[Haifux] Linux Friendly Netbook?

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

Well, I read the Link you provided, and I suggest you should read the
update here:
http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/03/19/news-from-the-poulsbo-front/

Basically the driver is being changed to full open source style
without binary crap (the binary things were due to licensing issues
with PowerVR), and the issue is quite old these days. If someone uses
Fedora 10 for example (I do), there's the
xorg-x11-drv-vesa-2.2.0-3.fc10.i386.rpm which supports GMA-500 pretty
well including correct DDC/EDID of the LCD panel. Red Hat people are
quite fast updating the drivers and their build so any new stuff will
be back-ported to fedora soon, and I think it will be the same in the
Ubuntu scene (although I don't know the ubuntu procedure for updates).

GMA-500 is a "design under pressure". Intel couldn't get any normal
3D, so they licensed it from PowerVR (don't know why not take from
nVidia), and this chip is utterly crappy anyway.

The new Intel chip that is coming in the following months is Intel
GN40 which should provide some relief to the CPU in terms of H.264
playback as well as MPEG-4 and WMV9. It has been added to kernel
2.6.30. Support for these accelerations on Linux is still unknown (it
has to be merged in Xorg and support either XvMC or VA-API in order to
work well with true hardware acceleration). GN40 should be phased out
by 2H 2010, and it's replacement will be announced this October along
with Intel's "next generation" Atom processor.

As I wrote in my blog about Netbook graphics chipsets
(http://benhamo.org/wp/?p=1423), soon there will be some netbooks
using the ION chipsets with nVidia 9400M which fully supports all it's
features under any Linux distribution.

Thanks,
Hetz

On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Oron Peled <oron at actcom.co.il> wrote:
> On 03.05.2009 Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:
>> All the netbooks that are in the market today will work with any
>> modern Linux distribution (Ubuntu 8.X, 9.X, OpenSuSE 10.X and up,
>> Fedora 9 and above, RHEL 5 and above, Debian Lenny, etc) since those
>> netbooks all use the same Intel crappy chipset which has Linux support
>> for few years now.
>
> Making sure you have a crappy Intel chipset is normally a good way
> to have good Linux support out of the box.
>
> However, there are exceptions. Specifically, the GMA-500
> currently sucks big-time and unfortunately it is used by Dell
> Mininote (and maybe others).
>
> For some gory details (long URL):
> http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/01/30/intel-gma-500-poulsbo-graphics-on-
> linux-a-precise-and-comprehensive-summary-as-to-why-youre-screwed/
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Oron Peled                                 Voice: +972-4-8228492
> oron at actcom.co.il                  http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron
> Ignore Your Rights And They'll Go Away
>
>



-- 
Skepticism is the lazy person's default position.
my blog (hebrew): http://benhamo.org