My Dell Mini 1210 netbook is using the Intel GMA500 built in display, which has a poor driver support on Linux.

By default, Versa driver is used when we installed Linux OS, but the performance is not good. Luckily, there are driver for Intel GMA500 “Poulsbo” video hardware in various Ubuntu releases.  Below is the method to install it on latest Ubuntu 10.04:
Command to add ‘GMA500 PPA’ repository and update database

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/ppa && sudo apt-get update

Command to install all needed packages

 sudo apt-get install poulsbo-driver-2d poulsbo-driver-3d poulsbo-config

Other Ubuntu releases can be found on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsbo.

After installed the driver, we need to restart the machine. So far the released driver on support 2D, where 3D is not available.