Intel GMA500 Poulsbo works with recent kernels.

[Walter Dnes]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 12:12:57PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote
> | From: Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
> 
> |   Many linux users who bought early netbooks with Intel GMA Poulsbo GPUs
> | ended up kicking themselves in the rear. If you got rid of yours, you
> | may end up kicking yourself in the rear even more.  According to
> | http://blog.bodhizazen.net/linux/linux-gma500-poulsbo-driver-moved-out-of-staging/
> 
> My understanding is that this is frame-buffer-only (with kernel mode
> switching).

  This is probably why I had to also install the xf86-video-fbdev driver,

> If you care about video in the Atom space, ION is better.  (Expensive,
> probably eats more power, not common except for HTPC)
> 
> Or get an AMD CPU+GPU chip (C-60 or E-350). (Not very available but I
> don't understand why.)
> 
> Or get a low power i3 system (more money).

  If I was doing it all over again, I would've known better.  Hindsight
is always 20/20.  This post was for those of us who mistakenly bought
what turned out to be almost a doorstop under linux.  I have a real
laptop plus the netbook.  Before the new driver, the netbook could do at
best a painfully slow 1024x768 X Window using the VESA driver.  It was
better as text-console-only device.  Now, it's half-decent at 1366x768

  One semi-related question for text mode; is there a source somewhere
for free ISO8859-1 wide *TEXT CONSOLE* fonts that are 16 or 17 pixels
wide?  I am *NOT* talking about X Window fonts.  I can set append =
"video=640x480" in /etc/lilo.conf and set consolefont="lat1-10" in
/etc/conf.d/consolefont for a nice crisp 80x48 text diesplay.  The 10
pixel-high font is actually much easier on the eyes than 8 pixel-high
font in the VGA50 mode (640x400 with 8x8 font).

  With other drivers on other machines, the text console resolution is
independant of the X Window resolution.  With this driver, setting text
consoles 640x480 sets the X Window resolution to 640x480.  The standard
VGA 8x16 font produces and unreadably tiny 170x48 textmode.

1366x768
-------- = 170x48
   8x16

  The only way to get the best of both worlds is to leave video at the
default (1366x768) and select a larger font.  There is an "iso01-12x22"
which is better (113x34) but I'd like something closer to 80 columns
across.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists