Makes me wonder if Linux will ever be ready for the common desktop, not to mention laptop

[Daniel Kasak]

Chris Pemberton wrote:

> I gave my wife, a non-Linux user, the task of determining if an Intel 
> 945GM graphics chip would work in Linux.  A quick google search and a 
> few clicks and she is here:
>
> http://intellinuxgraphics.org
>
> reading what appears to be a press release from Intel stating how great 
> their graphics drivers are.  Her conclusion: yes it is supported.  I 
> then explained to her that in fact the drivers were only somewhat 
> complete and lacked certain features

Oh Christ! 'Only somewhat complete'? That could be said of *any* piece 
of software. The inference that you've been somehow mislead into buying 
a product that isn't supported is *way* off. If you really want to jump 
up and down and shake your fist in the air over shitty drivers, then 
make sure the next card you buy is an ATI; their Linux drivers / support 
is a joke ( not referring to the open-source drivers here ).

I've seen friends' laptops running Linux with a 945 graphics chip, and 
they certainly weren't complaining. Same goes for our 855G chips at work 
... very, very small amount of shared RAM, but really can't complain 
about the performance / features, which, incidentally, improves with 
each driver release. But note the difference in focus ... I see the fact 
that features are being added as a good thing, whereas you're coming 
from the point of view where *everything* must be 100% complete, 
optimised, perfect, etc, otherwise ... it's just not good enough.

Also keep in mind that X isn't a stationary target for driver 
developers, and changes in X's architecture and feature set mean than 
drivers have to be rewritten to work, or to take advantage of new 
features, etc. So you're never going to get a 'complete' driver.

Dan