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No Intel Poulsbo Driver For Ubuntu 9.10

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  • No Intel Poulsbo Driver For Ubuntu 9.10

    Phoronix: No Intel Poulsbo Driver For Ubuntu 9.10

    Intel's Poulsbo driver for their GMA 500 IGP on the SCH U15W is a bloody mess. Unlike their X.Org driver for their other Intel IGPs, the Poulsbo driver is closed-source (since they licensed some of the technologies for this graphics processor), but the problems go beyond just whether or not you like to use a binary blob...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Dell Mini 12

    I just spent half a day making my daughter's Dell Mini 12 dual boot XP and Ubuntu 9.04, and it was a nightmare. Eventually I got a good 2d stable desktop using the PPA psb repository and a few xorg.conf tweaks. The real kicker was when I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.28-15 and the driver said NO. Works fine with 2.6.28-14. With 2.6.30-4 all I got was a black screen.

    So it runs OK as long as there are no kernel upgrades. I fiddled the Grub menu.lst to make 2.6.28-14 the default.

    This little news item means the Mini 12 will be stuck at 9.04 for the rest of it's working life. Or, maybe a clever person will reverse engineer the hardware. We can only hope.

    I cannot see me ever buying another computer with this chipset unless Intel does something positive. I have a suggestion, Intel should buy the company that made the GMA500, and then open source the hardware. I am sure it would be petty cash to them.

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    • #3
      what a shitty blob. good that ubuntu simply says no to this shit.

      it is intel's task to provide a proper driver, if they don't do it, it's their problem.
      simply buy no intel products as long as they mess around with their costumers...

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      • #4
        Great stuff. Its looking like the ONLY good GPU is an AMD...
        Amazing how things change.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by lbcoder View Post
          Great stuff. Its looking like the ONLY good GPU is an AMD...
          Amazing how things change.
          The Intel GMA 500 is a one-off thing, apparently. I hope that future versions of the Atom get rid of that shit stain of a graphics card.

          It sucks too because a lot of people are buying mini-12s and mini-10s and those use the proprietary driver.

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          • #6
            Nevermind. Moorestown platform will have proprietary driver also. Damn Intel Asshats.

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            • #7
              I'll never jump through as many hoops as I did trying to get this crap driver loaded on our Dell Mini 12.

              Next time I run across an issue like this, the system is going on Craigslist....just like this Mini 12 is about to.

              Sort of gives one a bad taste in their mouths for this whole netbook idea huh?
              Funny thing: I have the Dell mini 12 and an Asus 1000HE, I never have any hell with the Asus but don't they both run the same GPU or am I thoroughly confused?

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              • #8
                Efforts are likely spent on the Moorestown driver. Some changes from there may be backported to the Poulsbo driver at a later point. For now, the latest "supported" Ubuntu distribution is 9.04: Kernel 2.6.28, X.org 1.6.x. See PPA for Ubuntu Mobile.

                You have to know there are two drivers for the Poulsbo:
                - IEGD ('iegd') is the officially maintained one
                - GMA500 ('psb') is the not-officially supported one

                The former has better chances to support newer distributions in the future. Moblin2 will likely be a supported platform too, the opposite would be quite surprising. Some other things might also happen by Q4.

                BTW, there is unfortunately no other power-efficient chip with the same capabilities available from other vendors (AMD, NVIDIA).

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                • #9
                  psb on 2.6.30

                  The psb kernel module works almost ok on kernel 2.6.30 with patches from this git repository: http://koldfront.dk/gitweb?p=psb;a=summary

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                  • #10
                    I'll take a larger battery over proprietary drivers any day of the week.

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