No Intel Poulsbo Driver For Ubuntu 9.10

[phoronix]

Phoronix: No Intel Poulsbo Driver For Ubuntu 9.10

Intel's Poulsbo driver for their GMA 500 IGP on the SCH U15W is a bloody mess. Unlike their X.Org driver for their other Intel IGPs, the Poulsbo driver is closed-source (since they licensed some of the technologies for this graphics processor), but the problems go beyond just whether or not you like to use a binary blob...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzQzMg

[grege]

I just spent half a day making my daughter's Dell Mini 12 dual boot XP and Ubuntu 9.04, and it was a nightmare. Eventually I got a good 2d stable desktop using the PPA psb repository and a few xorg.conf tweaks. The real kicker was when I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.28-15 and the driver said NO. Works fine with 2.6.28-14. With 2.6.30-4 all I got was a black screen.

So it runs OK as long as there are no kernel upgrades. I fiddled the Grub menu.lst to make 2.6.28-14 the default.

This little news item means the Mini 12 will be stuck at 9.04 for the rest of it's working life. Or, maybe a clever person will reverse engineer the hardware. We can only hope.

I cannot see me ever buying another computer with this chipset unless Intel does something positive. I have a suggestion, Intel should buy the company that made the GMA500, and then open source the hardware. I am sure it would be petty cash to them.

[bugmenot]

what a shitty blob. good that ubuntu simply says no to this shit.

it is intel's task to provide a proper driver, if they don't do it, it's their problem.
simply buy no intel products as long as they mess around with their costumers...

[lbcoder]

Great stuff. Its looking like the ONLY good GPU is an AMD...
Amazing how things change.

[drag]

Great stuff. Its looking like the ONLY good GPU is an AMD...
Amazing how things change.

The Intel GMA 500 is a one-off thing, apparently. I hope that future versions of the Atom get rid of that shit stain of a graphics card.

It sucks too because a lot of people are buying mini-12s and mini-10s and those use the proprietary driver.

[drag]

Nevermind. Moorestown platform will have proprietary driver also. Damn Intel Asshats.

[whiskey_tango]

I'll never jump through as many hoops as I did trying to get this crap driver loaded on our Dell Mini 12.

Next time I run across an issue like this, the system is going on Craigslist....just like this Mini 12 is about to.

Sort of gives one a bad taste in their mouths for this whole netbook idea huh?
Funny thing: I have the Dell mini 12 and an Asus 1000HE, I never have any hell with the Asus but don't they both run the same GPU or am I thoroughly confused?

[gbeauche]

Efforts are likely spent on the Moorestown driver. Some changes from there may be backported to the Poulsbo driver at a later point. For now, the latest "supported" Ubuntu distribution is 9.04: Kernel 2.6.28, X.org 1.6.x. See PPA for Ubuntu Mobile.

You have to know there are two drivers for the Poulsbo:
- IEGD ('iegd') is the officially maintained one
- GMA500 ('psb') is the not-officially supported one

The former has better chances to support newer distributions in the future. Moblin2 will likely be a supported platform too, the opposite would be quite surprising. Some other things might also happen by Q4.

BTW, there is unfortunately no other power-efficient chip with the same capabilities available from other vendors (AMD, NVIDIA).

[billiob]

The psb kernel module works almost ok on kernel 2.6.30 with patches from this git repository: http://koldfront.dk/gitweb?p=psb;a=summary

[drag]

I'll take a larger battery over proprietary drivers any day of the week.

[gururise]

Its offical. I will NEVER buy another Intel chipset.. The Acer Aspire One was my last Intel purchase. AMD from now on.

[thefirstm]

Calm down. If you think Intel Linux driver support is bad, then you haven't thing anything yet. If you want to use only open source software, no blobs, with AMD graphics then you will be stuck with incredibly slow performance, crashy applications, and only OpenGL 1.4 support even on the modern cards. And, it will be a significant amount of time before that changes very much. The Intel GMA 500/Poulsbo chip is basically the only Intel chip on the market that is not supported properly in Linux. There is support for every other GMA chip, including some that have yet to be released. There is support for the Intel network controller chips, ATA/SATA controllers, sound controllers, and wireless cards. Intel has even authored relatively significant amounts of the Linux kernel. The only reason the Poulsbo driver is lacking is because the hardware is licensed from another company, and Intel doesn't own the techology to make it open source.

