Comment 39 for bug 362582

I got a mail with a reasonable explanation of the problem, that I'd like to ad to the report:

"My investigations on the net indicate that the source of the problem is
the LVDS (built-in LCD panel) controller of the graphics card. In my
case this is a National 2501 chip. It seems that older drivers (i810)
have supported it, but the new ones (intel) does not. I don't know why.
In some older readmes there are some references to the code supporting
this chip, for example here:
(http://downloadmirror.intel.com/df-support/9871/ENG/RELNOTES_LINUX5.0.txt
- reference to Driver/XFree86-4.2/ns2501.so)."

I think the theory sounds reasonable. I downloaded Feisty, and checked xorg.conf. It uses i810 driver, not intel. So I guess it was never supported. I've also tried other distributions like Tinyme, so it's not Ubuntu specific.
I did try the same thing as the person originally posting the bug, and vesa is not working either. I even tried safe graphics mode with Feisty, that did not work either (feels weird when normal graphics work, safe mode doesn't).
However I do have a vague feeling that I've gotten it to work with vesa in some version of puppy linux. Meaning that the vesa problem could be Ubuntu specific. Sadly beeing in the middle of moving houses, I can't get a hold of my linux discs. I also tried booting Slitaz, which worked beautifully. I know I've gotten it to work with Elive.

I guess that means support for the chip will have to be programmed for the intel driver, since it never supported it. I hope there is some help to be gained from i810, Elive or Slitaz in programming the intel driver. I don't know if it still should be called a bug, since it's more like adding a feature that was never supported by this driver. It is however a regression for some Ubuntu users if neither support for the chip is added, or the i810 driver is brought back. I know of no way to use the last two Ubuntu releases on my laptop without an external monitor.