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Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring includes an experimental new version of the X.org driver for Intel i810 - i965 graphics chips (under the name intel - the previous version of the driver was named i810), and an experimental version of the X.org server. Taken together, these have two important new features.

Capabilities

Firstly, this version of the driver no longer refers to the video BIOS in determining which display resolutions the chip is capable of. Many Intel graphics chips ship with incorrect video BIOSes which do not list the chip as being capable of many resolutions which it can in fact display, notably widescreen resolutions such as 1440x900 and 1680x1050. This leads to difficulty in using these resolutions. The 915resolution utility can be used to attempt to insert the desired mode into the video BIOS - the Mandriva graphics configuration utility will attempt to configure this for you - but this does not work perfectly in all cases. The new version of the driver discovers the available modes directly from the chip, bypassing the video BIOS entirely and obviating the need for 915resolution.

Secondly, these versions implement support for the new version 1.2 of the X.org randr extension which is used for changing resolution without restarting the X server. This new version of randr is more powerful than the previous one. It dynamically detects available displays - meaning that it will notice when you plug in or unplug a monitor and detects the resolutions of which they are capable. It is capable of setting any supported resolution on any output, including extending a single desktop across several displays. Probably the most useful practical result of this is that, on a laptop, you can plug in an external monitor which uses a different resolution to the internal panel, and immediately switch to using the external monitor at its native resolution with no need to restart X.

Thirdly, these versions come with a brand new DRM memory manager. Unfortunately, it needs a kernel with DRM version 1.7, and the official Mandriva kernel has 1.4, so it won't be enabled with the configuration explained here...

Installation

As these packages are experimental and have not yet had official releases, they are not installed by default. They are available in the contrib section of the official repositories and must be installed manually. For instructions on configuring your system to use Internet repositories and installing packages, please see Installing and removing software. You should install the x11-server13, x11-server13-common, x11-server13-xorg and x11-driver-video-intel13 packages.

Configuration

Again due to their experimental nature, these packages do not replace the default X server and i810 driver packages, but install alongside them in an alternate location. You must therefore make some configuration changes to ensure the new versions are used.

To enable the use of the new intel driver, you must make changes to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. See this page for instructions on editing system configuration files. You must add the following line to the Files section at the very start of the file:

ModulePath "/opt/xserver13/lib/xorg/modules,/usr/lib/xorg/modules"

NB: Replace the "lib" part above with "lib64" on x86_64 platforms.

You must then change the following line in the Device section:

Driver "i810"

to:

Driver "intel"

To revert to the old driver, you may simply revert these changes.

To enable the use of the new version of the X server, you must configure the login manager (DM).

If you are using the Mandriva default login manager, GDM, you can follow these steps. Run the Login Window application (under System / Configuration / Boot and Init on the menus). This can be run directly with the command gdmsetup. You will be prompted for the administrator password. After entering it, go to the Security tab. Click on Configure X Server.... In the window that appears, change the start of the Command: entry from:

/usr/bin/Xorg

to:

/opt/xserver13/bin/Xorg

Now click the drop-down box named Servers: and change from Standard to Terminal, and repeat the change. Then change the drop-down box to Chooser and repeat the change once more. Close the window and then close the application.

If you use the KDE login manager (KDM), edit the configuration file /etc/kde/kdm/kdmrc. See this page for instructions on editing system configuration files. Replace the following line :

ServerCmd=/usr/bin/X -br

with that one :

ServerCmd=/opt/xserver13/bin/Xorg -br

After making these changes, you will have to log out and restart X. You can either reboot the system, or log out and then hit ctrl-alt-backspace at the login screen.

Usage

To use the resolution switching features of these new versions, you must use the command-line xrandr command, as none of the graphical randr interfaces have yet been updated to the new version of the protocol. The simplest thing you can do is simply to change the status of the monitors connected to the system - for instance, plug an external monitor into the system - and run xrandr --auto. You should see the desktop automatically adjust: the external display will be enabled and the desktop will be expanded to its preferred resolution. Please note that in our testing we have noticed that GNOME responds better than KDE to the change in resolution.

More advanced uses of xrandr are beyond the scope of this document, but you may refer to the manual - run man xrandr - for more information.

Notes

As noted above, these packages are experimental pre-releases (to be precise, 2007 Spring includes version 2.0 RC3 of the intel driver, and 1.3 RC3 of the X.org server). Several Mandriva staff members and volunteers have tested these drivers and found them to work as described and to be basically stable, but they should not be relied on to be absolutely stable and may have problems to which the official, released versions are not subject. In particular, some of us have noticed issues running some 3D applications and games on these packages, although the beryl and compiz 3D-accelerated desktops appear to work without issues. These packages are not officially supported, but please report any issues you encounter to the Mandriva Bugzilla, from where we will report them to the authors if appropriate.