I have been able to run Fedora 15 and 16 on a Dell Inspiron Mini 12 netbook with a display resolution of 1280x800.
To do this, I compiled a custom kernel which enables the gma500 driver and disables some framebuffer drivers. (I'm not sure why this has to be done. Maybe it is because there is no DDX driver for the gma500 kernel module.)
To compile a custom kernel, see Building a custom kernel. You do not have to run makeconfig or apply any patches. However, you should modify the SOURCES/config-generic file. Search for each of these options in the file and modify them to be the same as in the following listing.
CONFIG_IKCONFIG=y CONFIG_IKCONFIG_PROC=y CONFIG_DRM_PSB=m # CONFIG_FB_VGA16 is not set # CONFIG_FB_VESA is not set # CONFIG_STUB_POULSBO is not set
For the 3.1 kernel, you also need to add three more options to the config-generic file. How you set these depends on what version of the GMA 500 hardware you have.
# CONFIG_DRM_PSB_MRST is not set # CONFIG_DRM_PSB_MFLD is not set # CONFIG_DRM_PSB_CDV is not set
When I boot the computer with the custom kernel, the display is not correct at the GDM Login screen. If I press Control-Alt-Backspace, the display becomes correct.
Suspend doesn't work for me yet, but otherwise this driver seems to be working quite well.