Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu writes:
Unfortunately, I don't, and I've given up on it anyway. I'm not going
to bother since I'll be getting a new laptop in a year or so. I can
live without the 3D desktop effects.
This is your golden opportunity to get rid of this headache, once and
for all. Be sure to buy a laptop with an Intel or ATI chipset that's
supported by Mesa, and have everything working out of the box. I don't
see why anyone who'se in the market for a laptop with Linux would want
to put up with this annoyance, in this day and age.
Careful there. All the new ATI models are unsupported. None of the
X1NNN series are supported by the radeon or ati driver. The commercial
fglrx driver does not support AIGLX and will only work with the XGL
server, which is a pain.
Almost all of the new ATI based laptops are shipping with X1400, X1300,
and other X1NNN series GPUs.
I just rebuilt my X1400 based laptop with 17" WUXGA (1920x1200) display
with F7. The very best I can get is 1600x1200 with the vesa driver, and
of course, no 3D support. The commercial fglrx driver has an issue with
F7 right now.
So saying that anyone should buy ATI GPUs in laptops is asking for
trouble as well.
The video card vendors are trying to maintain lock in, and that means
that both ATI and Nvidia refuse to divulge enough details about the
hardware interface to make an equivalent device driver.
Currently, only intel has enough of the notebook GPU market to make a
reasonable recommendation to Linux consumers. And only intel is
actively working with open source developers. And to make matters
worse, the intel GPUs are generally inferior (3D OpenGL performance
wise) to the others.
Performance wise, only the nvidia driver is on par with its Windows
counterpart.
So what to do? What to buy?
Same old answer: Do what's best for you.
If OpenGL performance is paramount, then there is no option but Nvidia.
If seamless integration is important, the the only major laptop GPU to
buy is intel.
If your company buys what is on sale and gives it to you to work with
(raises hand) then you will probably get stuck with an ATI X1NN series GPU.
Good Luck!
