[ubuntu-x] i8xx, again!

[Greg]

On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 12:29 AM, Christopher James Halse Rogers <
raof at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> Hello X wranglers!
>
> It's that time of the release, again(!), where it's too late for a
> magical fix for i8xx to appear, and we need to work out the least-bad
> option to use as the default.
>
> It, again(!), looks like there's hope for the next release with Chris
> Wilson's accel-less shadow branch, but there are still problems with
> that branch, it's not mainline, and it's too late to switch for
> Maverick.
>
> This, as I count it, leaves us with 3 options:
>
> 1) Blacklist KMS on the cards, as we did for Lucid, and let VESA drive
> them.  This is my current favourite, and what we've got in the kernel
> now.
>
> Pros:
>  * Users get the VESA driver, which should work.
>
> Cons:
>  * Laptops might not have the panel's native modes in their VESA bios,
> leading to suboptimal resolution or -vesa not working at all (there's a
> report of -vesa failing completely).
>  * Users need to fiddle with grub options or modprobe config to load the
> intel driver.
>
> 2) Don't blacklist KMS, but drop these cards from X's autoload list.
> This will let fbdev take over.
>
> Pros:
>  * If KMS brings up the native mode, users get the native mode.
>  * Resolution can be set on the kernel command line.
>  * Dual-head will work in clone mode if second head is connected at boot
> time.
>
> Cons:
>  * Can't change resolution at runtime
>  * Non-default resolutions *must* be set on the kernel command line.
>  * User needs to generate an xorg.conf to use the intel driver.
>
> 3) Do nothing, let the intel driver load on kms.
>
> Pros:
>  * If it doesn't crash, everything works.
>
> Cons:
>  * Lots of crashes.
>
>
> I favour option (1).  I think that the ability to switch resolution is
> likely to be more important than starting in the best possible
> resolution.  I also think that users are more likely to be familiar with
> the VESA driver, and be more likely to ask useful questions.
>
> We'll release-note this, again(!).
>
> Does anyone have any further insights or better ideas?
>
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