Hi all,

Just a quick update to let you know that I've just put x11-drivers/xf86-video-i810-2.4.1 to Portage.

Overall, I'm not very happy with this release. It's definitely not as smooth as 2.3.2 which turned out to be very solid. So please test it out with a recent xorg-server (read, 1.4.2) and let me know in bugzilla if anything breaks.

Again, be prepared to continue the bug hunt in FreeDesktop's bugzilla as my Intel Powers (tm) are very limited. It just so happens that half a dozen Intel developers also roam there, so all in all, it's a good place to file bugs. Just add "remi at gentoo dot org" as a CC on those bugs so I can keep track of the issues.

Thanks

Update :

Josh asked me a couple questions and the answers might interest all those of you who have Intel chips but don't follow X development closely. So here goes :

My Thinkpad R61i has an Intel X3100 chip, so I'll be sure to test out the new drivers. I am sorta scared by your blog post, but, well, as long as I quickpkg the relevant packages before upgrading, I should be okay, right?

Yes, let's get this straight, the driver won't eat your laptop and won't kill kittens either. A lot of the core features do work, but there are some instabilities and some quirky behaviors, and those are the issues I'm worried about.

I normally run the hardmasked/~arch X and Intel packages, with all their quirks, on that machine, so 2.4 shouldn't all that different.

Yep, 2.4.1-r1 is in ~arch, so ~ users will probably already have it installed by now.

I wasn't aware of the git overlay. Are there any fixes in upstream's git that just didn't make it into 2.4.1? If so, I may have to make the move to the overlay.

Donnie's X11 overlay has live ebuilds for the "master" branch of all X packages. Beware that intel/master is very different from intel/xf86-video-intel-2.4-branch. I'm currently backporting patches from the latter into Portage as they will end up in the next release anyway. So there's no need to create a live git ebuild for this particular branch.

As for the current git master, as you may have read on Phoronix and Planet FreeDesktop, the driver is going through major changes. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

Also, when's the namechange to xf86-video-intel?

I plan to tackle this tiny issue when Donnie decides to put Xorg 7.4 (aka xorg-server-1.5) into portage.