Guide to Get the Best Performace from the GMA 500

[bodhi.zazen]

Hi psb_gfx lovers...

Yow today I've tested the latest driver named gma500_gfx.ko!!
So nice...

I could say we don't have to do trick for plymouth, vt.handoff anymore! it smoothly works... amazing.



And I've attached source for those who want to tackle to the bleeding edge driver experiences...
But one thing.
I've modified psb_drv.c because every time "acpi_video_register()" gets in my way to control the backlight, so I've commented it. Hopefully this could help some types of VAIO machine as well... On the other hand, like AspireOne, it might need, if so, please uncomment that line.

Regards,
Tista

PS:
An attached tar-ball is for kernel geeks. if you guys didn't know how to write Makefile, unfortunately you'd better to stay away from this trial...

Did you submit that patch to kernel.org ?

[Anaesthisia]

So, what is the outlook for Ubuntu 12.04?
Will there be a functional EMGD driver?

Has anyone tried out MeeGo on their GMA 500 hardware? Is it a useful Unix?

A

[bodhi.zazen]

So, what is the outlook for Ubuntu 12.04?

The psb_gfx driver is looking good. You can try it in the 12.04 beta.

You need to restart X

Will there be a functional EMGD driver?

I have not used the closed source driver is a long time.

[versvs]

Hi,

it is just great that 12.04 beta2 finally delivers a reasonable driver for gma500. thanks everyone that made it possible (from coders to people reporting bugs and trying patches!).



I was able to install the new beta release on my laptop, using the alternate install (the desktop install was crashing at a certain step). But now everytime i boot up i get a black screen. Changing the grub settings (console=tty1) didnt help. Of course, I can do the "ctrl+alt+f1 > lightdm restart" everytime i boot up, but I wonder if there is a mode to override this bug. From what I think, given the real advance of the work, should be nuts compared with what have been achieved


Any ideas?


thanks!

[tista]

Did you submit that patch to kernel.org ?

@bodhi.zazen

No, I haven't.
Because this modification must be polished more as upstream changes, and Kristoffer already know this issue I wish...

In fact VAIO P user knows this machine is crazy (at least in Japan) so that acpi_register() function might be accepted as a module parameter. But as far as I know devs could solve this, but in previous, exactly Alan gave us "fullscreen scaling and dithering" on 2.6.39 kernel that we'd contacted to Kristoffer. In that time, I've made a first patch for it (EMGD didn't have this dithering routine yet, so seems ugly on EMGD obvously..).

Regards,
Tista

[tista]

So, what is the outlook for Ubuntu 12.04?
Will there be a functional EMGD driver?

Has anyone tried out MeeGo on their GMA 500 hardware? Is it a useful Unix?

A

@Anaesthisia

A #1
Almost seems well.
Or I want to ask you "Why do you wanna try Pangolin out?"
Because everyone has own purpose to run Ubuntu on Poulsbo machines, right? But I don't know what you want for Pangolin and even which machine you have...

How should I answer to you?

A #2
No.
Because current EMGD release (1.10) has ABI 10 as graphic driver. But Pangolin already got ABI 12 or higher, OK? You should wait for the new release of EMGD from Intel, NOT from us...

A #3
I don't know.
In past, MeeGo IVI only had Poulsbo support natively. And now what? I don't know... Anyway MeeGo/Tizen would support mainly "Automotive" and "Embedded" revisions I think. Because there's only a few vendors to release Atom laptop/nettop in the future since everybody thinks "Oh Atom?! No thank you!! Yeah damned performance, right?"... Exactly a couple of months ago, I've made a discussion with a laptop engineer who wroks on XXXX, then he said "We would never release any Atom laptops in the future because lots of consumers thought Atom already died on laptop revision especially on performance"...

Totally I agree with him.

Cheers,
Tista

[blugeco]

Has anyone tried out MeeGo on their GMA 500 hardware? Is it a useful Unix?

I tried Meego on my Nokia Booklet.

There's an image specifically made for it (you can read about it here) but it didn't work very well: the screen was flickering, it was not very stable.

I also tried latest 1.2 images (both the IVI and Netbook edition) but didn't even manage to get to install either of them.

