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

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

guy keren <choo at actcom.co.il> writes:

> try to replace the KDE theme, or the general windows look and feel,
> and see if this helps.

Oh, that I tried - should have mentioned it. Happens for multiple
desktop themes, session splashscreens, window decoration schemes,
wallpapers, etc. Regular KDE is all screwed up, with failsafe it is
fine.

Thanks, Choo, it is a good guess, but it's not it.

However! I finally decided to have a look at what failsafe actually
does differently.  Didn't I say I was a sack of lazy bones? Should
have done that a long time ago...

Looking at the process table I deduced that choosing failsafe invokes
/usr/bin/startkde with --failsafe option. Whatever else it does it
turns out that it disables compositing (the script looks at the first
argument and if it is --failsafe it sets KWIN_COMPOSE=N and exports
it).

So I went to system setings and disabled desktop effects, restarted
KDE, and voila! It worked... My old nVidia didn't have any problem
whatsoever with compositing. The poor i5 went bonkers though...

It still looks like some sort of bug. I'd expect the graphics to be
sluggish, whatever, but not this weird effect that smells of mixing up
co-ordinates and directions and whatever.

FWIW, here is the relevant part of the output of lspci -v on this
computer:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Giga-byte Technology Device d000
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 43
        Memory at fb800000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
        Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        I/O ports at ff00 [size=8]
        Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
        Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
        Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [a4] PCI Advanced Features
        Kernel driver in use: i915
        Kernel modules: i915

Compare the above to my Lenovo X200 laptop that also has Intel's
graphics (older variety) and is perfectly happy with OpenGL
compositing and desktop effects:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Lenovo Device 20e4
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44
        Memory at f2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
        Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        I/O ports at 1800 [size=8]
        Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
        Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
        Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 3
        Kernel driver in use: i915
        Kernel modules: i915

Both machines run Fedora 14, exactly the same kernel, KDE, etc.

Anyone from Intel here? Have you guys screwed something up along the
way? ;-)

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org