Re: Recommended laptop for FC5, was: glxgears

[Jesse Barnes <jbarnes virtuousgeek org>]

On Wednesday, March 01, 2006 8:09 am, Jesse Barnes wrote:
> Pick your poison.  With ATI chips you get open mode setting code but
> very poor support for recent devices.  ATI doesn't release specs so
> most of the ATI driver support is reverse engineered, and support for
> very recent devices is pretty buggy as a result.
>
> With Intel chips, at least you get open 2D and 3D code developed by
> people with specs.  The modesetting stuff is still VBE-only
> unfortunately (though Dave Airlie is working on changing that, as are
> others I think), and really it's beyond Intel's control in many
> (most?) cases since vendors are free to plugin whatever external
> interface chip they want to the basic i9xx graphics hub whey they
> design their boards.

Oh, forgot to  mention the implications.  If you buy a recent ATI device 
you get to help debug the drivers.  If you buy an Intel based device 
you can only set modes that the board/BIOS vendor thought of (though in 
some cases you can use vbetool or somesuch to make your own modes), 
which means you might have trouble plugging in arbitrary flat panels, 
TVs, etc.  Your choice.

Jesse