Intel's driver for GMA500

Display driver and X11
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VG7
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Sep 10, 2010 6:32 am

Intel's driver for GMA500

Post by VG7 »

How about this driver? http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... 8&lang=eng

Does anybody tried it with any of mentioned there Linux distros (Moblin, Fedora, etc)?

fly
Posts: 162
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2010 2:02 pm

Re: Intel's driver for GMA500

Post by fly »

This is the psb driver used since the initial release of gma500 based consumer products. It is a proprietary blob with some open-source glue code. Even worse, this glue code is not really maintained anymore by Intel, Tungsten, Dell, Ubuntu or who ever might have benn in touch or responsible for it. Major problem is that this driver is incompatible with newer kernel, xorg and lib versions. There are a lot of skilled users around the globe fighting day for day to get this glue code to work around these limitations, but there someday will be the point, that this is impossible...

mutrax
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 2:54 pm

Re: Intel's driver for GMA500

Post by mutrax »

I dumped my fitpc2 project for just this reason....

BUT! Sounds intel is working on a os kms driver for the gma500
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/ ... 95125.html
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1103793

So there might be hope for descent linux support!

fly
Posts: 162
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2010 2:02 pm

Re: Intel's driver for GMA500

Post by fly »

Yap, Intel has said such things before, but now I can really believe it. Alan Cox, one of the linux masterminds and an Intel employee delivered actually working code. I keep my fingers crossed, that it will mature by time and get even 3d and va features, because PowerVR (the base of gma500) is very common on lowpower devices and these devices are becomming more and more mainstream. Getting a decent feature-complete free PowerVR driver base has promoted to one of the main challenges by the FSF, too. Let's hope for the best!

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