This page is for Obsolete Drivers for the GMA500 and applies to version of Ubuntu prior to 12.04.

Please note, the gma500 team last produced packages for the EMGD as of Ubuntu 10.10, and drivers for 11.04 and 11.10 are "Experimental".

Please use the gma500 team ppa for the EMGD driver.

The list of drivers including its major properties and below tables with a features matrix:

• EMGD driver (obsolete)
  • Closed-source userspace (Xorg driver, libva support, and 3D rendering).
  • Open-source kernel module.
  • Last stable on Ubuntu 10.10, experimental on 11.10 and 11.10, not available for 12.04 or higher.
• PSB driver (obsolete)
  • Closed-source core
  • Good performance, but no longer supported (original developers - Tungsten Graphics).
• Other

  • You can also choose to use a basic driver like fbdev, see HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsboAlternatives.

EMGD driver

PSB driver

Emgd drivers (currently unsupported and experimental)

EMGD 1.14

The latest EMGD driver is 1.14. This driver is not packaged for Ubuntu and to use this driver you will need to compile both a custom kernel and the driver itself from source. Hopefully the gma500 team will have drivers available soon.

Disadvantages of EMGD on Ubuntu 12.04 :

• Requires compilation of a custom kerenl.
• Requires compilation of the EMGD driver.

• Requires a custom /etc/X11/xorg.conf

• The driver is experimental and although it works for some, it does not work for everyone.
• The 3d video drivers are particularly problematic. many people can get the basic driver working, but without the 3d video.
• There is no official support from Ubuntu for either custom kernels or the EMGD driver.
• There is currently no documentation on how to compile and use the EMGD 1.14 driver.
• The EMGD 1.14 driver officially supports Fedora 14 (outdated), kernel 2.6, and xorg 1.9, all of which are very much out of date for Ubuntu 12.04. To use the driver you will need to downgrade all these packages, which means pinning packages from 11.10 or 11.04. Pinning packages from previous releases is not advised for new users, may cause problems or breakage, and is unsupported.

As a "solution" to the difficulty, some third parties have posted custom kernels and/or custom iso. These postings are without the support or oversight of the gma500 team and you should use them with the utmost of caution. Use extreme caution with third party custom kernels, they have not been peer reviewed and may cause hardware problems, may contain security risks/threats, and are completely unsupported.

Older Drivers are available in the gma500 PPA repository for Natty and Oneiric. The drivers on Oneiric are marked as experimental and do not work for everyone.

EMGD 1.8

Repository page: https://launchpad.net/~gma500/+archive/emgd-1.8
Instructions for Natty and Oneiric only. Open a terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/emgd-1.8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xorg-emgd emgd-dkms
sudo emgd-xorg-conf

reboot for the changes to take effect.

EMGD 1.10 (under testing)

Repository page: https://launchpad.net/~gma500/+archive/emgd110
Instructions for Oneiric only. Open a terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/emgd110
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install emgd-support
sudo emgd-xorg-conf

reboot for the changes to take effect.

EMGD Known Workarounds

Known workarounds that address problems such as Plymouth (startup screen), Brightness keys, Hibernate/Suspend, and Mplayer can be found on this page:

https://answers.launchpad.net/emgd/+faq/1450

PSB drivers (outdated)

Drivers are available in the gma500 PPA repository for Maverick, Lucid, Karmic, Jaunty and Intrepid. With the note that Jaunty and Intrepid versions are no longer supported and guaranteed to work.

Open a terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install poulsbo-driver-3d

reboot for the changes to take effect.

(At least on Lucid, poulsbo-driver-3d conflicts with compiz packages. You need to uninstall them first.)

sudo apt-get -y remove compiz*

Note: remember to perform after a version upgrade the commands in the terminal again to update to the gma500 packages matching your Ubuntu version.

Optimized software matching the PSB drivers

The gma500 PPA repository also ships mplayer, gnome-mplayer and vlc (currently vlc has still some issues and does not always work) with enabled vaapi backend. These are only available for Natty, Maverick and Lucid. They can be installed with the package manager of your choice.

Driver Removal

Emgd drivers

If you installed from live ISO, remove all packages installed by the PPA:

sudo apt-get purge emgd-support*

Afterwards, use a package manager like Synaptic (System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager) or muon to remove the rest of the packages called "emgd*"

Known issues and tweaks

Feedback

When applying any tweaks from below we kindly request you to provide feedback concerning the results from the chosen tweaks on your laptop. Please fill out this form to send your findings to the gma500 team.

Tweaks only for PSB drivers (outdated)

Known tweaks and workarounds for Karmic and Lucid (installed by default for Maverick)

Suspend by moving 99video

sudo mv /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video /usr/lib/pm-utils/99video

Suspend by using uswsusp (alternative)

sudo apt-get purge vbetool && sudo apt-get install uswsusp

and suspend using:

sudo s2ram --force

to make this permanent, run:

sudo gedit /etc/pm/config.d/00sleep_module

and set in the file:

SLEEP_MODULE="uswsusp"

and run:

sudo gedit /etc/pm/config.d/defaults

and add in the file:

S2RAM_OPTS="--force"
QUIRK_NONE="true"

After that, you can run  pm-suspend  instead of  s2ram --force .

But suspending via gnome-power-manager (for example, through the suspend menu) doesn't work.

Flash plugin replacement for Firefox

(for all Ubuntu releases):

* 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/

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 (PSB)

Double check that the psb kernel module can be loaded into the running kernel by running sudo modprobe psb.

3D Graphics (OpenGL) does not work after suspend and resume (PSB)

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

EMGD driver description from Intel: http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/embedded/hwsw/software/emgd

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/12/poulsbo-mess-casts-a-shadow-on-intels-moblin-project.ars

Other problems?

If you're still having problems, please mail ubuntu-mobile@lists.ubuntu.com, and do not submit bug reports.

CategoryHardware