Linux kernel doesn't seem to support my old laptop

[steve7233]

How do I obtain kernel support for my laptop's video driver? Ubuntu 14.04 worked on my laptop, but now Hardware acceleration doesn't seem to work. I read a lot of Google searches, and it seems the hardware acceleration isn't working with my driver, and since the laptop is very old -HP Pavilion dv6 1030us-, I wonder how I can regain support. I am currently running Firefox with hardware acceleration turned off, and it seems to have stopped locking up my system. Firefox was occasionally freezing my system, and I had to reboot every hour or so. Google told me how to sort of fix it. Since Xbuntu 14.04 ran on it just fine, I wonder why it doesn't work with 24.04. Possibly missing stuff that might have been removed in the years between. Is there any way to get that functionality back?

[claydoh]

Arghh......what video card?
And no, many to most of us aren't going to look it up or guess .

Most likely it is a RAM limitation, as it will share video ram with system ram, and probably not really share enough to be useful

aka it is old and you probably need to use a more specialized distro catering to old hardware.

[tenplus1]

For a dual-core 4gb laptop you may be better running a lighter desktop distro like Bodhi Linux 7.0 HWE to get the most out of old hardware.

[steve7233]

Arghh......what video card?
And no, many to most of us aren't going to look it up or guess .

Most likely it is a RAM limitation, as it will share video ram with system ram, and probably not really share enough to be useful

aka it is old and you probably need to use a more specialized distro catering to old hardware.

Mesa Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset

[steve7233]

I found this on a Google search:

The Intel GM45 Express Chipset and its integrated graphics, the Intel GMA 4500MHD, are supported by recent 2.6 Linux kernels, according to ThinkWiki. This support generally extends to newer kernels as well. For example, a fix for a graphic rendering problem related to this chipset was mentioned in Arch Linux Forums in relation to kernel 3.19.

Unfortunately, the current kernel doesn't seem to work with my graphics chipset. I will have to keep looking. At least now I know it is a bug in the kernel.

[steve7233]

I just found this from Intel:

X.Org driver User Mode Setting

NOTE!
UMS where the mode setting is done by the Xorg driver in user-land is deprecated and newer versions of the Intel Xorg driver (v2.10+) no longer support it. Instead you will have to use KMS (Kernel Mode Setting)



Make sure you're using Intel Xorg driver, version 2.8 or 2.9.

[steve7233]

Just found this:

Chris Wilson worked on adding back a GEM-free UMS code-path for those older Intel customers (though it should also work with newer Intel chipsets too) in hopes that this would take care of the stability and freezing problems that has become a common occurrence to those using the newer driver stack such as what's found in recent distributions like Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. This work hasn't yet been pushed into the mainline xf86-video-intel DDX driver, but it has been packaged for Ubuntu in a PPA and Ubuntu developers have encouraged those with Intel hardware to try this driver. A few weeks have passed since this call-for-testing and the results seem to be mixed.

Does anyone know the name of this driver or the Ubuntu PPA?

[steve7233]

I think I found the needed ppa:
oibaf/graphics-drivers

When I updated my system, it downloaded 20 or so updates for Mesa. I am thinking I probably need to switch from Wayland to X11, but when I try the login screen to use the button to switch it is not there. I suspect, for some reason, it changes the resolution of the viewport, and now the screen is bigger than the viewport, and the needed button is beyond the viewport and thus can't be seen or accessed. Is there another way to switch from Wayland to X11? I think I need the old UMS instead of KMS for the old i8xx, as the GM45 uses the older deprecated tech.

[steve7233]

I have been doing some more research and discovered a way to add an egpu to any laptop even very old ones unless they are from the 20th century. If you have a wifi card then it will probably will work. I just need to see how much it costs and decid if I want to do that. I have a 1060 6GB card and a power supply I just need the dock which might cost $17 usd or so.