Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

tempestuous · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 4944 Location: Australia

The Intel GMA500 Poulsbo graphics devices, as typically found in recent Atom-based netbooks, have been a problem in Linux. The "intel" Xorg driver doesn't support this graphics device at all, so Puppy's xorgwizard will fall back to the generic "vesa" Xorg driver. Not only is this driver limited in performance and features, it simply doesn't play well with the Poulsbo graphics hardware - apparently there are bad glitches.
And the "Xvesa" xserver gives similarly poor results.

A potential solution is the new "pcb" Xorg driver, which I recently posted here -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=515093#515093
but this driver is new and cutting-edge, and success is not certain.
It would be great if someone could get that driver working under Puppy 5.1/5.2, but until such time forum member jemimah has told me about a working solution using the "fbdev" Xorg driver in combination with the "uvesafb" kernel module.
Now attached.

tempestuous · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 4944 Location: Australia

INSTRUCTIONS

Get Puppy 5.2.x up and running first. The xorgwizard wizard will set up the generic vesa Xorg driver.
jemimah has some automated setup scripts she uses in Puppeee, but I think it's best I supply the manual setup information, since this information is untested in Puppy 5.1/5.2 at this stage.

First you need to do some diagnosis to determine the best (native) resolution and refresh rate for your display. Run this command -

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

Just a quick note - VLC seems to be the only media player that performs adequately with the fbdev/poulsbo combination. YouTube should work ok at low rez, but not so well at high rez.

tempestuous · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 4944 Location: Australia

If you have an ASUS Eee netbook with Poulsbo graphics, you are likely to want to use Puppeee, and as I understand it Puppeee already contains the necessary fbdev Xorg driver and uvesafb kernel module ...

but if you have a netbook other than Eee, you're more likely to want to use Fluppy. I just discovered that Fluppy 013 includes the fbdev Xorg driver, but it doesn't include the uvesafb kernel module, so I now attach it as a separate dotpet.
Once this dotpet is installed, setup instructions are the same as above.

maxe · Joined: 23 May 2011 Posts: 3

Aloha,

im running 5.25 on a GMA500. I followed your instructions, but after rebooting x it seems like I only have 256 colors. Can you please help me change that?

tempestuous · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 4944 Location: Australia

I don't know for sure. I've only tested this Xorg driver with my onboard SiS graphics card where it works fine, but I have no direct experience with Poulsbo graphics devices.

First let's just check that you have installed the dotpets from the first post, which are compatible with Puppy 5.1/5.2?

I would guess that when you load the uvesafb module, you may be specifying parameters too high for the graphics device to handle. So if you are using the same values I provided in my example above -

edoc · Posted: Thu 07 Jul 2011, 17:55 Post subject:

Would this have any positive impact on a Samsung NB30 with a GMA3150?

The Netbook is working OK but seems dim in bright light ... and I am always curious about incremental improvements ... especially while we pray for Jemimah to be reassigned to quiet desk-duty!

I am also trying to update Claws-mail ... preferably without breaking it!

tempestuous · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 4944 Location: Australia

8-bit · Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 3012 Location: Oregon

I am going to drop in my two cents worth of advice here and suggest you do a backup of your pupsave file before you start anything like this.
That way, in a worst case crash, you have a backup that you can copy to your frugal install directory to recover.
Pupsave backups have saved my bacon a number of times!

beluga · Joined: 01 Oct 2011 Posts: 3

Im trying to install lucy 5.2.8 on a asus eee 1101ha, but I´m stuck on
"We need to configure Xorg to use the newly installed fbdev driver: open /etc/X11/xorg.conf in Geany, and change this line -
Code:
Driver "vesa" #card0driver

to this -
Code:
Driver "fbdev" #card0driver "
cant even find the word driver in that file, I guess I ´m going wrong somewhere before that but cant figure out where.

tempestuous · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 4944 Location: Australia

I recently learned that Lucid only has a base xorg.conf file, and autoconfigures Xorg at each bootup.
The solution is to create a full xorg.conf file;- exit X with Ctrl<Alt>Backspace
then run this command -