GMA500 (Poulsbo) gma500_gfx

[Anaesthisia]

I am guessing you are referring to llvmpipe ?

And yes, llvmpipe is slow.

I highly advise you switch to K/X/Lubuntu

I'm not sure exactly what technologies are involved, I only read that Ubuntu would take away the Unity 2D option in 12.10.

I guess I could still upgrade to 12.10, then, but install Xfce or KDE desktop? I do like the Unity greeter, so I might want to keep that.

A

[sandyd]

Removed posts on EMGD
Please read the first post.

Note: This thread is NOT for discussing the depreciated EMGD driver. If you need support for the EMGD please contact Intel.

A separate EMGD thread can be created as soon as the gma500 team provides stable packages and adequate documentation.

As said, EMGD is depreciated, and breaks systems.

[grahamst]

I've been away from this thread for a while and have just been catching up.

Have I got this right?

gma500_gfx at last works out of the box with 12.10. However, it won't be usable because Unity 2D has been scrapped and llvmpipe, which has to take over the Unity 2D work, is really slow. There are solutions (try a different version of Ubuntu, install a different graphical environment like KDE) but they all involve fiddling with the standard distribution, which means my Acer AO751h won't work out of the box - disappointing.

I'm willing to do a bit of fiddling, but I'm no expert. Given that 12.04 has got long-term support for another 18 months and I only want to run basic applications (mostly web, mail, office stuff), will I be better off not upgrading beyond 12.04?

Graham

[mikewhatever]

I've been away from this thread for a while and have just been catching up.

Have I got this right?

gma500_gfx at last works out of the box with 12.10. However, it won't be usable because Unity 2D has been scrapped and llvmpipe, which has to take over the Unity 2D work, is really slow. There are solutions (try a different version of Ubuntu, install a different graphical environment like KDE) but they all involve fiddling with the standard distribution, which means my Acer AO751h won't work out of the box - disappointing.

I'm willing to do a bit of fiddling, but I'm no expert. Given that 12.04 has got long-term support for another 18 months and I only want to run basic applications (mostly web, mail, office stuff), will I be better off not upgrading beyond 12.04?

Graham

That's about right, though I am not sure what you mean by "fiddling with the standard distribution". If you want Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Lubuntu installed, the 12.10 release should, hopefully, work without fiddling. Also, 12.04 is supported for 5 years as an LTS, whereas 12.10 is a regular release supported for 18 months.

[grahamst]

Thanks. Apologies for mixing up the support periods for LTS and regular distributions with their update frequency.

By the 'standard distribution' all I meant was the version downloadable from http://www.ubuntu.com/ - as far as I can see, the others all call themselves 'derivatives'.

I've been using 'standard' Ubuntu ever since a special netbook version was released. That no longer applies, and it may be that one of the other versions is now more suitable for my GMA500 netbook. However, given that (unlike most people who post to this thread) I don't want to spend a lot of time tinkering with my OS/GUI, I think I'll probably stick with 12.04, as it works for what I want to do and the support period will almost certainly last longer than my netbook (which is already 2.5 years old).

Thanks to everyone who has contributed both to this thread and to the old 'Performace' thread - you've helped to make my netbook workable.

Graham

[gsedej]

Hello!

I would just like to confirm that Kubuntu 12.10 on GMA500 works very good for desktop use! (Atom z520 in my case)

I was able to run KDE plasma desktop smoothly on 2 monitors LVDS 1366x768 + VGA 1600x1050 with compositin (xrender).

(There is still issue with not being able to change resolution for LVDS, I posted bug here https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55564)

Also, there is no OpenGL or video acceleration

[grahamst]

OK - it's good that Kubuntu works well. I can confirm that standard (GNOME) Ubuntu 12.10 is awfully slow. Even allowing for the fact that I'm running it from a USB drive, it's really sluggish - you can see windows being crreated and taken down in stages, the scrolling Unity icons on the left of the screen jerk up and down very slowly and it takes a while for the menu bar at the top to change, even after the initial loading. Scrolling up and down web pages is also sluggish and jerky.

No surprise after what's been written in this forum, but even if the installed version is a bit faster I couldn't live with it. It's a shame, because the GMA500 driver really does work without any modification being needed.

I'll try downloading Kubuntu and will see how much difference there is. I'll also try GNOME Ubuntu on my older, non-GMA500 netbook to see how that compares.

Graham

Graham

[GreatEmerald]

So far I still can't get the screen to turn off on my Oak Trail device. I can now make it decrease the brightness, but not turn it off... Neither using xset nor otherwise. It just makes the screen "shine black".

Has anyone else experienced something like that? Also, how is it related to the graphics driver, anyway? Directly, or could it actually be a bug in the screen drivers or ACPI or something else?

[TakeLifeEasy]

My understanding is that Gnome 3 on Fedora works well with the GMA500 chipset. Does anyone know how they managed this and if these tweaks can be ported to Ubuntu 12.10

[mikewhatever]

My understanding is that Gnome 3 on Fedora works well with the GMA500 chipset. Does anyone know how they managed this and if these tweaks can be ported to Ubuntu 12.10

That's not my experience. Fedora 18 with Gnome3 is rather slow as well.