HW compatibility research: are intel i5 graphics and realtek net/audio hassle-free?

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

Hi,

I am sorry for being late with an update on this query of mine - it's
been almost two months since I asked the question. I did get the HW in
Subject (details reminder: GIGABYTE H55M-D2H s1156 MoBo and Intel Core
i5 650 3.2GHz with a GPU Core, on-board RealTek net and audio). It
works _almost_ without a hassle with Fedora 14 on it.
 
"Almost" means that there are no problems with networking (I didn't
expect any) or audio (normal headset/mike, didn't try HDMI or anything
fancy like that :).

There is a WEIRD video effect with KDE though. Never saw anything like
that: the _text_contents_ of windows (e.g., konsole/terminal) are
flipped upside down and left to right. The windows' decorations are in
the normal places (e.g., the title bar is on top), but the text in
them (e.g., window title) is flipped - upside down and right to left
(in English). The _actual_ controls - buttons, etc. - are in the normal
positions, but are _shown_ inverted and in the wrong places.

Looks like everything related to the desktop ("plasma"?) is flipped,
too, including the session's splash screen (starts normally and flips
over after about a second or two), the panel, the application launcher
(IIRC it is called kickstart - I mean the "equivalent" of XP's Start
menu), logout/shutdown/lock menu, etc., to the point that I need to
guess where, say, the "Logout" or "Restart" menu items or the "OK"
button are (I usually know that from experience). Gnome is OK. KDE
failsafe is also OK (I found that out by trying - and I've been using
failsafe since, and since it works fine I stopped regarding the issue
as critical...).

I have no idea whether it is a KDE/plasma bug, an X driver bug, a
kernel driver bug, or something else. Frankly, I never researched it
thoroughly due to other priorities, lack of time, and other reasons
commonly known as being a sack of lazy bones. 

When I upgraded the HW the system ran Fedora 12, which worked fine
before and after, except for this issue. I did not modify the settings
and customizations that had worked fine with the old AMD 3800+ and
nVidia graphics. I upgraded to Fedora 14 (my /home is on a separate
partition, so the update didn't touch any customizations
either). Today the system is fully updated (kernel, KDE, everything) -
the updates didn't fix anything. Google didn't yield any clues,
either.

I delayed posting the feedback partly for this reason but since it is
going nowhere... If anybody knows what it is and how to fix it I'll be
happy to know.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org