I have a MacBook and a nice Apple 20″ Cinema Display. I tried using OS 10.4 for about 3 month and then decided never to do that again. In my opinion OS X is better than any version of Windows but still useless if you like me like playing around with stuff that is not directly available from Apple. Yes, there are package managers for OS X but they (a) are not good enough, and my Linux from Scratch days are over and I therefore no longer find ever soooo cool to sit and watch application after application compile (b) there are far to little packages available in the package managers and at the end of the day it is all just a sorry compensation for someone who really should be running Linux. Oh yea, and also, after using hours finding a hacked firmware for the DVD drive, making it region-free, I really did not feel like having to do that again the second Apple sends out a new firmware update. But what does all this have to do with Intel video drivers for Linux you ask? Everything! You see, my Cinema Display, according to Apple’s website, only officially supports three widescreen resolutions, 1680×1050, 1280×800, and 1024×640. But in OS X I could choose any resolution for the display and it would work perfectly. Either the display supports more resolution (after all, why should it not?) or the driver choose a resolution as close to the one selected (but perhaps larger) and does the rest in software. Either way, it works in OS X and that is how it is supposed to be. But in Linux it does not.
I used to use i810 driver, before everything got packed into the new intel driver which has now xrandr 1.2 support. The i810 worked, and allowed me to use all sane resolutions, except that smaller resolutions would not be stretched and therefore only use the center part of the display (which looked really stupid). With the new intel driver only the native resolution 1680×1050 works. This is a problem if you sometimes run a program or a for instance a computer game that has a tendency to change the resolution. This causes the screen to black out, or just start flickering like it is experiencing a LSD trip which probably can cause epileptic seizure to the unfortunate. All in all the driver is very lacking and xrandr actaully reports that the display supports all the usual resolution but only 1680×1050 works. Now, I could continue to rant about or I could do something. I am planning to actually try and improve on the driver as I do have a little bit of spare time here on my last semester, so hopefully it works out and sometime in the future I will have a post about how exceedingly froody the driver has become. Rant end.