Intel graphics drivers for linux

[Tim Watts]

(Heads up, not a question)

This:

I've just ripped this out of my Xubuntu 14.04 laptop and it seems to have been causing all manner of problems.

The main one was rdesktop crashing my Xorg server with extreme frequency. I noticed that since ripping the drivers out, the laptop doesn't seem to be running so hot but that's a bit subjective.

Everything else seems fine without the drivers, even GoogleEarth. Might not be *quite* as fast, but rather have stability.

He says, after a GHOST patch went wrong at work and I was trying to recover 8 VMs from backup which requires rdesktop (Veeam on Win Server

2008 R2). The wasn't half a lot of swearing as rdesktop kept crashing me out every few minutes.

So there you go...

[dennis]

Don't be silly linux doesn't have any major problems!!!!!

[Tim Watts]

No it doesn't. But Intel's shitty driver does!

[The Natural Philosopher]

Correct.

Actually I am not sure it is Intel's.

IIRC Intel don't support linux at all, and h 'shitty drivers' have to be reverse engineered by guessing at how the chipset works and hoping that you got it right.

Shitty drivers are not restricted to Linux either. Udpated bug fixed windows drivers are the norm not the exception on a monthily basis.

[The Real Doctor]

You do realise that the drivers under discussion are written by Intel and fully open source?

Ian

[The Real Doctor]

See my other thread ... I had to /install/ it in my Xubuntu 14.04 laptop to cure problems. In my case that was a complete X server crash whenever I tried to visit

Ian

[Tim Watts]

That's what I thought...

If they gave tangible benefit, I'd perhaps persevere and write a bug report.

But the intel driver in Xorg seems to do a very fine job and I need my laptop not to crash me out constantly - So ICBA :(

[Tim Watts]

On an unreleated note, just because you said "chrome", I just noticed that Chrome browser 40.0.2214.111 (64-bit) on linux is unable to open a Google drive sheet I created the other day - opens, then pops up an error box.

Firefox works fine.

I am slightly surprised as Chrome is pretty much "made for Google Apps".

Weird... I did bug report that -

It's been a very unstable month for me...

[The Natural Philosopher]

I don't think that's quite how it works. Intel produce sample development code yes, but not a fully worked driver.

That's because its the one that takes intel sample code and develops it to actually work: However I have never found that its a patch on Nvidia performance wise so I dont use intel video anymore

[Tim Watts]

Fair point.

Laptops tend to have more restricted offerings, otherwise I would have gone NVidia too...

[Andrew Gabriel]

FWIW, same on Solaris x86. nVidia drivers have always been fantastic. Intel didn't get theirs anywhere close whilst I tried using them. Sadly, very difficult to find a laptop with nVidia graphics, now that Intel include the GPU in with the main processor.

[Tim Watts]

That is starting to include lots of small "media" boxes now that Intel System-on-a-Chip is taking off.

Obviously "Media boxes" have a significant subgroup of video producing devices rather than just network steaming - so it could be a problem.

[The Real Doctor]

Nope. They provide a full, open-source driver.

Ian

[The Real Doctor]

Are you aware that the most recent Nvidia driver is broken and does not work with the current *buntu kernel? It looks as if it installs, but I get twice the frame rate with nouveau that I get with the nvidia driver.

Oh, and the nvidia drivder is strictly closed source.

Ian

[cl]

I thought Intel were one of the few who publish their driver documentation, or at least the information needed to program drivers.

[dennis]

Of course he doesn't. He doesn't even know that all the hardware details are available if he wants to write a better one or debug the current one. I mean that is the best reason to use open source so you can fix the stuff that doesn't work.

I have seen the source code for unix which is what linux started out copying and a huge amount of that was copyright Intel. Just about the time Solaris went on Intel processors.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The latter yes, but its still not 'intel supplied and maintained drivers'

[The Natural Philosopher]

From their site, they publi8sh reference driver SOURCE that presumably doesn't actually work quite well enough.

That gets shoved into various public domain software developments.

It is not clear that full hardware specs even exist within Intel.

It is mot uncommon for hardware to be developed by hardware engineers and simply passed to the software people who with luck will find out, or have conversations with the HW boys to frig driver code enough to make it work.

In the real world, there is never enough time to do everything properly.

[Andy Furniss]

You are setting Followup-To uk.d-i-y

Historically there was an issue with some h/w that the gpu driver was outsourced and not really supported.

It's not the case now though, most h/w is supported and actively developed by OSS intel devs, who are accessible and respond to bug reports.

Of course everyone would like 10x as many, but there is constant activity - look at the commits for mesa/kernel/vaapi/ddx.

As for bugs - well there always are, but I don't think you can say anymore that intel or AMD don't support OSS as far as GPUs are concerned.

[Marc Haber]

Judging from the experience with "Nvidia supplied and maintained drivers" and "AMD supplied and maintained drivers", I'll choose freely written drivers based on information published by the hardware vendor any time.

Greetings Marc