Kristian Kissling

There is hope for Ubuntu users with Intel graphics. As it appears, the current 2D drivers solve most of the recent graphics problems with Intel chips, according to Ubuntu developer Bryce Harrington in a developer mailing list. Jaunty users should profit it from them as well.

A nuisance to owners of Ubuntu 9.04 and Intel graphics chips has been the problems with the graphics drivers. Even though Intel manages its drivers in an exemplary open source way, 2D and 3D acceleration has fairly much dragged so far. The reason is an unhappy pairing of the current Kernel 2.6.28's Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) with Intel's new UXA acceleration architecture that replaces EXA and the newly added Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) in the Kernel.

The solution should come in the form of the Intel 2.7.99.1 driver, as Canonical's Bryce Harrington describes on the Ubuntu developer mailing list. The still somewhat unstable 2D driver should fix most of the Intel chip problems, with the stable version to appear later in Ubuntu 9.10.

Harrington mentions that Jaunty users have the advantage of the Kernel 2.6.30 installation to resolve the issue. Ubuntu source packets are on the kernel.ubuntu.com webpage. Harrington suggests activating the UXA module in the xorg.conf file, but not KMS, which is deactivated by default. To activate UXA, use Option AccelMethod "EXA" in the Section "Device" in /etc/x11/xorg.conf.

Installing the actualized 2D driver should, however, be accompanied by the stable Intel 2.7.1 driver that you can get from an external Personal Package Archive (PPA). The source package is xserver-xorg-video-intel. Careful, though: playing with Xorg can have adverse side effects, so backing up the original files might be a good idea.