# Goodbye charm, welcome up


I've bought a new 11.1" netbook from Asus, this is going to replace my
aging 4G Surf (named *charm*). I've named the new one  *up*, so I'm hoping the 
[Large Hadron Collider](http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/LHC-en.html)
is up and running soon and discovers a new 
[flavor of quarks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark) - 'cause I'm
running out of names. (*strange* is already allocated if I ever buy a Mac
and run Linux on that, *top* and *bottom* just don't sound right).

This is hopefully the last time I buy a Intel only machine, turns out 
this machine has a `GMA500` (aka poulsbo) video chipset which
is [not](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzAyOQ)
[really](http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=533450)
[working](http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-mobile@lists.ubuntu.com/msg02099.html)
[well](http://forum.soft32.com/linux/Intel-Atom-Poulsbo-chipset-Xorg-driver-Debian-ftopict487114.html).

This chip is not supported by the 100% open source driver Intel is
promoting so much. Even Moblin 2.0 (A Intel sponsored distro) does not
support it.

There [is a git
repo](http://git.moblin.org/cgit.cgi/deprecated/psb-kmd/) containing
a driver which was created *for* Intel by a company named 
[Tungsten Graphics](http://www.tungstengraphics.com).

I'm pondering getting into kernel development and also trying to code
for X, so this may be a good opportunity to delve in. However, my guess
is, that this kernel-X-graphics interaction is one of the more difficult
areas...