Using SiS 771/671 graphics card with Ubuntu 14.04

Just a quick post to avoid losing this very useful bit of information: we have some older laptops laying around that were budget bargains. They have the following (old!) SiS graphics card:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 771/671 PCIE VGA Display Adapter [1039:6351] (rev 10)

After trying in the past several times, somehow today my Google-fu was strong, and I found two useful bits of information:

  1. This PPA for Ubuntu 14.04 and 15.04 that holds the driver xserver-xorg-video-sisimedia, created by mati75:
    https://launchpad.net/~mati75/+archive/ubuntu/sis771
  2. ArchLinux has the same driver available, so if/when this driver for Ubuntu is no longer viable, I get an excuse to play around with Arch! Awesome!
Following the instructions on the PPA page, I was able to get the laptops to use the native 1280x800 resolution, instead of 640x480. Ubuntu went from absolutely unusable to a very nice option! (using Lubuntu, by the way, but Xubuntu would probably also work decently.)

Dear mati75, Mateusz, thank you for creating that PPA!

Update: To help people in finding this, the laptop model information, from the BIOS. Notice the great serial number. Shame on you, Clevo.

root@user-M7x0S:~# dmidecode -t 1
# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.4 present.

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
        Manufacturer: clevo                           
        Product Name: M7x0S                           
        Version: Rev. A1                         
        Serial Number: 12345678901234567               
        Wake-up Type: Power Switch
        SKU Number: Not Specified
        Family: Not Specified

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