Intel Poulsbo Driver For Fedora 11

The Intel Poulsbo Linux driver is a bloody mess, it's that simple. Unlike the main Intel Linux graphics stack, the one that supports the Poulsbo chip found on many Intel Atom-powered devices, is closed-source. While some could careless whether a driver is open or closed source, the Poulsbo driver is difficult to find and to get working on distributions outside of Ubuntu Netbook Remix. However, Intel has already decided to not support Ubuntu 9.10. There was an open-source Poulsbo DRM that was created, but it was rejected from the mainline kernel, on the basis of it being undocumented and just being used by a binary-only client.

For those using Fedora on any Poulsbo-bearing hardware, you have had many steps to go through, but fear no more. Red Hat's Adam Williamson has created a Poulsbo driver repository for Fedora 11. When enabling this third-party repository, anyone can install the Poulsbo driver, which will enable full 3D support (Compiz included). With this being a binary-only driver, a third-party RPM repository is necessary as it will not be included within the mainline Fedora.

For more on this Fedora 11 + Poulsbo driver repository, view Adam's blog. To create the Fedora Poulsbo driver, Adam had started off with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix package. With Ubuntu 9.10 going to lack Poulsbo support, there will be no luck for Fedora 12 users with this Intel hardware.