Expérimental X11 intel driver

Just a small post to tell you that I’ve recently switched to the experimental X11 driver called “intel” on my Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring system. This X11 driver, usable with most of the intel graphic cards, is improved and is shipped in the 2007 Spring edition. In order to use it, it is necessary to update your xorg server (which, as a bonus, gives you access to randr extensions 1.2) and to do some manual operations which are explained here in a very straight-forward way :

Experimental_Intel_driver

I really appreciate this driver instead of the previous one (i810) for several reasons :

• I don’t have this “blurred” appearance I had before, probably due to an incorrect refresh rate
• I can now hotplug my television to my linux box, but unfortunately, the picture is black and white (even after several tries with xrandr, I can’t get the color)…
• It is now possible to change resolution dynamically. It was possible before with krandrtray, but now Xorg has a good support for it
• The awful 915resolution service isn’t useful anymore at every boot. It was used to launch a program hacking the BIOS in order to have the X11 driver correctly guessing the resolution. But, well, it’s really a hackish solution, as you’d admit.

However, I still have two little problems with it, but they don’t bother me, personally :

• Beryl, compiz & compiz-fusion (yes, it is now available in 2007 Spring if you activate backports) don’t work : back to my favorite KDE theme : Serenity)
• Logging out is enough to see X crashing (but it doesn’t crash when I’m inside the session, even when displaying at the same time a filem, a 3D application and flash sites)

That’s it.