HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsbo
This page details support for the Intel GMA500 "Poulsbo" video hardware in various Ubuntu releases. The table below shows the current status of the driver.
|
2D graphics |
3D graphics |
Normal Video Playback (Xv) |
Hardware Video Acceleration1 |
Maverick (10.10) |
Excellent |
Good |
Broken |
Excellent |
Excellent |
Good |
Broken |
Excellent |
|
Excellent |
Excellent |
Excellent |
Excellent |
|
No longer supported and/or recommended |
||||
No longer supported and/or recommended |
||||
Partial support with pre-installed version |
Drivers installation
Drivers are available in the Gma500 PPA repository for Maverick, Lucid and Karmic.
Open a terminal and type:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install poulsbo-driver-2d poulsbo-driver-3d poulsbo-config
reboot for the changes to take effect.
This PPA repository also ships mplayer, gnome-mplayer and vlc with enabled vaapi backend.
An unofficial Lucid iso image with gma500 support and mplayer-vaapi is available for downloading over bittorrent. torrent link
Known issues and workarounds
Suspend
Temporary workaround:
sudo mv /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video /usr/lib/pm-utils/99video
or use the following workaround:
sudo apt-get purge vbetool && sudo apt-get install uswsusp
and suspend using:
sudo s2ram --force
to make this permanent:
sudo gedit /etc/pm/config.d/00sleep_module
and set:
SLEEP_MODULE="uswsusp"
sudo gedit /etc/pm/config/defaults
and add:
S2RAM_OPTS="--force"
QUIRK_NONE="true"
Brightness hotkeys
Temporary workaround:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
add the following parameters to grub configuation:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash quiet acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor"
sudo update-grub
Compiz
Temporary workaround:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
and add the following option: Option "ExaNoComposite" "true"
* install this updated poulsbo-config package: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338581/poulsbo/poulsbo-config_0.1.2%7E1004um3_all.deb
* install compiz
Flash plugin replacement for Firefox
* install gnome-mplayer and gecko-mediaplayer
* tune gnome-mplayer settings like the following screenshots: http://lukaszklich.pl/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/vaapi_output.png http://lukaszklich.pl/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/vaapi_va.png (This should already be automatically done by the gnome-mplayer package from the gma500 repository)
* install this firefox addons: http://flvideoreplacer-extension.blogspot.com/
Kernel mode setting
To enable KMS paste the following command:
echo "psb drm_psb" | sudo tee -a /etc/initramfs-tools/modules && sudo update-initramfs -u
In Maverick due to an issue during shutdown we added "no_fb=1" to /etc/modprobe.d/poulsbo.conf. This settings fix shutdown but unfortunately conflicts with KMS.
Intrepid (8.10) and Jaunty (9.04)
The drivers for the Poulsbo chipset are shipped in the ubuntu-mobile PPA.
Add the ubuntu-mobile PPA
Edit a file called /etc/apt/sources.list/psb.list, and add the following line to it, for Intrepid: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main for Jaunty: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
You may also wish to add the key to the keyring by following the instructions here.
Which kernel are you running?
If you are using a kernel that you have compiled yourself, or are not using the latest kernel provided by either Intrepid or Jaunty, install the psb-kernel-source package (and make sure the headers for your kernel are available!) and then remove psb-modules.
Install packages
Install poulsbo-driver-2d if you only require 2D, and poulsbo-driver-3d if you also require 3D acceleration to work. Make sure your user is a member of the video group before using 3D.
Hardy (8.04)
The Poulsbo hardware is not supported in the community version of Ubuntu. However, it is reputed to "just work" on Hardy version shipped by a netbook manufacturer.
For example, the support for GMA 500 hardware by Dell Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 is provided by the following repository
deb http://dell-mini.archive.canonical.com/updates hardy-dell-mini public
Contribution
The Ubuntu community is a great example of free software community in action, and is arguable one of the greatest examples of free software community in the world. To make Ubuntu better, You would like to take a look on new project Intel GMA500 'Poulsbo' and provide any help.
Common problems
X doesn't start
Double check that the psb kernel module can be loaded into the running kernel by running modprobe psb.
3D Graphics (OpenGL) does not work after suspend and resume
This is a known bug with psb kernel driver. Due to partial close nature of the driver, because Intel has not released an open source driver, the bug fix is currently no available. There are reports2 that a new driver will be available shortly.
Additional Reading
Why GMA 500 hardware doesn't work out of the box? Read "How To Kick Your Friends in the Face: GMA500" by Shawn Powers and the Intel "apology" "Blaming Intel for how the world is" by Henry Kingman
Other problems?
If you're still having problems, please mail ubuntu-mobile@lists.ubuntu.com, and do not submit bug reports.
Refers to Hardware-Accelerated playback using vaapi, that is, libva library http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_500_on_Linux (1)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Mg (2)