Mandriva’s second release candidate for Mandriva 2010 adds a Moblin UI option, and (in the paid version) auto-detected support for the closed GPU in Intel’s Poulsbo companion chip. So, if you’ve got one of those teensy CompuLab FitPC2s, an early Dell netbook, or perhaps a MID or single-board computer based on Menlow, it might be worth a look.
The Poulsbo support is not only in ‘the paid version’, it’s in any MDV edition except the free-as-in-speech one. Most components of the driver are in the main and contrib repositories, and the closed-source bits are in the non-free repository, all of which are available to anyone at no charge. I would assume the One editions (which are free-as-in-beer) of MDV 2010 will include the driver.
http://linuxcrunch.com/content/20-features-mandriva-2010“ 20 Features in Mandriva 2010
Do not forget that a lot of actual netbooks uses the “Poulsbo” US15W chipset with GMA500 graphic processor.
Just take a close look to the actual specifications of the netbook, that’s always a wise move by the way since GMA950 offers both a much better driver support (especially under Linux) and better 3D performances — of course at the expense of more heat and less battery-life.
For instance, the Asus EeePC T91 or the Sony Vaio P are both using it. The same goes for Acer Aspire One 751 or Asus EeePC 11O1, those two “mini-laptops” with 11″ display. And others…
What is so special about Mandriva and Poulsbo?
Do they have 2D? 3D? Or video accel?
Did they write the driver by specs under NDA?
Who maintains it?
Poulsbo support sounds good. But what level of support?
Much like my packages for Fedora (in RPM Fusion), it’s a re-packaging of the driver from Ubuntu’s custom OEM build for Dell, which is shipped with some Dell netbooks that use Poulsbo chipsets. Regular Ubuntu doesn’t include the driver.
The driver supports 2D, 3D and video playback acceleration, though actually using video playback acceleration is slightly complex (you need a custom mplayer build). The functionality you get is identical in Mandriva, Fedora with RPM Fusion packages, and the Dell-custom Ubuntu (or a regular Ubuntu with the packages from the custom Ubuntu added to it, which is documented in this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014534 – warning, it’s gigantic).
For those who want to know how Mandriva is build, how to contribute, etc…
have a look there:
http://blog.mandriva.com/2009/10/09/re-introducing-mandriva-linux/
http://blog.mandriva.com/2009/10/09/linux-publisher/
http://blog.mandriva.com/2009/10/16/101-contributing-to-mandriva-li…
http://blog.mandriva.com/2009/10/16/102-taking-part-in-mandriva-lin…
regards,
Glyj