Fedora 10, Xorg 7.4 and US15W - Poulsbo - please help - I'm stuck

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 16:45 +0100, Roland Scheidegger wrote:
> On 16.01.2009 05:11, Dan Naughton wrote:
> > Are there drivers for the US15W / Poulsbo chipset?  I just got the
> > install done with Fedora 10 in text mode, and it tanked setting up the
> > xserver.  From the Xorg.0.log, it looks like it tried every driver, then
> > failed.  I was hoping the "intel" driver was the answer, but I guess
> > that doesn't support the US15W.  I tried in the Intel sight.  They have
> > the IEGD drivers for Poulsbo as binaries, but they only cover up to xorg
> > 7.3?  (I tried it anyway, and they failed)
> > 
> > If anyone knows how to get xorg 7.4 running with Poulsbo, can someone
> > help me out.
> 
> I think the vesa driver should work. I don't think there's currently any
> released driver which supports poulsbo and xorg 7.4, there is a poulsbo
> driver in the moblin repository but I think it's limited to xorg 7.3.

I just came up against this problem, spent the entire day bashing my
head against it, finally established to my satisfaction that it's
screwed, and wrote a long post about it:

http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/01/30/intel-gma-500-poulsbo-graphics-on-linux-a-precise-and-comprehensive-summary-as-to-why-youre-screwed/

there's clearly code out there. And it's getting updated, in Ubuntu's
Sekrit Sauce repositories. The latest code in Ubuntu's repos even has
specific conditionals for handling recent X servers (for e.g., EXA
support gets disabled if you try to build on X server 1.4.99 or later).
But it's not getting discussed or documented anywhere that I can find,
it's sprinkled liberally with inaccurately or just plain not-at-all
documented proprietary special sauce, and it doesn't work on anything
but Ubuntu 8.04, as far as anyone's been able to establish.

Why is this code being handled in this half-assed way? Can't Intel,
Tungsten, Dell, Ubuntu and whoever just pull together and put it in
X.org and the kernel like a sane and actually-useful driver should be?
There's at least three systems out there in the real world using this
chip - the Mini 12, a Panasonic Toughbook model, and the Sony Vaio P,
which is what I've got. I've read that future Eee models will use it
too. This driver really needs to come out in the daylight...

(oh, btw, for anyone who didn't catch it, I'm working for Red Hat from
next month. I really need to change my subscription info.)
-- 
adamw