Linux and Cedar Trail

Anyone try Linux on one of the new Cedar Trail netbooks. My main concern is the graphic drivers.

TIA

 

Hi there,

yes, I installed Ubuntu 11.10 without a problem on an Acer D270. Everything seems to work fine EXCEPT the screen brightness can not be adjusted. It runs with the frame buffer in X11 and it seems there is no ACPI function for the display available. WLAN and everything else works just fine.

Peter

 

Did you try acpi_backlight=vendor as a boot parameter at the grub command line?

 

Yes, I just tried the "acpi_backlight=vendor" and "acpi_osi=Linux" in the cmdline of the Kerner - no luck. The screen is running at full brightness which is not so much of a problem. It is only recognized as a VESA frame buffer device, so I figure there is no driver for it and the ACPI function are not supported.

I also tried MeeGo 1.2.0.6 which supposedly has some support for Cedar Trail but this just hangs after boot or doesn't boot at all. With Ubuntu at least all other function keys are working fine and it runs nice and stable.

Peter

 

Cedar Trail graphics driver support is also pretty rocky for Windows as well. Am I the only one who has the impression that Cedar Trail has been a commercial flop?

Personally, I'm looking forward to Medfield, and I think this will be the first real test of a x86 in the space currently occupied almost exclusively by ARM. My only worry is that this SOC family won't have the generic driver support, or even an unlocked boot loader in most applications. In short, I'm worried that SOC will remove the advantages of the now generic x86 architecture, in an attempt to compete with ARM.

 

Just a short update: I finally managed to install MeeGo 1.2.0.0.6 on the Acer D270, the installation went fine and the adjustment of the screen brightness now works!
BUT: WLAN doesn't work. The Broadcom device is not supported by MeeGo. There are instructions to compile your own kernel module for it but that failes since MeeGo 1.2.0.0.6 does not install the correct kernel headers for this "adaption-pc" branch. Too bad. So now I can decide to have the screen at full brightness but everything else working or have the screen adjustable and no WLAN. I think I will go with the bright screen and hope that maybe some day the video drive will find it's way into a Ubuntu release.

I was also considering going with Win 7 but I think that is not a good option for netbooks in general...

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Just another update: I finally managed to get the kernel headers on MeeGo installed and then I could compile the driver for the Broadcom-WLAN card which I downloaded directly from the Broadcom website. Now everything is running perfectly under MeeGo (display, WLAN, suspend/resume etc). It is actually quite fast now with the proper display driver, feels much faster than with the VESA-FB under Ubuntu...

 

Peter,
I own the same netbook and also tried meego. I skipped this when I found the WLAN not working (Linux newbie). Could you please give me a step-by-step desrciption on what you specifically did to make the wlan work in meego?
Thanks a lot,
Chris

 

Hi Chris,

I don't know much about Linux as well, but here is what I did:

You should have the MeeGo development tools installed, I followed this guide:

http://slaine.org/_slaine/Meego_1.2_Wifi.html

up to step 4, step 5 didn't work for me so from there on I did the following (all steps in a terminal window):

1. Find out the installed kernel version:

uname -r

..for me it was:

3.0.0-4.1-adaptation-pc

2. Find the kernel headers for your version. Zypper didn't install it for me so I downloaded it from the Repository directly:

http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/updates/1.2.0/repos/oss/ia32/packages/
.
.this one:

kernel-adaptation-pc-devel-3.0.0-4.1.i586.rpm

3. Install the kernel header with rpm:

rpm -ivh kernel-adaptation-pc-devel-3.0.0-4.1.i586.rpm

4. get the WLAN driver source directly from the Broadcom website:

Broadcom.com - 802.11 Linux STA driver

..download the 32bit driver:

hybrid-portsrc_x86_32-v5_100_82_112.tar.gz

5. make a directory, move the downloaded driver file to it and unpack the driver:

mkdir wl
mv hybrid-portsrc_x86_32-v5_100_82_112.tar.gz wl
cd wl
tar xvzf hybrid-portsrc_x86_32-v5_100_82_112.tar.gz

.. you should get a Makefile and 2 directories: src and lib

6. compile the driver with a simple 'make', this should give you a kernel module wl.ko in the directory, copy this module into the kernel module path:

make
sudo cp wl.ko /lib/modules/3.0.0-4.1-adaptation-pc/kernel/net/wireless/

7. rebuild the module depencies and load the module:

sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe -a wl

This should give you a working wireless connection, even the LED for the active wireless works, it did not work with Ubuntu.

HTH,

Peter

 

Does anybody think it would be possible to make the cedar trail graphics driver from meego work with the X server in ubuntu?

I don't have a Cedar Trail machine yet. I'm waiting for the Lenovo S200 to come out this summer, otherwise I would give it a go myself.

 

I have an ASUS 1025c netbook and I had the same problem. And I hardly know anything about computers so I've been searching for a solution for 3 days!

I was going to settle with Meego until the release of Tizen, but I decided to install the 32 bit Windows 8 preview ISO and (after encountering the same problem and more dead ends) I visited the ASUS site, downloaded and installed the Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator Driver (click on VGA in the menu) and my problem was finally solved.

Don't know if it works with Ubuntu. Don't drivers get installed on a partition separate from operating systems?

Don't bother answering that. I've had enough of these kind of forums to last me a lifetime.

My good deed is done and I'm gone.