The X Strike Force needs you! (redux)

This time, the focus is on the xserver-xorg-video-intel driver. KMS and UMS are going to be used heavily below, one may want to check the mode-setting wikipedia article and the modesetting page on X.org.

Intel follows a 3-month cycle for its video driver releases. Some comments on the last ones:

• 2.9: What we’ve had in Debian for some time already. Works mostly fine, supports both KMS and UMS. What we’ve planned to release with for some time already.

• 2.10: First version with ripped-off UMS support. Not a significant improvement.

• 2.11: Apparently (still) having a bunch of regressions from 2.9, which is why we didn’t switch to it.

• 2.12: Many regressions are supposed to be fixed, meaning it could compete with 2.9, which is why we need you.

It’d be nice to have users install 2.12 from experimental and see how it goes from here. If regressions are found, we should be able to try hard(er) to get them fixed, so that we can move 2.12 to unstable and release with it. If there are too many of them, and if they’re not going to be fixed on time, we might stick with 2.9.

Pulling the driver from experimental should be quite easy: libdrm* packages are going to be upgraded, but that’s mostly it (meaning the server itself will stay the same, and rolling back should be as easy as downgrading the driver and the libdrm* packages).

A note on KMS and UMS: a benefit of sticking with 2.9 was being able to switch back to UMS in case KMS wasn’t usable for some cards. Unfortunately, popular/well-spread cards like i8xx aren’t well supported yet, that’s why Chris Wilson (upstream) is considering introducing UMS support again for that kind of blacklisted cards. This way, it should be possible to move to 2.12 (including Chris’ work) without leaving some users behind.

Feedback appreciated as follows:

• If 2.9 used to work and if 2.12 doesn’t: please file a bug upstream.

• If 2.12 works while 2.9 didn’t, reportbug -k or debian-x@.

Thanks already!