netinstall CD from the stable distribution. The kernel of the stable distribution started without problems, but it wasn't possible to access the hard disks connected via the Intel raid system. Therefore I turned it off and I'm using software RAID-0 now. After minimal installation I immediately switched to testing by changing the entries in the /etc/apt/sources.list file.

At this time the kernel version of Debian testing was 3.1.0. This kernel already worked well, but suspend to RAM didn't. To get this mandatory feature I updated to Vanilla Kernel version 3.2.

Supported parts using Vanilla Linux 3.2.2

CPU with frequency switching
Graphics with 3D support and monitor hot plugging using the VGA and HDMI port. Didn't try both external ports together.
Display brightness control
WLAN
Ethernet 1000Mb
Suspend to RAM
Sound card
SD-Card reader tried with Sandisk Extreme HD Video card, 32GB. The performance was 30MB/s as promised on the card.
Some multimedia keys: Mute, volume, brightness, suspend.
USB 3.0 tried with Verbatim USB key 88MB/s, USB 2.0
SSD software RAID-0. Using this console command: "time dd bs=$((1024*1024)) count=$((1024*10)) if=/dev/md0 of=/dev/null" I get about 800MB/s readout speed...
Touch pad with multi finger tapping to emulate left, middle and right mouse button with one, two and three fingers respectively. Using this feature, you don't need to use the click pad. This feature also works together with "two-finger"-scrolling.
Bluetooth, tested with bluetooth mouse.

Not tested (yet)