Gateway Solo 5350 Runs Linux: DRI and 3D graphics

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X11 Display and Direct Rendering Infrastructure

RedHat 9.0/XF86 4.3 Update: DRI works if you specify 16MB video RAM ("VideoRam 16") and get the DRM from xfree86.org if you get the 2.4.22 kernel. 2.4.22 stock kernel comes with version 1.2 of the DRM, but XF86 4.3 needs 1.3. Setting the memory to 16MB doesn't mean to expect 16MB of preallocated video memory (technically, it has none!), it tells the GART to allocate this much for the video buffers. Keep in mind it's shared so your applications loses around 7MB RAM (9M allocated on default).
This is then enough for DRI at 1024x768 at 24bpp, and got to admit, it's beautiful, and lots of crazy OpenGL screensavers in the xscreensaver package :p (3d graphics is useless for me, at least until I can get it to run Warcraft3 :)

The stock DRM 1.3 for XFree86 4.3 drivers do _not_ compile correctly on RedHat9's stock kernel, so if you want to stick with the stock kernels, you need to hack DRI. In order to get other non-opensource drivers (such as Netlock and Linuxant) to run at the same time as DRI, I had to get DRI to work with RH's stock kernel. I hacked the stock version and came up with the code here that runs on RedHat 9's 2.4.20-27.9. I haven't tried upgrading to the later kernels yet, as it's a PITA to deal with the other stuff I need to recompile too... You'll need to have RH9's kernel sources installed as well. I think these should also compile in 2.6 but YMMV, I haven't tried it yet. Note, this isn't the cleanest way to hack the code so don't think it's the end-all solution.

However it -does- work and I get 291 fps in glxgears on battery power. I get around 24-30 frames per second with "sproingies -delay 0 -fps" maximized at 1024x768, also on battery power, instead of the 8 to 11 fps it gets with emulation. Yes, this pales to other DRI implementations... it's downright awful... but hey, use what you got, and don't use MESA software emulation which is even slower... Plus, IT'S OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE!!! What could be better than having an fully open source machine? :-)

Also the max texture map that i830m seems to support is 512x512, so beware when these apps crash with "cannot mipmap" when you try to use a texture map larger than this. Better than my Voodoo3 which only supports 256x256, but alas, wish it could do more and run all of xscreensaver's OpenGL code in full screen like my desktop's Radeon. But at least it doesn't crash like it (my Radeon crashes frequently. Very annoying. The i830m seems -much- more stable.)