[gururise]

Calm down. If you think Intel Linux driver support is bad, then you haven't thing anything yet. If you want to use only open source software, no blobs, with AMD graphics then you will be stuck with incredibly slow performance, crashy applications, and only OpenGL 1.4 support even on the modern cards.
Who said anything about open-source drivers. Intel will not release *ANY* drivers for the Poulsbo, open source or otherwise!

The only reason the Poulsbo driver is lacking is because the hardware is licensed from another company, and Intel doesn't own the techology to make it open source.
This is a tired argument. Intel is certainly capable of releasing a driver for the Poulsbo, they do it on windows. Why can't they do it on Linux? Forget about open-source, Intel won't even release an updated binary blob. That means users who bought a netbook with a GMA500 thinking (with good reason) they could run linux because thats what is used on the Mini-10 and Mini-12, are SOL unless they want to forever run an old version of Ubuntu.

C'mon Intel. At least release updated binary drivers like Nvidia or even Via!

[grege]

The psb kernel module works almost ok on kernel 2.6.30 with patches from this git repository: http://koldfront.dk/gitweb?p=psb;a=summary

Thanks I will check it out

[airlied]

what a shitty blob. good that ubuntu simply says no to this shit.

it is intel's task to provide a proper driver, if they don't do it, it's their problem.
simply buy no intel products as long as they mess around with their costumers...

you missed the point.

where did Ubuntu say no? they've said yes to this in the past, they'd gladly bend over and take the blob if Intel would give it to them.

Intel have no interest in giving it to them despite Canonical asking for it.

[gbeauche]

I have a suggestion, Intel should buy the company that made the GMA500, and then open source the hardware. I am sure it would be petty cash to them.

I'd say the recent raise of Intel participation in ImgTec is not totally innocent...

where did Ubuntu say no? they've said yes to this in the past, they'd gladly bend over and take the blob if Intel would give it to them.

Intel have no interest in giving it to them despite Canonical asking for it.

Exactly. Should Canonical have any business with Ubuntu 9.10 and Poulsbo devices, Intel would update the drivers. However, since they have nothing to present to Intel... And I'd prefer Intel spend time working on drivers for newer chips or adding (backporting) newer features to existing Poulsbo drivers, rather than working on drivers for a distribution that nobody will be using for real on this market.

[grege]

I'd say the recent raise of Intel participation in ImgTec is not totally innocent...



Exactly. Should Canonical have any business with Ubuntu 9.10 and Poulsbo devices, Intel would update the drivers. However, since they have nothing to present to Intel... And I'd prefer Intel spend time working on drivers for newer chips or adding (backporting) newer features to existing Poulsbo drivers, rather than working on drivers for a distribution that nobody will be using for real on this market.

Dell sell truck loads of Dell Inspiron Minis with this chipset and Ubuntu installed. A distribution that is being used for real and commercially. Will Dell simply throw up it's hands and stop selling Ubuntu Minis because driver support is lagging behind? Perhaps Canonical and Dell might point out how many sales will go begging unless the driver is updated and refined. Binary blobs do not bother me as long as they work. Nvidia is still the best Linux option by a mile, the AMD open source goodies still have a way to go. I would be happy with an updated and 3D working blob, as I do now with Nvidia. Once the AMD FOSS drivers mature I might just jump ship.

We will have to wait and see.

[airlied]

Dell sell truck loads of Dell Inspiron Minis with this chipset and Ubuntu installed. A distribution that is being used for real and commercially. Will Dell simply throw up it's hands and stop selling Ubuntu Minis because driver support is lagging behind? Perhaps Canonical and Dell might point out how many sales will go begging unless the driver is updated and refined. Binary blobs do not bother me as long as they work. Nvidia is still the best Linux option by a mile, the AMD open source goodies still have a way to go. I would be happy with an updated and 3D working blob, as I do now with Nvidia. Once the AMD FOSS drivers mature I might just jump ship.

We will have to wait and see.

Dell will keep shipping them with 9.04 for as long as necessary. Ubuntu does a lot of these one off deals with OEMs and generally after a single release they go to crap.

Dave.

[gbeauche]

Dell sell truck loads of Dell Inspiron Minis with this chipset and Ubuntu installed. A distribution that is being used for real and commercially.

Dell is not selling any notebook with Ubuntu 9.10. Please read what I wrote again. AFAIK, they are using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, and this is a supported platform. It's even so with currently released IEGD driver.

