Arch Vs HP Mini 100-4100

garmaz · 2012-12-02 20:26:08

Hi All,

i'm a new user on Arch, i come from other distro's (debian/ubuntu - fedora)

i spend the day following a lot of wiki's and guides in order to install Arch on my netbook.

The problem is: X doesn't start.

surely i made a lot mistake on the installation of X and DE

Now, my goal is:

install Arch with a light DE (i tried Fedora 17, starts with gnome but works with a lot of CPU usage)

i will use this netbook for surfin' the web, email, video (stream & local), light gaming, and properly use the keyboard hotkeys

what are the steps to follow in order to make this happen?

On this netbook is present a GMA500 Intel chipset

Thanx in advance for the suggestions & please forgive me if I posted in the wrong section

garmaz

UnsolvedCypher · 2012-12-02 21:22:50

Welcome to Arch!
So do you need help starting X or installing the DE? If starting X is the issue, what happens when you try to start it?

Trilby · 2012-12-02 21:27:24

IIRC, the GMA500 is a constant source of issues. If that is part of the problem, be sure to search for other forum threads on installing the right driver(s) - there are *many* such threads.

bgc1954 · 2012-12-02 21:31:55

Welcome to Arch.

I have an HP mini 110 as well though mine is a year or two older. My best advice is to just follow the excellent beginners guide--if you haven't already-- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide to get a base system and then add the de/wm you decide on--or install a few to try them out. You'll likely need to install the xf86-video-intel and intel-dri packages for your video to work and follow the Xorg wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg
I have a section in my /etc/xorg.conf or you can but it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf to set the acceleration necessary for the intel video

Section "Device"
   Identifier "Intel Graphics"
   Driver      "intel"
   Option     "AccelMethod" "uxa"
#Option     "AccelMethod" "sna"
EndSection

I got the best performance from the uxa option but your mileage may vary edit: I apparently have a gma3150 not the GMA500 chipset--thank goodness, after doing some googling.

My hp mini has a Realtek wireless card that uses the rtl8192ce module but yours could be something different.

$ lspci

will give you the info but I didn't have to do anything. The modules necessary loaded and the firmware was already in the installed system.. If yours is a broadcom card you'll likely need to install the firmware--see the wiki, or it could be whatever hp decidied to use this year. Who knows?

The only hotkeys that worked out of the box for me are the brightness keys but I had to use xbindkeys for others to work as I use a simple tiling wm. Other DE's like gnome, xfce that I have used with other linux distros seem to have the keys working out of the box but I keep a very simple setup on my netbook. It's all up to you.

edit: I type too slow--two people ahead of me. ... and coincidentally the guy right ahead of me, Trilby, programmed the tiler I use.

Last edited by bgc1954 (2012-12-02 22:09:42)

ewaller · 2012-12-02 21:57:06

Lets start with your logs.

Can you post your /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Gusar · 2012-12-02 22:06:15

@bgc1954: garmaz has a GMA500, which is *not* an Intel GPU, so your config will do nothing with it.

@gamaz: Your choices are the kernel gma500_gfx module with xf86-video-modesetting, or the EMGD driver.

The first choice (gma500_gfx and xf86-video-modesetting) and is easy to set up, but you get no acceleration whatsoever, which means no Gnome Shell, no gaming, even video is problematic. The second choice (EMGD) is a big pain in the butt to set up, it requires downgrading X, possibly downgrading the kernel, and other nasty things.

bgc1954 · 2012-12-02 22:23:26

@Gusar - I stand corrected--alot of that going on lately. Technically, you're right, it's made by PowerVR--yikes--but is distributed under Intel or labelled as Intel--from what i"ve read. Doesn't seem to play nice with Linux.

thopiekar · 2014-07-24 22:03:22

Old thread but you might be interested in this project: https://github.com/EMGD-Community/intel-binaries-linux

Arch Linux

#1 2012-12-02 20:26:08

Arch Vs HP Mini 100-4100

#2 2012-12-02 21:22:50

Re: Arch Vs HP Mini 100-4100

#3 2012-12-02 21:27:24

Re: Arch Vs HP Mini 100-4100

#4 2012-12-02 21:31:55

Re: Arch Vs HP Mini 100-4100

#5 2012-12-02 21:57:06

Re: Arch Vs HP Mini 100-4100

#6 2012-12-02 22:06:15

Re: Arch Vs HP Mini 100-4100

#7 2012-12-02 22:23:26

Re: Arch Vs HP Mini 100-4100

#8 2014-07-24 22:03:22

Re: Arch Vs HP Mini 100-4100

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