I don't think it makes much sense to spend time on it. Meego's website hasn't been updated since the 23rd of June 2011.
From what I gather all the Meego resources have been moved to a new project called Tizen, which still hasn't produced anything useful for the end user.

[tista]

All 3.3 kernel users...

I've contributed the new "gma500_gfx" as deb package for drm-next mainline kernel. An attached tar-ball contains deb package for automatic install/build as dkms. This deb could install gma500_gfx on 3.3.0-996 generic kernel series which employed latest drm functions.

CAUTION! - This gma500_gfx only could be improved by drm-next kernels (means 3.3.0-996 series), so you guys first should install that kernel via downloading from ubuntu kernel ppa before installing gma500_gfx...

And this package includes a patch below:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/915903/
A patch makes new module parameter to solve acpi_video_register on various machines to toggle it ON/OFF via this option on grub:

gma500_gfx.disable_acpi_video=1

if you guys could set it, then gma500_gfx would disable acpi_video_register(). it would be suitable for VAIO machines, in opposite, the other machines won't set it since those which needs acpi backlight controls...

Finally VAIO P would be OK with this grub option:

acpi_backlight=video gma500_gfx.disable_acpi_video=1

Have a nice day!!
Tista

[fanum]

So, what is the outlook for Ubuntu 12.04?
Will there be a functional EMGD driver?

Has anyone tried out MeeGo on their GMA 500 hardware? Is it a useful Unix?

A

I tried Meego on my Nokia Booklet.

There's an image specifically made for it (you can read about it here) but it didn't work very well: the screen was flickering, it was not very stable.

I also tried latest 1.2 images (both the IVI and Netbook edition) but didn't even manage to get to install either of them.

I don't think it makes much sense to spend time on it. Meego's website hasn't been updated since the 23rd of June 2011.
From what I gather all the Meego resources have been moved to a new project called Tizen, which still hasn't produced anything useful for the end user.

To add to the discussion even though everyone already did a pretty good job of explaining it, the outlook is quite good for 12.04. I have been running it with the gma500_gfx drivers with almost no issues. Now Alan Cox (The rockstar at Intel that has saved our butts on multiple occasions) has stated that even 3d in the open-source drivers may be possible and not far away.

The outlook for meego is not good, since it is a dead project. They officially gave up on it a few months after nokia backed out (it was a joint venture with Intel). Intel continued to work on it briefly, then gave up too. The official statement is that it is being switched the the "Tizen" project, but if you look at the details they give about Tizen, it is nothing like meego. May have the same backend, kernel etc, but it will be html5 based for the gui. Lots of work to be done, just to catch up to where they were with meego, So nothing very similar. It is probably a long way away from being useful, and also probably too little to late.

I have never been considered an optimist, and I am no authority in this area, but I would consider EMGD dead. We may see another unimpressive release or two, but nothing too exciting.

As far as Meego being good LINUX (different than Unix), it at one time had great potential and large backing. I have tried many of the releases, and was barely able to get them to even boot, let alone be usable. If nokia hadnt made an exclusive deal with the devil (Microsoft) then it could of been great.... could of been.

FANUM

[neokod]

Hello everybody !

Thanks to the time to help all of us

I just moved to Precise Pangolin, with a AcerAspireOne (GMA 500 / Poulsbo).

I have added the Kernel 3.3.0-030300 from the kernel.ubuntu.com

I have removed all poulsbo/psb & emgd drivers.

I have removed all extra parameters on the grub loading line.

I have installed the gma500 deb of you Tista (posted 3 hours ago)

I have put "Driver "gma500_gfx" inside the xorg.conf

But... I still have a black screen.

Any help would be appreciate.

If you could post the xorg.conf please ?

Or may be I need to launch a special command (dpkg-reconfigure something....)

Thanks a lot !

EDIT:
When I try :
# modprobe gma500_gfx
FATAL: Error inserting gma500_gfx (/lib/modules/3.3.0-030300-generic-pae/updates/dkms/gma500_gfx.ko):Unknown symbol in module, or unknowwn parameter

# dmseg
gma500_gfx: Unknown symbol drm_property_create_range (err 0)