Intel's Medfield Still A Botched Binary Mess Under Linux?

[Kano]

If you dont need it anymore, feel free to send it to me. I have got no gma 500 test hardware.

[FireBurn]

I have an Acer AspireOne. What a big mistake it was to buy that netbook. I bought it back when it first came out a few years ago, thinking that MeeGo would support it, since its an ATOM notebook. The only information/updates I have received in all these years is from Phoronix. So I very much appreciate Michael's pushing Intel on this issue.

We have waited years for descent support. We got a binary driver a few years back, but thats never been updated, and with each new kernel release and new release of X.org/Mesa, the old driver keeps breaking. It is very frustrating as a user. Even Windows support on the Poulsbo platform is god-awful, with multiple drivers, each supporting a different subset of features, but at least with Windows you get working 3d (sort-of) without hacks.

It's too bad, the PowerVR hardware is good. But the driver situation is a terrible mess. I will never ever buy another ATOM/Poulsbo again.

Out of interest why did you buy it in the first place - every linux review around the blogosphere slated it and warned against using it

[grege]

@Fireburn

When I purchased my Dell Mini 12 there was a working driver, a binary blob - but it worked. In fact you could purchase the notebook from Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed and with a working video driver. They just failed to ever update it so that over time the blob would no longer work with newer Xorg and kernel versions, so it was use Ubuntu 8.04 forever or seek alternatives. So far the EMGD driver has been able to be forced into newer Ubuntus, but I doubt it has been successful elsewhere. I think there was an Arch version of the Ubuntu work. So for me it has been Ubuntu or nothing or worse than nothing - XP.

My Dell runs Xubuntu 11.10 and works fine for what it is, it is just hard work to do each update.

[lucazade]

There are no words to express my feelings about Gma500 and Intel.
I'm so tired to find everytime a way to make these terrible drivers work in Ubuntu and package them in a PPA.

Anyway also Canonical and Dell are responsible of this mess because they didn't buy a premium support from Intel when shipping netbook with this chipset, that's why there were no more updates of the original 'psb' driver.

[grege]

There are no words to express my feelings about Gma500 and Intel.
I'm so tired to find everytime a way to make these terrible drivers work in Ubuntu and package them in a PPA.

Anyway also Canonical and Dell are responsible of this mess because they didn't buy a premium support from Intel when shipping netbook with this chipset, that's why there were no more updates of the original 'psb' driver.

But a big thank you to you and the other members of the GMA500 team for keeping our machines running for years, when Intel has abandoned us.

[agajan]

out of staging in which release?

However, this Intel Medfield graphics support was added to the Intel GMA500 "Poulsbo" DRM driver, which was merged and moved out of staging in the brand-new Linux 3.2 kernel.

I believe that this driver will be moved out of staging in the Linux 3.3 kernel.

[autono]

Corporate psychos

Charlie Demerjian doubts Intel will ever release Medfield. Asus, Dell, Acer; they all got burned on poulsbo. They aren't going to make that mistake again. Intel won't be able to give away Medfield for free. Intel's problem is they can't tell the truth and admit that Medfield will never be sold.

Suppose Intel does have a good graphics driver, ha ha ha, Medfield still has no advantage over Arm. The one advantage they had was bringing Windows to the dance. But Intel went for a fling with Meego and now MS is in bed with Arm. Intel will be paid back for their trasgressions.

Michael will have a lot less anguish when he grasps the truth.

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/01/03/intel-thinks-cedar-trail-is-a-dog-reading-between-bullet-points/