it's not entirely right. my Dell D505 works like a champ ( with compiz,
emerald). the workaround is to add i915 to boot configuration.

this probably loads proper kernel module. beyond that i did not have time
between now and then to hook it up to the debugger so there is generic
version running on my machine.

Linux host 2.6.32-22-generic #33-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 28 13:27:30 UTC 2010
i686 GNU/Linux

there are a few minor bugs. one is there is no DVD play back on totem (this
relates to video and codecs) it simply blackscreens when I start totem...

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Thoer <email address hidden> wrote:

> from
> http://www.linux.com/community/forums?func=view&amp;catid=25&amp;id=5462
> (1 Month, 1 Week ago)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Basically, the Intel Linux developers have decided to screw with the
> i915 gpu Linux kernel driver which used to work for the Intel 855GM or
> Intel 85x graphics chips. They have decided to drop ums (user mode
> setting) for the driver without providing a working kms (Kernel mode
> setting) alternative.
> So in short, if you have an Intel 85x graphics card (Extremely common on
> slightly older Pentium M Centrino Notebooks) You have practically zero
> chance of using any current distribution release which uses a current
> version of the Linux kernel and be able to use any kind of working
> xserver (Say for instance to use a desktop, kde sc, gnome, xfce, etc.)
>
> The last working Fedora kernel version is :
> 2.6.31.1-56.fc12.i686
>
> I believe that any of the 2.6.30.x kernels should work on any
> distribution.
> The recent Ubuntu LTS support release does not suffer from the problem
> because the Ubuntu developers identified the issue and marked it as a
> regression. Unfortunately, upstream are either not interested in fixing
> or reverting the regression or are having no real luck fixing it.
> (From some bug tracker hunting, it looks like a combination of the two
> with the person involved in pushing the regression completely ignoring
> the problem.)
>
> This issue has been known for and was reported over six months ago now.
> The developer who pushes the updates to the i915 driver was told that
> the commits he was about to push were a regression but still he pushed
> them and it was merged anyway.
>
> The problem manifests itself as a complete lock up when the x server has
> started or shortly after the xserver has started.
> No magic sysrq key combination or ctrl + alt + backspace key combination
> achieves any kind of escape from the lock up and the only solution is to
> power down the machine manually by holding down the power button.
>
> So if you do own a machine which contains an Intel 85x graphics chip,
> you may as well either buy a new machine without Intel graphics to
> replace it or run an old distribution on it (And hope that it is ever
> fixed. Which seems pretty unlikely at the moment.)
> I myself have one of these machines and have now learned the lesson the
> hard way, to never again buy a machine which contains Intel graphics
> hardware to try to use in conjunction with the Linux kernel. I advise
> others to do the same.
>
> --
> MASTER: [i855] GPU lockup (apport-crash)
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/541511
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of a duplicate bug.
>
> Status in Ubuntu Release Notes: Fix Released
> Status in X.org xf86-video-intel: Confirmed
> Status in “xserver-xorg-video-intel” package in Ubuntu: Triaged
> Status in “xserver-xorg-video-intel” source package in Lucid: Triaged
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-video-intel
>
> This is a MASTER bug report, i.e. not a real bug report, but a tool to help
> manage other bug reports.
>
> Most bug reports on i855 are probably due to the CPU/GPU incoherency
> problem that is now consolidated upstream at
> http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27187 (which was split off
> from a bug report for i845). For now, we mark all automatically reported GPU
> lockups on i855 as duplicates of this unless there is a reason not to. There
> are some tests you may do to help upstream with this issue, and I will come
> back with instructions here. For those of you who know how to patch and
> compile a kernel you may look at comment #30 (and #6 for what kind of
> feedback they want) in the upstream bug report. Actually, if someone could
> volunteer to build an ubuntu-packaged kernel with this patch for others to
> test, that would be nice.
>
> There is a similar master bug report for i845 at bug 541492.
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-release-notes/+bug/541511/+subscribe
>