Once the AMD FOSS drivers mature I might just jump ship.

I hope so even with HW video decoding acceleration using the dedicated ASIC... Currently, Intel remains the dominant player FOSS wise, even though this does not cover Poulsbo yet. Next is NVIDIA with very good quality drivers too, though totally proprietary and without any hope for this to change, IMHO.

[grege]

Dell is not selling any notebook with Ubuntu 9.10. Please read what I wrote again. AFAIK, they are using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, and this is a supported platform. It's even so with currently released IEGD driver.



I hope so even with HW video decoding acceleration using the dedicated ASIC... Currently, Intel remains the dominant player FOSS wise, even though this does not cover Poulsbo yet. Next is NVIDIA with very good quality drivers too, though totally proprietary and without any hope for this to change, IMHO.

Well as 9.10 does not come out until October it is hardly surprising that they do not sell it yet. I guess my point was that to keep selling they will eventually have to move up to the next LTS, which at the moment they will not be able to do. Dell do offer a 9.04 upgrade image. And, yes, other Intel products are very well supported. I have an EeePC 900 running a heavily modified Kubuntu (KDE 4.3, 2.6.30 and latest xorg and intel driver) that runs very well.

My daughters Mini 12 runs well enough for now, without 3d effects.

[djtm]

Yes, this really sucks. The poulsbo drivers aren't even that good in windows: I get crashes trying to use DXVA, when playing videos, the scaling is normally really crappy, etc.

But that they're not releasing any linux drivers for poulsbo really really really sucks. I have bought a netbook with it assuming intel will make sure it will run, but no...

Unless we show them we're upset, nothing's going to happen.

I think we should all file bug reports:
http://supportmail.intel.com/scripts-emf/welcome.aspx?id=39

Even better would probably be some polite but clear letters to
Intel
2200 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054-1549
USA

[gururise]

Yes, this really sucks. The poulsbo drivers aren't even that good in windows: I get crashes trying to use DXVA, when playing videos, the scaling is normally really crappy, etc.

But that they're not releasing any linux drivers for poulsbo really really really sucks. I have bought a netbook with it assuming intel will make sure it will run, but no...

Unless we show them we're upset, nothing's going to happen.

I think we should all file bug reports:
http://supportmail.intel.com/scripts-emf/welcome.aspx?id=39

Even better would probably be some polite but clear letters to
Intel
2200 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054-1549
USA

I tried your link above and after you select GMA500, you get the following:
"Intel does not support this product via email.

Great... they don't even want to hear about it!

[djtm]

I tried your link above and after you select GMA500, you get the following:
"Intel does not support this product via email.

Great... they don't even want to hear about it!

Yes, sometime after I posted this they included poulsbo, which was not included before and then disabled the support for it. You might still select a different chipset and just tell them in the text that you're disappointed.

But, yes, it sucks, it really really sucks.

[Kano]

I think it sounds a bit too complicated to use that driver. Maybe one extra export would be needed to run it with a new kernel, can not test. But usually it is not too hard to install an older kernel if you really want to use that piece of hw.

[gururise]

What is needed to make the driver work under Ubuntu 9.10? Why can't a kernel or graphic dev from Ubuntu step up and modify the 9.04 driver to work under 9.10? Is it because its proprietary? Has anyone tried contacting the Moblin team and ask them if they have an updated driver?

[grege]

What is needed to make the driver work under Ubuntu 9.10? Why can't a kernel or graphic dev from Ubuntu step up and modify the 9.04 driver to work under 9.10? Is it because its proprietary? Has anyone tried contacting the Moblin team and ask them if they have an updated driver?

It is a binary blob that was written for specific versions of the kernel and xorg. Those versions have been left behind. The only solution is a new binary blob from the original developers. Someone will have to pay for this and Dell seem to be abondoning this chipset so don't hold your breath waiting.

[Apopas]

It seems is possible to work...
HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsbo (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsbo)

[Ant P.]

Maybe it'll end up being another nouveau situation where the only good, working driver is a third party one.

They could call it xf86-video-poulsblows.

[jonwil]

Reverse engineering the PowerVR family of GPUs would have benefits for other devices than just Poulsbo

[Apopas]

PowerVR had an official and good enough driver for 2.4 kernels. But they did never support the 2.6 series. I remember I was playing NWN beta with these drivers while in windowsxp this was rather difficult.