[ubuntu-x] Intel 845G and 855GM hangs

[Geir Ove Myhr]

I just wanted to give you the heads up that there are new kernel
patches upstream for the problems users of intel chipsets 855GM [1]
and 845G [2] have had for a long time. There is an experimental, but
promising patch for the general cache incoherency problem that both
chipsets suffer from at [3]. This patch seems to be in need of more
testing before it will be commited. Unfortunately, I don't have the
time and resources to build kernels for Ubuntu users to test these
days, but it would be nice if someone else coud.

The 845G chipset suffers from some additional problems which should be
fixed by the commits [4] and [5] in drm-intel-next (the second commit
fixes a bug introduced in the first).

Let's hope that these computers soon will be usable for linux users again!

[1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/541511
[2]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/541492
[3]: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27187#c281
[4]: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/ickle/drm-intel.git;a=commit;h=15056d2c06862627ead868e035fcacc59dce1b1a
(drm/i915: Flush pending writes on i830/i845 after updating GTT)
[5]: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/ickle/drm-intel.git;a=commit;h=dc3bfebcf77d943b7e8495d30d0ee3d01b3042a5
(drm/i915: Don't skip ring flushes if only invalidating)

Geir Ove