Hi everybody,
I've got an interesting issue today which I half-resolved, but am still
wondering whether I missed something important or did something that'll
bite me in the end.
So here's short story: I've been running older kernel (2.6.22-gentoo-r9)
and KDE3 on my laptop(x86,i945) for quite some time. Now with recent
unmasking of KDE4 I went with the flow and "upgraded" my KDE3 to KDE4
(yep, I know it's still there, slotted etc., but that's not the point).
So, after "upgrade" I've noticed how painfully slow my KDE4 was. Now,
I've been running KDE4 on my home machine (amd64,nVidia) for quite some
time now (ever since 4.2.0) and never noticed such things (mind you -
it's running another rather dated kernel: 2.6.25-gentoo-r6), so I
started digging. Xorg gave me no real reason for worries other than some
complaints about DRI and the fact that "compatible" DRI would be part of
kernel-2.6.28+, but I have not enabled any of the "effects" yet! Well,
so I upgraded kernel, and... my X wouldn't start at all. Actually it did
start but my externally plugged LCD monitor won't show anything. Lid on
my Dell x420 laptop stays closed since I had trouble getting my
1920x1200 resolution on external LCD to cooperate with 1280x800 on
internal one. SysRq saved me trouble of hitting reset too many times. A
bit of digging on google brought me to this xorg.conf (probably
suboptimal as I was adding options and never retracting them looking for
the "right" combination):
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics
Controller"
Driver "intel"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
Option "AccelMethod" "xaa"
Option "monitor-LVDS" "LVDS"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics
Controller 2"
Driver "intel"
BusID "PCI:0:2:1"
Option "AccelMethod" "xaa"
Option "monitor-LVDS" "LVDS"
EndSection
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "LVDS"
Option "Ignore" "True"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dri"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AIGLX"
EndSection
Section "DRI"
Group "video"
Mode 0660
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default"
Option "XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
DefaultDepth 24
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1920x1200"
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1920x1200"
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 32
Modes "1920x1200"
EndSubsection
EndSection
Some of it are hints from KDE folk, some came from other resources.
Not only that but I had recompiled my kernel quite a few times with
pretty much every possible options related to intel graphics on i945
chipsets until I hit the "right" one. So it's kind of working. BUT - now
every time I end KDE session instead of going back to KDM I'm being
dropped to VT7, closer examination shows that KDM is running, but I
can't get to it on any of the VTs. So I kill it and start again. And
KDE4 itself leaves quite a few artifacts on screen (not entirely sure if
it's related to a few effects I have enabled for usability's sake). KDE4
on my home machine haven't had any of those issues for quite some time
now (it's got different issues though ;) ).
Another annoyance is that with older kernel vesa framebuffer worked
perfectly fine (... video=vesafb:ywrap,mttr,1280x800...@72 ...) and I
was able to have full-screen framebuffered text console with 1280x800
resolution on external LCD. Now I get some "viewport"-like console where
content is stuck in the upper-left corner (I assume it's resolution is
1280x800) but it didn't scale to full screen.
So my real question is: are there any specific guides I should've
followed instead of playing "hit-n-miss"? Did I miss something along the
way that produces KDM issues? Do I really have to have an xorg.conf only
to disable certain things? How do I deal with my framebuffer so that my
console looks bit more sane and utilizes all given real estate of 26"
monitor and not a mere 50% or so.
Sorry for bundling all those into one mail, but it kind of popped up
altogether so I felt bad about separating it :-D
