A friend of mine asked me to install linux on his Asus EeePC 1201HA. So, I am installing Xubuntu 14.04 LTS on his laptop. This laptop has some audio and video issues when running a default Linux installation. In this post, I will discuss the audio and video setup.
This laptop uses an integrated Intel graphics controller. It’s known as GMA500 or Poulsbo.
$ lspci | grep VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) Graphics Controller (rev 07)
By default, the display uses the gma500_gfx module. This module has no hardware acceleration, which causes videos to stutter. So, this is not a workable configuration.
Therefore, we will configure the Intel® Embedded Media and Graphics Driver driver. This driver is not available in an official Ubuntu repository and must be installed manually.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thopiekar/emgd sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install emgd-drm-dkms xserver-xorg-1.9-video-emgd
Note that we are installing a DKMS package. This means, a kernel module will be compiled. This causes the installation to take quite a while.
Once installed, a little configuration is required. First, we must disable the default kernel module. Create a file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-gma500.conf
with the following content:
#use the EMGD driver instead blacklist gma500_gfx
Then we must configure X. Create a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf
with the following content:
Section "Device" Identifier "Intel EMGD" Driver "emgd" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Intel EMGD" SubSection "Display" Modes "1366x768" EndSubSection EndSection
The video is not the only thing that stuters on this laptop. There are audio problems as well. However the solution for this issue is much simpler then the solution for the video problem. Just changing one line. A solution for this problem is found is described on the Debian wiki for a different model in the EeePC series. Edit the file /etc/pulse/default.pa
and add tsched=0
to the line saying load-module module-udev-detect
, so in the end, it reads:
load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0
And that’s it… the laptop works as a charm!
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Did you get suspend, hibernation and backlight working on this computer? I have the same one, installed xubuntu 14.04, updated and did basically only stuff you wrote here and computer is far from working as a charm – no suspend, no hibernation and crazy screen ripples. I wonder how it went for you.
Cheers!
I’m afraid I haven’t gotten suspend and hibernation to work. And as it is not my laptop, I don’t have it around anymore.
How can I check if the computer is using the emgd driver?
Thanks
As I don’t have access to this machine, I cannot say what the specific lines should look like, but look at the following:
Have a look at “lsmod”, does it list the emgd module,
also, the output of the “glxinfo” (might need to be installed) gives information about the graphics in use,
and a look at the X logs (/var/log/Xorg.0.log) shows what drivers X is using.
hi, works fine for resolution. what about lightness control? – EEE 1201 HA
I’m not sure. As it’s not my own hardware, I don’t have access to it anymore.
Hey man, thanks for the tutorial. I’m trying do the same as you with Xubuntu 16.04.1 LTS, but i have some problems with broken packages…any idea?
One thing I can think of, the repository https://launchpad.net/~thopiekar/+archive/ubuntu/emgd contains a number of packages (xorg-server, mesa etc.). Remove the packages with the same name, if installed from the Ubuntu repositories, and replace them with the versions from the thopiekar repository.
Thanks again Andre. I’m new in linux (and not so good for english), recently reinstall xubuntu but your tutorial’s version 14.04
but when i try sudo apt-get install emgd-drm-dkms xserver-xorg-1.9-video-emgd, these are the results:
Los siguientes paquetes tienen dependencias incumplidas:
xserver-xorg-1.9-video-emgd : Depende: xserver-xorg-1.9-video-emgd-meego1.2 (= 1.16-201601312316+emgd~rev164~ubuntu14.04.1) pero no va a instalarse o
xserver-xorg-1.9-video-emgd-meego-wayland (= 1.16-201601312316+emgd~rev164~ubuntu14.04.1) pero no va a instalarse o
xserver-xorg-1.9-video-emgd-tizen1.0 (= 1.16-201601312316+emgd~rev164~ubuntu14.04.1) pero no va a instalarse o
xserver-xorg-1.9-video-emgd-fedora14 (= 1.16-201601312316+emgd~rev164~ubuntu14.04.1) pero no va a instalarse
Recomienda: xserver-xorg-1.9 pero no va a instalarse
Recomienda: xserver-xorg-1.9-video-emgd-meego1.2 pero no va a instalarse
E: No se pudieron corregir los problemas, usted ha retenido paquetes rotos.
I am not familiar with your language, but from the format of the message, it’s about a conflict between packages. I don’t really understand why I see Fedora in there, as Fedora is an RPM based distro, while ubuntu is a DEB based distro. Nevertheless, I would suggest looking at which PPAs you have added. If there is some other PPA added providing some xorg packages this could cause such a conflict.
Also, be sure to sync with the repositories. I believe it’s something like “sudo apt-get update”. (I don’t run a ubuntu based system myself)