Graphics with intel GPU

[Marius Gedminas]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 12:51:39PM +0200, Arnaud MEZ wrote:
> As i sai last time i got a problem with my graphics; i founded that it's an
> Intel mobile GM965/GL960, and i wen to compiz website and found it on the
> blacklist and the reason is "*XV does not play with XAA under compiz, only
> with EXA*"

That's way out of date.  The issue has been fixed, and GM965 was removed
from the blacklist, and the drivers switched to EXA by default and then
a new series of driver issues appeared in Jaunty and GM965 was
blacklisted again.  (And, I believe, unblacklisted again in an updated
Compiz package available from the jaunty-proposed repository.)

> i really need to activate that compiz thing cause my laptop seems like
> boring without it.

Heh, I hear you.

People have mentioned two solutions for making Compiz work.  Both are
poor:

  1. edit /usr/bin/compiz (no! bad user! never edit files in /usr)
  2. set SKIP_CHECKS=1 before running compiz (difficult to do if compiz
     is started by the GNOME session; maybe you could edit
     /etc/environment)

but the third and best solution was not mentioned:

  3. mkdir -p ~/.config/compiz
     echo SKIP_CHECKS=yes > ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager

Now the downside of doing that, as described in
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/904

  * Graphics performance is *very* slow if you use EXA (which is the
    default acceleration method)

  * There are random video freezes that make your laptop unusable until
    reboot

you can switch to UXA (as described elsewhere in this thread), but that
also has downsides:

  * A constant memory leak that eats ~1 gig of memory per day until the
    computer runs out
  * X crashes on almost every suspend/resume requiring you to log in
    again and losing all open programs

Upgrading to a newer intel video drivers (2.7.1) doesn't fix anything.
I haven't tried the other workarounds (using greedy migration heuristic
with EXA or reverting to an older driver version).

Good luck,
Marius Gedminas
-- 
For Sale: Parachute.  Only used once, never opened, small stain.
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