Xorg i810 driver

Puppy 301 has Xorg 7.2 and the Intel video driver is named 'i810_drv.so', located at /usr/X11R7/lib/xorg/modules/drivers. Puppy 400 introduced Xorg 7.3 and this has a new Intel video driver, 'intel_drv.so'. Unfortunately, the new driver does not work properly with some Intel video chips.

Teting Xorg 7.4 recently, things have got worse, but that's another story.

Forum member ICPUG recently reminded me of this problem, so I have decided to try an experiment. I am building Puppy with both 'i810_drv.so' and 'intel_drv.so' and will test on a range of hardware. I'm interested to see which one Xorg chooses on different hardware, and whether they can coexist.

Acer 3681 laptop
Xorg has chosen the i810_drv.so driver, and it seems to be working fine. My screen is 1024x800. The chips are:
Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub
8086:27a0, 8086:27a2, 8086:27a6

Classmate laptop
Again, i810_drv.so got chosen, and seems to be working the same as the intel_drv.so driver. The chips are:
Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller
8086:2590, 8086:2592

That's all I've tried so far. Perhaps Xorg is going to always use the i810 driver. Maybe I should just leave it like that and see if anyone complains.

...I wonder if anyone had the reverse experience. Moving from the i810 driver in 301 and earlier, to the intel driver in 400, fixed their video problems? I don't recall anything specific on that.

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Comments

xorg 7.4 intel
Username: kirk
Barry, Have you tried Xorg 7.4 with kms enabled kernel (2.6.29 or later)? The new intel drivers require kms enabled, or the older driver gets loaded. Intel graphics seem OK, not great, but I'm using 2.6.28. I'm going to try rebuilding my T2 build with Xorg 7.3. I downloaded the T2 trunk revision 30200 which has xorg-server 1.4.2, I think that's the last for 7.3. I was going to use the X11 and Xorg package folders from it in my current T2 build. The only problem I'm having with Xorg 7.4 is that ATI no longer supports my card with the newer X servers. Sorry you when through all that with Abiword. I had went down that road. I ended up using the development version of Abiword (2.7.4). It doesn't require Gnome libs.

abiword
Username: ttuuxxx
"Hi Kirk are you telling me that you have Abiword 2.7.4 fully working Fonts???? The max version puppy can use 2.6.3, All the pcf fonts get mangled up really bad after that, I tried about 10 newer versions after 2.6.3 and all the same results. I wonder if its because you have a newer xorg. Even Slackware had the same issue. ttuuxxx

Abiword
Username: kirk
"Yes, I'm using ttf fonts and yes Xorg has to be able to recognize them. I'm letting Xorg 7.4 auto-configure it self except for input devices. I did keep a couple pcf fonts for rxvt. I haven't tried to get rxvt to use ttf. You can configure Abiword to exclude fonts from it's list (AbiWord.Profile). I've done this in my alpha3: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=44060

i810
Username: ICPUG
"Thanks for the testing. Much appreciated. If this stays in I might just test the next release on my Medion laptop.

Tags: woof