# Cedar view drivers...

## matthew-matvei

Hi all.

Unfortunately I made the mistake of trusting Acer and thus not researching enough when I bought my Acer Aspire One.  The surprise I found waiting for me when I loaded my favourite linux distro was a lack of X server functionality.  I've since used Arch Linux using generic drivers, but that gave me pretty awful performance, with videos always laggy and the general performance being rather slow.  I then found out that Ubuntu has the closed-source drivers in its repositories, so I installed 32bit Bodhi Linux and have been using that since then.

I'm interested in tinkering around with the netbook again, but by trying to install gentoo on it.  Basically, my question is this:

What are my chances of successfully installing the closed-source .deb packaged drivers under gentoo?  I've practised using a virtualbox to install simple .deb packages, which usually worked, but I've no idea if the manual installation (by unpacking the .deb ---> .tar file) I tried worked or not, as it's all in virtualbox.

I thought I'd ask before the perhaps time-consuming process of a new installation.

Also, I've looked for information about installing .deb packages.  It seems quite simple... are there more advanced things I might need to do to configure the installation of the drivers?

Thanks for your time

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## John R. Graham

I have X running at very acceptable speeds on an Aspire One. Maybe your hardware is different than mine, though. Could you post the output of

```
lspci
```

please?

- John

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## Gusar

The driver is shipped in a generic package (not deb) at the intel site. Then there's a repository that has the driver upgraded to support newer kernels, I think the CedarView thread at the Arch forums has a link to it. In any case you'll need to use an old X version (1.11 I think, maybe even older). And even if you do get the driver running, note that OpenGL is not supported, only OpenGL ES.

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## matthew-matvei

John, my particular Aspire One uses Power VR's Cedar Trail integrated processor.  Yours may be an Aspire One that's actually completely made by Acer... ugh, that'd be nice.

```
$ lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor D2xxx/N2xxx DRAM Controller (rev 03)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor D2xxx/N2xxx Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)

00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)

00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)

00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)

00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)

00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation NM10 Family LPC Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 02)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 02)

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 05)

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

03:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5116 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
```

Gusar, I've seen the Arch forum's thread about support for these drivers.  The last I read, though, it seemed to be somewhat hacky to get it supported.  I don't have too much time, patience nor expertise to deal with too much fiddling.  I'm trying to keep an eye on it, once there's something substantial in the AUR I'll probably head back to Arch, as it's my usual distro of choice.

What I don't understand is why can I install the .deb package using an up-to-date X in Bodhi Linux but to use the generic package I would need to revert to an outdated X?

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## Gusar

 *matthew-matvei wrote:*   

> once there's something substantial in the AUR

 

Don't count on it. As you yourself have seen, installing the driver requires a lot of fiddling. And requiring old components of stuff is a big no-no on Arch. If you don't have the time or interest, use the kernel gma500_gfx driver together with xf86-video-modesetting.

 *matthew-matvei wrote:*   

> What I don't understand is why can I install the .deb package using an up-to-date X in Bodhi Linux but to use the generic package I would need to revert to an outdated X?

 

Err, even if you used the Bodhi driver, you'd need to revert to an older X. The exact same one running in Bodhi. That's the problem with these binary drivers - they were made to run on a specific distro that the machine ships with, and so will only work with the specific versions of certain components (kernel, X) used on that distro at the time the machine was released. These driver aren't like what Nvidia produces, a generic driver constantly updated whenever a new kernel or X are released.

Intel has wised up though, their next netbook platform, called ValleyView, will have an Intel GPU, with fully open source drivers.

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