What's so great about Intel's support?

[greg]

Intel's drivers are quite buggy and slow. Without DRI2, OpenGL won't work with a compositing manager active. There's no support for textured video either, so video playback is crap with a compositing manager, too. The only upside is that 2D performance is pretty good.

Actually, on my X200M-based notebook X.org now works a lot better. I don't really get it with all the praise about Intel's "great" Linux support. It may be all open sourced, but as it stands, it isn't particularly great.

[TechMage89]

Actually, it's really Intel's hardware that sucks. Their drivers are pretty darn good. I do agree that ATI's open source drivers are within range of Intel's stuff for some of their cards.

[Redeeman]

intels drivers are quite very good, and so is their hardware.. 2D is fast, it has lots of features.. and its not true that video doesent work good with compositing on, it does. And you too can run opengl apps while, atleast it doesent stop my brother from running shit like google earth.

all in all, it works better than nvidia and fglrx..

[greg]

and its not true that video doesent work good with compositing on, it does.

Sure, it does work if you disable Xv and revert back to software-rendering. Which is disasterous for performance/CPU usage. Not exactly a solution you'd want.

And you too can run opengl apps while, atleast it doesent stop my brother from running shit like google earth.

You can, but it will certainly flicker a lot. DRI always renders directly into the framebuffer, which fucks up the compositing. It's completely impossible to apply any compositing effects onto the OpenGL window. DRI will just overwrite what's in the framebuffer, causing the flickering. And the fact that DRI2 will get delayed makes it even more frustrating. By the way: this is not a problem if you're using NVidia, they have a workaround in the drivers which allows you to use OpenGL with compositing.

all in all, it works better than nvidia and fglrx..

Not for me. Not at all.

Actually, it's really Intel's hardware that sucks.

Maybe. At least in terms of performance even Intel's latest and greatest offering (X4500) still blows. I cannot imagine Larrabee to not suck at the moment.

[Extreme Coder]

all in all, it works better than nvidia and fglrx..

Hah..
I lived three weeks of living hell trying to get some decent Linux native or Wine games working on my friend's PC with an Intel GMA.. I had to revert him for Windows in order to play, even though he wanted to use Liunx.

[JeanPaul145]

Originally Posted by Extreme Coder

Hah..
I lived three weeks of living hell trying to get some decent Linux native or Wine games working on my friend's PC with an Intel GMA.. I had to revert him for Windows in order to play, even though he wanted to use Liunx.

Yeah...
Look, if a GMA card is a doubtful (and poor, may I add) choice of graphics card for games on Windows <enter favorite version here>, in Wine it won't work at all because, even IF there are no bugs in the wine code making windows apps crash (and that's a big if), at the moment 3D speed is probably nowhere NEAR being somewhere on the priority list, and probably won't be until wine can run a lot of stuff out-of-the-box (as in, WITHOUT tweaks!).
Before all of that has changed, methinks we'll all be a year or 2 older, at least.

[Melcar]

Well, Wine needs a lot of openGL2.x extensions to work (in so far 3D is concerned) and the Intel FOSS driver I think is only openGL1.5. It's the same situation with the radeon driver. As for speed, I have yet to see a direct comparison between Windows and Linux when it comes to Intel chips, but as far as Linux FOSS drivers I believe they are the fastest (hardware limitations taken into consideration of course).

[Tillin9]

The thing that makes Intel so good is they don't just write open source drivers for their cards, they help develop the core open source projects X.org, kernel, etc. to better the state of linux graphics all around. I remember the Intel devs even offering to lend a hand to the AMD/ATI devs to help make sure GEM would be sufficient for their cards and help get it in master faster.

Intel's hardware isn't top notch, but gets okay bang for its low wattage. Try to remember most high end cards use 100+ watts, midranges pull 30-75, and GMAs ~5. Almost any WINE issues are OpenGL 2.x support. WINE uses 2.x features for supporting old DirectX 7 and 8 stuff too, which means a lot of games on Windows can play fine on older cards, but can't under Linux.

P.S. Open source radeon is OpenGL 1.3 support.

[lenrek]

So far, most of the eye-candy stuff of Compiz-Fusion works fine. So, I guess I am satisfy with it.

Though, I doubt, I would use Intel card for OpenGL/3D games...

[wswartzendruber]

I've been using textured video through XV for almost a year now. Who said it didn't work? AFAIK, all you need is a GMA 900 or later. It works on the system I have now (see sig).