Last week I was working on an old ASUS X5DC laptop, which features the notorious SiS Mirage GPU. This is really a narrow niche topic, as these laptops are reaching their end-of-life, but let’s briefly document the process here anyway. This may be directly, or with slight modification, applicable to other SiS Mirage equipped laptops as well. There are lots of out of date guides and articles around the web regarding SiS Mirage installation and I had to go through several to find a working solution for me. Therefore I decided to publish this here, just in case someone else is unfortunate enough to own this dreadful laptop or GPU.
Install sisimedia drivers on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
First install Ubuntu, or perhaps the lighter Xubuntu variant, as usual and then proceed with the following steps:
- Add the Mateusz Lukasik PPA repository to your software sources and then refrest repository data.
- sudo apt-get update
- Install the sisimedia driver
- sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-sisimedia
- Create a file using a text editor to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, copy-paste the following settings to the file, save and reboot:
Section “Device”
Identifier “Configured Video Device”
Driver “sisimedia”
Option “UseTiming1366” “yes”
EndSection
Section “Files”
ModulePath “/usr/lib/xorg/modules”
ModulePath “/usr/lib64/xorg/modules”
EndSection
Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Configured Monitor”
EndSection
Section “Screen”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Monitor “Configured Monitor”
Device “Configured Video Device”
EndSection
Section “ServerFlags”
Option “IgnoreABI” “True”
EndSection
Note: This setting file is specifically for the ASUS X5DC, which has a 1366x768 resolution LCD panel (UseTiming1366). You may need to tweak the file according to your laptop specs.
As an end result you have the latest Ubuntu LTS version running with the native display resolution. The performance will be poor and video playback jerky.
If you are aware of any additional tweaks to improve the performance or a better method of getting this done, please let me know!