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Saturday, January 8, 2011

Install drivers for SIS 771/671 graphic card in Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04

   My Esprimo Mobile V5535 laptop came with an unsupported by default graphic card SiS 771/671.

$ lspci -nn |grep -i vga
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 771/671 PCIE VGA Display Adapter [1039:6351] (rev 10)

After infinite searching (that took almost 4 hours:) on forums about that problem,  I finally got some working drivers (still without 3d acceleration that doesn't seem to be supported in the near future) from the 5th post from here (I still have the files if the links are not working).  This contains instructions also:

  • copy the driver (sisimedia_drv.so)  to /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers
  • modify (or copy xorg.conf if you don't have that file) /etc/x11/xorg.conf with the lines from xorg.conf contained in the archive.

Warning!!
Check the refresh rate supported by your monitor!  An incorrect setting may damage the monitor.I modified mine like below, in the "Monitor" section of xorg.conf:
    .....

#      HorizSync 30-63
#      VertRefresh 50-75
        HorizSync 28-72
        VertRefresh 43-60
   .....


P.S.:

  • If possible stay away from SiS graphics cards, at least until they decide to support Linux. Stick with Intel, AMD, nVidia.
  • SiS Graphic on Linux site contains lot of other drivers, that have been used  successfully by others in Linux 
  • http://ubuntuforums.org is a great resource   

Enjoy and hope it helps!

EDIT for Ubuntu 11.04 Natty :
Using the instructions on this post worked for me, and I encountered 2 issues:

1. I had a blank screen just after reboot (instead of grub). I solved that (or it solved by itself ?!) by rebooting with an ubuntu live usb and deleting some resolution modes from xorg.conf. (dont know if this actually was the solution but he computer booted correctly.
2. I had to modify in xorg.conf in the Device section Driver "sis", after 'sudo make install'

After that, because this graphic card does not support 3d acceleration, you have to install Unity 2d, (which looks kindof ok compared to the real deal). Complete instructions on installing Unity 2D in Ubuntu 11.04 here.

EDIT2:
Still on that blog, the drivers compiled!

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