Intel Linux Driver Kills The Netbook Experience
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Posted by Michael Larabel on April 22, 2009
Using this Intel Atom netbook with Ubuntu 9.04 RC with X Server 1.6 and xf86-video-intel 2.6.3, I would have rather just brought a bulky notebook with ATI or NVIDIA graphics than to put up with this graphics mess (or just downgraded to Ubuntu 8.10). I generally just use Firefox, Thunderbird, and Pidgin while away on business, but with Ubuntu 9.04 RC the Intel netbook experience is ridiculous. Among the issues are the system becoming unresponsive when opening up a large email or web-page and when typing there is quite the delay at times before the text appears on the screen. Sadly, there is no proper fix in time for Ubuntu 9.04. Enabling greedy migration heuristics and some other driver options can help alleviate the situation for some, but the default experience is far from pleasant and telling a novice Linux user to edit their xorg.conf is not friendly either.
This Intel Linux graphics driver situation should be settled in time for Ubuntu 9.10, but for now this really will hamper the "out of the box" experience with those installing a brand new Linux distribution to their Intel-powered netbooks.