Good news for those of us with the GMA500 (Poulsbo) graphics card !
Fedora 17 ships with the 3.3.4 kernel and my GMA500 works out of the box without the need for any customizations to the boot options. Simply put the .iso onto a flash drive and boot.
Again, the gma500_gfx offers 2d graphics (no 3d). So while gnome-shell is working with llvmpipe, but there is a noticeable performance hit.
While it is novel to see gnome-shell running on the GMA500, I suggest the kde spin (if you want eye candy) or the xfce or lxde spin.
The gma500 should work, with 2d graphics, using the 3.3.4 or higher kernel, on any Linux distribution.
You may need to add (kernel) boot options for suspend or brightness keys. These features are often BIOS dependent.
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Do you have any tips on which boot options you’ll need to have suspend/hibernate working?
@aspireone the boot options seem to be dependent on hardware / bios. A few people posted some suggestions on my blog here :
http://blog.bodhizazen.net/linux/ubuntu-12-04-gma500-poulsbo-boot-options/
Hi, I’m new to linux and seeking clarification on two points.
Does the 3.3.4 kernel support the GMA500 chip specifically, or the whole series?
Does the support entail 2d acceleration or only basic functionality?
I’m running Fedora 17 Gnome on an Asus x101CH, which I think uses the GMA3600. The experience is sluggish, and the cursor flickers and disappears. I suspect that Gnome is doing some 3d rendering and is responsible for the slow performance. But I’m not sure I’ve understood everything I’ve read.
Any distro recommendations? And any suggestions where I might report my progress? I’m booting off an SD card and I’m guessing that people would like to know it’s possible to do that on this machine.
@Necromancer79 – There are open source drivers for the gma500 and gma3600 video cards in the linux kernel.
Graphics is 2d only.
Gnome (shell) on Fedora is using llvmpipe (basically using your cpu for gpu to give 3d graphics effects). While it is interesting to see gnome-shell on my gma500, I find the kde, xfce, or lxde spins give better performance.
See: http://spins.fedoraproject.org/
bodhi.zazen, thanks for fielding my questions. lxde is indeed faster :)
I might even be glad that I was ignorant of the gma3600 / n2600 issues when I purchased the netbook, because I may not have seriously considered installing linux if I’d known.
Good News, wait too long for ubuntu to support this driver!
Time to go back to Fedora.
Nice web mate,
Gonna give fedora a go on my vaio p19….
See what happens. Natty Narwhal struggled with videos…. Fingers crossed for Fedora.