raymac46 Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 (edited) If Intel ever sold a more Linux unfriendly video solution than GMA500 (Poulsbo) I don't know what it is. You'll likely encounter this little gem in Atom powered netbooks like the Dell Mini 10 or Dell Mini 12, but some smaller notebooks like Sony Vaio also have it. The problem is that the 3D portion of this video card was not designed or built by Intel, but by Tungsten Graphics. It's totally proprietary so can't be fixed or modified in any Linux situation. Dell (shame on them!) actually offered a Linux powered system with the Dell Mini 10 and 12. This was based on a custom Ubuntu 8.04 setup with a FOSS kluge job that got the 3D acceleration to work. Subsequent kernel changes broke this driver "glue" and as a result 3D hardware acceleration has not been possible with Poulsbo since. There is no real upgrade path from the customized 8.04 distro. To its credit, Intel fixed the 2D portion for Poulsbo and it's in the kernel now as a GMA500 module. Prior to this fix all you had with a new installation of Linux was a brain dead Vesa video which didn't use the native resolution of the Poulsbo chip. Early versions of the Intel GMA500 driver didn't work unless you switched off the graphical boot - you just got a black screen unless you tweaked the boot parameters to switch off the graphic splash screen. Now with the latest kernels this has been fixed and you can get a decent 2D display right out of the box with say Linux Mint 16. Don't try running anything that needs 3D acceleration like Unity or Cinnamon though - that is only supported in software and the Atom chip runs it very badly. Stick with Xfce. Edited January 2, 2014 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 BTW if you were wondering if lovely LXLE works with GMA500 - it does not. LXLE is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS which has an older kernel. Unless you add in the boot tweaks LXLE crashes. With the boot tweak I got a decent display with the live ISO, but I don't know how stable it is. Linux Mint 16 Xfce works fine but the other Linux unfriendly part comes into play with it - Broadcom wifi. You have to install with a cable connection and then use the Driver Manager to install the Broadcom firmware. Then wifi works. At the end of the day you have a very nice little Linux netbook - upgradable, native resolution, works well. This is only 5 years after Dell sold it to an unsuspecting customer. And by now most of these units are in a recycling depot somewhere. It's stuff like this that makes me question whether Dell has/had any commitment to Linux at all. At least when Acer made a Linux netbook they used Linux friendly hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 Thanks for the head's up This may help you some with troubleshooting and tweaking: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gma500 I guess I lucked out with my Atom notebook. The one I have is a HP Mini 110 (from 09) that has the GMA 3150 which uses the foss driver.. I only realized by accident that it has a 64 bit processor as I assumed it was 32bit. I did not know that they made 64 bit Atom processors. Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know that not all Atom machines are this horrible at supporting Linux. Just watch out for those GMA 500 chipsets Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 Yes I have an Acer Aspire One that has the old school Atom N270 but Intel GMA945 graphics, and an Atheros wifi chip. That is very Linux friendly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 Yes I have an Acer Aspire One that has the old school Atom N270 but Intel GMA945 graphics, and an Atheros wifi chip. That is very Linux friendly. Very nice, mine also has Atheros wif Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 Both of my netbooks were sold with Linux pre-installed. The difference is that Acer actually built a Linux machine, and Dell did not. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 Intel graphics and Broadcom have both caused me to have spiking blood pressure from time to time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 Intel graphics is an oxymoron of sorts, but I've never had a problem with them in Linux except for the GMA500. Now take Broadcom....please. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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