[Tfug] Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic" Alpha4 and the Intel video drivers...

[Ray Reeves]

I was curious. I just put Karmic on my box as a clean install and it is a turd, as you say, while connected to the network. I checked another Jaunty box and it screams. Mt wireless laptop is faster. Wonder what's up? Some setting perhaps? 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim March" <1.jim.march at gmail.com> 
To: "Tucson Free Unix Group" <tfug at tfug.org>, "Main PLUG discussion list" <plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us> 
Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 9:48:59 PM GMT -07:00 U.S. Mountain Time (Arizona) 
Subject: [Tfug] Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic" Alpha4 and the Intel video drivers... 

Folks, 

I have a laptop with the mediocre Intel 965/X3100 chipset. In Ubuntu 
Jaunty it ran like a turd until major tweaks were applied, and the 
results weren't 100% stable. Jaunty came out right as the Intel video 
support was in flux and Jaunty basically caught about half of what was 
needed between the kernel, xorg, Intel driver, Mesa and Compiz. 

Karmic has the whole package. I've been running it for five days now, 
ever since alpha4 came out, and it's more solid (and FASTER) than I 
ever got out of Jaunty. I did a full re-install with the alternate 
installer (as I use whole disk encryption) and I went with Ext4 - it's 
working great. 

On a lark I loaded the 64bit Adobe Flash "alpha" and it's rock solid 
too - best flash Linux experience I've ever had, period, end of 
discussion. 

I think Karmic is going to be a really sweet Ubuntu flavor when it 
ships and the improvements in Intel video support are so amazingly 
vast I'd say anybody with at least moderate technical chops able to 
cope with minor pre-release glitches should switch NOW. I'm told the 
fixes also apply perfectly to the Intel 4500 chipset found on the 
newest el cheapo laptops. 

WARNING: this applies to all Intel video drivers except the GMA500 
chipset. That thing is a major turd and will remain so until the 
Ubuntu distro post-Karmic at a minimum. The most common GMA500 
machine is the Dell "mini 10" I think it's called, and for some reason 
that thing is an excellent Hackintosh candidate. While I'm not 
normally a proponent of running Apple OSX on non-Apple hardware (as 
Apple is actively trying to stomp your install with updates!), the 
difference in support for the GMA500 between Linux generally and OSX 
is severe enough I'd consider it, at least until Intel helps get the 
driver situation under control. (The issue is, Intel recently bought 
the GMA500 tech from another company that was very 
Linux-hostile...Intel is getting it sorted out but it's just not done 
yet. That company did do some OSX drivers for Apple...) 

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