Sabayon on Poulsbo

[Bar]

Hello,
a newbie looking for advice here. I have a netbook with GMA500 (Poulsbo) chipset. It's my first Linux machine and I have it for 10 months (of light use). Right now I have Lubuntu 11.04 on it and I already learned that Ubuntu is not my taste and I'm looking to try something different.
Initially I chose Lubuntu because the Ubuntu family got the best support for my chipset. Which turned out to be a big mess. Since a kernel update, every time I touch touchpad, X crashes. I updated to 11.10, it didn't boot. I cleanly installed 11.10, it didn't boot. I went back to 11.04...and after some time mistakenly updated the kernel again. Weirdly, going back didn't help.
OK, I would like Sabayon to be better, but I don't require it. Providing not worse experience is sufficient for me. I don't care about 3D acceleration and I don't think I care about 2D, though I don't have any experience running modern OS w/out it.
Really, I wanted to try Gentoo, but I feel I'm not experienced enough, hence Sabayon.

So here's the question:
How hard would it be to make Sabayon work on my hardware?

I read about a new open source GMA500 driver in the kernel, maybe it's usable? Maybe I could add some closed source ones?

Thoughts?

[BlackNoxis]

I would advise trying booting a Live DVD and you'll see. First try a lesser graphical desktop environments like XFCE / LXDE Good luck !

[Bar]

Thanks for suggestion. I don't have an optical, but I'll try to make a live USB.

[Chris5]

I have an Intel GMA 500 as well, on an Intel Atom Z520 machine with 2 GB RAM (Sony Vaio VGN P11Z).

Sabayon boots readily from a USB stick prepared with unetbootin, but X doesn't start and cannot be started manually. I always end up in a terminal (at a command line). The logfile Xorg.0.log says the following (excerpts -- apparently the native Intel drivers are loaded erroneously, not the correct PowerVX ones); beforehand, however, I'd like to mention that other distributions, such as VectorLinux, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, and the discontinued Dreamlinux, DO render a graphical desktop -- so the GMA 500 can't be blamed.

Regards,
Chris5

[ 102.667] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 12.1
[ 102.667] (II) intel: Driver for Intel Integrated Graphics Chipsets: i810,
i810-dc100, i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 854, 852GM/855GM, 865G, 915G,
E7221 (i915), 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 945GME, Pineview GM, Pineview G,
965G, G35, 965Q, 946GZ, 965GM, 965GME/GLE, G33, Q35, Q33, GM45,
4 Series, G45/G43, Q45/Q43, G41, B43, B43, Clarkdale, Arrandale,
Sandybridge Desktop (GT1), Sandybridge Desktop (GT2),
Sandybridge Desktop (GT2+), Sandybridge Mobile (GT1),
Sandybridge Mobile (GT2), Sandybridge Mobile (GT2+),
Sandybridge Server, Ivybridge Mobile (GT1), Ivybridge Mobile (GT2),
Ivybridge Desktop (GT1), Ivybridge Desktop (GT2), Ivybridge Server,
Ivybridge Server (GT2), Haswell Desktop (GT1), Haswell Desktop (GT2),
Haswell Desktop (GT2+), Haswell Mobile (GT1), Haswell Mobile (GT2),
Haswell Mobile (GT2+), Haswell Server (GT1), Haswell Server (GT2),
Haswell Server (GT2+), Haswell SDV Desktop (GT1),
Haswell SDV Desktop (GT2), Haswell SDV Desktop (GT2+),
Haswell SDV Mobile (GT1), Haswell SDV Mobile (GT2),
Haswell SDV Mobile (GT2+), Haswell SDV Server (GT1),
Haswell SDV Server (GT2), Haswell SDV Server (GT2+),
Haswell ULT Desktop (GT1), Haswell ULT Desktop (GT2),
Haswell ULT Desktop (GT2+), Haswell ULT Mobile (GT1),
Haswell ULT Mobile (GT2), Haswell ULT Mobile (GT2+),
Haswell ULT Server (GT1), Haswell ULT Server (GT2),
Haswell ULT Server (GT2+), Haswell CRW Desktop (GT1),
Haswell CRW Desktop (GT2), Haswell CRW Desktop (GT2+),
Haswell CRW Mobile (GT1), Haswell CRW Mobile (GT2),
Haswell CRW Mobile (GT2+), Haswell CRW Server (GT1),
Haswell CRW Server (GT2), Haswell CRW Server (GT2+)
[ 102.670] (--) using VT number 7

.....

[ 102.692] drmOpenByBusid: drmGetBusid reports pci:0000:00:02.0
[ 102.692] (EE) No devices detected.
[ 102.692]
Fatal server error:
[ 102.692] no screens found
[ 102.692]
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support

[linuxfluesterer]

Did you boot with 'Unfree Drivers' ?
To be honest, I had some problems in former times with Intel graphic chips especially on Netbooks with 1024x600 res.
But finally, it works (Intel 950 driver).

-Linuxfluesterer (I love KDE ...)

[Chris5]

Linuxfluesterer, thank you for your quick response.

No, I am not aware of having booted with unfree drivers. I just tried the "plain" live system.

Anyhow, my display resolution is 1600 x 768 (YES ! and it is 8 inches across...) and about two thirds of the distributions which I have tried out apparently do not get along with this.

Well, in the meantime I have decided to use Linux Mint (Debian edition) because it simply works right out of the box without any flaw, including the machine's Option GlobeTrotter MO40x 3G modem. In fact, originally I wanted to find out if Sabayon supported that modem (which is a must-have for me).

Best regards,
Chris5

[micia]

Hi, I've got my hands dirty with a Poulsbo too.
Turns out that Sabayon "thinks" it is an Intel card, but the GMA500 doesn't work with the intel drivers, thus it fails to start X.
Currently the suggested way to use poulsbo on Linux is having the gma500_gfx driver (which Sabayon already loads automatically) and using the fbdev X driver.

When Sabayon boots into console login as root (if you switch to tty1 with ctrl+alt+F1 you should already have a root console), then remove the xorg.conf file with:

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rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf


Now you have an xorg.conf-less configuration, X will try to autodetect the configuration. This should be enough for the live session, run:

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/etc/init.d/xdm restart


and you should be up and running in a GUI session.

Sabayon will reproduce the mistaken configuration even in the installed system. So you must perform the same on the installed system, with a few additional steps to make it permanent, login to a console as root:
1) Remove the x-setup service to allow for xorg.conf-less setup:

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rc-update del x-setup boot


2) Remove the xorg.conf file:

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rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf


3) While we're at it, let's optimize the driver a bit to get a decent performance: create a /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-gma.conf file:

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nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-gma.conf


4) Create the GMA500 device section:

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Section "Device"
   Identifier "Intel GMA500"
   Driver      "fbdev"
   Option     "AccelMethod" "UXA"
   Option     "UxaNoComposite" "true"
   Option     "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
EndSection


Save and exit.

5) Setup ACPI handling to allow for screen brightness correction, edit /etc/default/grub:

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nano /etc/default/grub


6) Add these tokens to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX:

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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor"


Save and update GRUB:

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grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg


7) It should now work correctly, reboot using:

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shutdown -r now


Hope it helps, I'm currently trying to find out more about 3D acceleration on this chipset, right now none is provided, but it might be available in the future.