Guide to Get the Best Performace from the GMA 500

[pjman]

plus "black screen after boot" problem not solved even after adding console=tty1.

Have you tried removing "splash" from the boot options? That fixed the black screen issue for me on my Dell Mini 1010.

[Ludalex]

So what's the best way to achieve a functional 12.04 installation with the GMA500? I have the EeePC 1101HA.
Could someone kind link me to a guide?
Thanks in advance

P.S: happily using 10.10 version at the moment, without problems except the fact it's discontniued. Do you advice me to upgrade?

[bodhi.zazen]

So what's the best way to achieve a functional 12.04 installation with the GMA500? I have the EeePC 1101HA.
Could someone kind link me to a guide?
Thanks in advance

P.S: happily using 10.10 version at the moment, without problems except the fact it's discontniued. Do you advice me to upgrade?

Take a look at the wiki page

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupp...Poulsbo#A12.04

[bodhi.zazen]

I am going to ask the staff to review the status of the gma500.

I am uncomfortable with people advising to use the emgd driver on these forums as this is starting to involve packages outside of the default ubuntu repositories (ie custom iso , custom kernels).

The gma500 team [ https://launchpad.net/~gma500 ] does not have stable packages in the ppa for 12.04.

The forums are not for supporting this sort of custom stuff.

At a minimum, I think I need to ask those supporting the emgd to:

• Provide documentation.
• Be sure to CLEARLY indicate this driver is experimental
• Be sure to CLEARLY indicate that custom kernels and packages outside the official repositories are not supported.
• Please do not "over sell" the emgd. The gma500_gfx has better performance.
• Be sure to indicate when to use the emgd.

I really do not think we should be advising the emgd to new users, or advising it should be used "by default".

[godfazr]

Hey, why few last posts from niop and my answer to him regarding his custom kernel has disappeared?

Have you tried removing "splash" from the boot options? That fixed the black screen issue for me on my Dell Mini 1010.

Thanks, that did the trick after I removed splash from /etc/default/grub and made update-grub.

[bodhi.zazen]

Hey, why few last posts from niop and my answer to him regarding his custom kernel has disappeared?

Because the staff is uncomfortable with his work. See below.

[bodhi.zazen]

The consensus of the staff is:

For preferred driver for Ubuntu 12.04 is the gma500_gfx / psb_gfx. The reasoning is:

• This is the driver in the Ubuntu repositories.
• The driver works out of the box with minimal configuration.

If you have a problem with this driver , the proper thing to do is to file a bug report (rather then advise an experimental driver).


We do not mind if you wish to work on experimental drivers, in this case the emgd, but only with proper documentation and appropriate warnings.

We strongly prefer if you were to:

1. Work with the gma500 team

https://launchpad.net/~gma500

This allows coordination of effort and peer review.

2. Provide appropriate documentation. "Works for me" is insufficient. Please update the wiki page with specific instructions.

3. Do not advise this driver to new users.

4. Do not advise this driver as a panacea. The default driver, gma500_gfx, provides adequate functionality and works with Unity, KDE, XFCE, and LXDE, including transparency. The only potential advantages of the emgd is 3d graphics and video acceleration.

• 3d graphics are sort of icing on the cake. You can obtain 3d effects on kde, xfce, and even gnome-shell without the EMGD driver. 3d graphics support is NOT REQUIRED to have a functional desktop.
• The video acceleration is spotty at best with the emgd. Many users can not get video acceleration working, which defeats the advantage of the driver.

5. Be sure to give proper warnings. Using the emgd driver is not clean and easy. It requires custom kernels and significant changes to the system. These changes are not supported in Ubuntu. I made an initial list of warnings:

• Requires compilation of a custom kernel.
• Requires compilation of the EMGD driver.
• Requires a custom /etc/X11/xorg.conf
• The driver is experimental and although it works for some, it does not work for everyone.
• The 3d video drivers are particularly problematic. many people can get the basic driver working, but without the 3d video.
• There is no official support from Ubuntu for either custom kernels or the EMGD driver.
• There is currently no documentation on how to compile and use the EMGD 1.14 driver.
• The EMGD 1.14 driver officially supports Fedora 14 (outdated), kernel 2.6, and xorg 1.9, all of which are very much out of date for Ubuntu 12.04. To use the driver you will need to downgrade all these packages, which means pinning packages from 11.10 or 11.04. Pinning packages from previous releases is not advised for new users, may cause problems or breakage, and is unsupported.

Last, we have a problem with 3rd party packages or kernels outside of the gma500 team / ppa. If you are going to provide such packages our first choice is that you work with the gma500 team. Second choice would be to use a reputable location for your code/iso such as a ppa, sourceforge, etc. The continued use of unknown repositories, links to virus infested download pages, and packages / iso not subject to peer review is going to be strongly discouraged/ jailed.

[simplygades]

I've submitted a bug report regarding Redshift here.
Please if anyone else has this annoyance on Precise and psb_gfx, click the affect button. Cheers!

[marcuslauer]

Hello Ludalex,
I have the ASUS 1201HA. I think the difference betweeen our netbooks is only the size of the display. So I can give you some hints.

I happily used 11.04 with EMGD. I have this old installation on a second partition. But I don't use it anymore.

Because I installed 12.04 32bit and everything worked out of the box. I had the problem with the black screen after boot (no login screen). But you can fix this by doing the jobs documented at Bodhizazens blog. These are my changes in the /etc/default/grub

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet console=tty1 acpi_backlight=vendor acpi_osi=Linux acer_wmi.blacklist=yes mem=1920mb"

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor console=tty1"

With this version and the gma500_gfx "out-of-the-box"-driver this netbook is the first time nearly perfect. Only the display brightness keys don't work. But I don't need that / never used it in the past. Flash-Videos in small frames is ok. For videoplayback I use smplayer - for "normal-resolutuion"-Videos it's acceptable.
Standby is perfect. This is very important for me, because my netbook gets several times a day to sleep. And from the beginning, the "waking up" did always work - no nightmares

So, give it a try. For me this system is really flawless and I'm very happy with it. Because of gma500_gfx is in the kernel, everything will be easier in the future. Happy end for this crappy chipset?

Sorry for my poor english... ML

So what's the best way to achieve a functional 12.04 installation with the GMA500? I have the EeePC 1101HA.
Could someone kind link me to a guide?
Thanks in advance

P.S: happily using 10.10 version at the moment, without problems except the fact it's discontniued. Do you advice me to upgrade?

[at0msk]

I tried 10.04 on an Inspiron 1100 and had an awful time with the display driver. For some reason I thought trying 12.04 on an Inspiron 1210 mini would be different. But here we are again: black screen on boot and jumping through tons of unnecessary hoops to get something that just barely passes as a display. This. This is why Ubuntu is just going to stay low-man-on-the-totem.

During the installation I only had a small rectangular display in the corner of the screen that constantly flickered and ghosted everything. DURING THE INSTALL. This should never be. 12.04 *looked* enticing but now I see it's the same clunky crap wrapped up in a different colored bow.

** I've edited grub and changed the default line. I can boot up now w/out the black screen but I still have to enter the console via ctrl alt F1 and enter "sudo service lightdm restart" to get to a normal desktop. :\