Guide to Get the Best Performace from the GMA 500

[nekr0z]

One thing I have noticed after all the recent changes involving Plymouth being properly displayed finally: the hardware clock on my EeePC 1101HA now functions normally.

It used to stop somewhere in suspend/resume cycle (not always, making things fairly untrackable), and somehow even ntpd coulndn't cope with it giving up and stopping sometimes, so I was getting used to having 1101HA's clock late for hours or even days (depending on the last time I had Internet connection and bothered to check whether ntpd was still alive). I actually suspected GMA to have something to do with it suspend-wise, but had not enough knowledge to act on that suspicion.

Now after a couple of weeks with latest fixes in place I think it safe to report that hardware clock has beed mysteriously repaired. Actually, this alone makes 1101HA work on Maverick better than on any other Ubuntu release (I've been having this problem ever since I had installed Ubuntu on the machine, which essentially was the very day I bought it).

Praise to all of you who contributed to GMA 500 problem so far. Where is the PayPal Donate button?

[STG85]

Just to share my experiences with Nokia Booklet 3G and Ubuntu. Earlier I used original 120G Hitachi HD, but as it's 5400rpm, it's so damn slow, making whole system almost unusable. So, I upgraded to Intel X18 SSD. Then I thought to give a try for 10.10, but there was something strange in installation when partitioning HD. I could create partitions, but just when I tried to format it to XFS/EXT4, installar died. Switching to terminal, I saw lot's of IO Error messages in dmesg (sorry, I didn't write down exact error). Reboot didn't bring back online, I had to make cold reset.

You can always try to boot with the generic IDE driver, which I think means you have to use "all-generic-ide=1" on the kernel command line. That may allow you to get the machine to run all the way through the installation process, after which you'll have more options. I like the way OpenSUSE installs on a USB key, extra space after writing the CD on the whole device is partitioned and used as backing store to filesystem updates.

So, I decided to go with 10.04, using alternative install, since I really need encryption. Installed system with defaults, then following instructions from wikipage, and almost everything works now perfectly. I used 99video-workaround for suspend, instead of uswsusp, since in earlier setup I had some other problems with uswsusp. Only brightnesskeys doesn't work currently, even with those Grub parameters. I also tried that Skype-workaround mentioned earlier, but didn't succeed. Skype is currently only app for which I have to boot Booklet to Windows, since I really love to have videocalls to my relatives around the world.

I'm still working on getting 10.04 running and might use 9.10 in the interim, depending on how it goes. I found a driver being backported from Mandriva, but the system just froze when X started up after I installed the .deb files.

By the way, has anyone else experienced really fast increasing load_cycle_count? In original setup, when I had Hitachi HD, I heard these clicking sounds in 5-10 sec interval, and it was load_cycle_count which was increasing very fast, around +1000 per day. I had to do lot's of tweaking to get rid of it, and that eventually broke suspend. Now, with SSD, I'm happy to just ignore that, haven't even looked at it

Clicking sounds are bad; I don't know if the Hitachi unloads the heads during error recovery, but it might, and that might be what you're hearing.

Anyway, thanks a lot for making Booklet & Ubuntu usable, I knew there's some problems with GMA500 when I bought Booklet, I just didn't know how much

Doing encryption properly is still fairly difficult. I'm not interested in using loopback schemes or fuse, so it has to be done in the initrd with LUKS.

[mle]

You can always try to boot with the generic IDE driver, which I think means you have to use "all-generic-ide=1" on the kernel command line. That may allow you to get the machine to run all the way through the installation process, after which you'll have more options. I like the way OpenSUSE installs on a USB key, extra space after writing the CD on the whole device is partitioned and used as backing store to filesystem updates.

Hmm, if I just found time and interest now when system is running ~perfectly, I might just try that one. I was thinking if 10.10 installer could try trim-commands, which just fails with Poulsbo even SSD supports them? This was the thing which made installing/cloning Win7 quite difficult.

Clicking sounds are bad; I don't know if the Hitachi unloads the heads during error recovery, but it might, and that might be what you're hearing.

Don't know what it actually was, but like said, load_cycle_count increased a lot, about 1000 per day.

Doing encryption properly is still fairly difficult. I'm not interested in using loopback schemes or fuse, so it has to be done in the initrd with LUKS.

Alternative installer supports LUKS by default, I just created 100M boot, 2G swap with random key and rest for rootfs. Working nicely.

[lucazade]

Hi all!

Great news!
EMGD 1.5 drivers working in maverick!
soon i'll release some info on how to test them.



PS. I should thank exobuzz from Joggler forum for his hints!

[winya]

Really good news dude! I'm waiting for your report!

[lucazade]

EMGD Drivers 1.5 for Maverick and Natty
Use only for testing purpose on a test partion, do not use side-by-side with old psb drivers! Be careful!

wget dl-web.dropbox.com/u/1338581/emgd/install.sh && sudo sh ./install.sh

This script will add repositories,
downgrade xserver-xorg from 1.9 to 1.8 and lock it,
install emgd drivers (dkms kernel module and xorg bits)
and set a xorg.conf file.

At the end of installation script you have to change display resolution in xorg.conf
if different from 1366x768 (haven't got time to make it detect automatically!)

At the moment i tested 2D and 3D and *seemed* a bit better than PSB drivers and
it is lighter on cpu usage.

* vaapi seems to have some issue (check vainfo output)
* suspend needs 99video workaround like psb
* gtkperf seems faster for some stuff, slower for others
* unity (haven't tested)
* compiz works more or less like psb
* brightness doesn't work out-of-the-box on my acer (need investigation)
* glxgears says 1500fps (1200 was with old drivers)
* notify-osd looks strange (maybe argb/composite related, don't know)

EMGD are not a perfect solution but at least open a hope
if Intel will release new emgd updates.

Let me know how it works for you!

[jbernardo]

Luca,
These are still binary only, right? All the x stuff is provided only as binary libs and drivers, or has Intel released any source for these?

[lucazade]

Luca,
These are still binary only, right? All the x stuff is provided only as binary libs and drivers, or has Intel released any source for these?

José still binary, no sources.

I used your emgd packaging for lucid, updated to 1.5 by exobuzz and i applied 2.6.35 patch to dkms module (applied statically, it need better packaging)

it needs also xorg 1.8.x from xorg-edgers ppa, 1.9 still says lack some symbols.. haven't found solution for that and i think it is difficult because of xorg blob.

[jbernardo]

it needs also xorg 1.8.x from xorg-edgers ppa, 1.9 still says lack some symbols.. haven't found solution for that and i think it is difficult because of xorg blob.

That is what I was affraid of. The fact that those idiots at intel released it as binary only will tie those drivers to a single xorg version.

[winya]

That is what I was affraid of. The fact that those idiots at intel released it as binary only will tie those drivers to a single xorg version.

It doesn't matter, if it works correctly. But it doesn't, and that's our problem..

Update: Unity didn't start on my dell mini 10, just overheated my netbook.