Intel Mobile 945GM/GMS 943/940GML GPUs and KDE 4.5.1

[Snowhog]

I'm interested in observations from members here who have upgraded/installed KDE 4.5.1 on rigs with the above GPU. My laptop has this GPU, and with KDE 4.4.5, is very stable. I previously stated in another post that I would wait until KDE 4.5 was released at 4.5.1 or later before I considered upgrading.

I want to know that compositing (3D effects) will not be compromised. That's is really my #1 concern. Secondary to that, I'd like to hear of any other 'system issues' that those with this GPU are/have experienced with KDE 4.5.1.

Thank you.

[JontheEchidna]

Re: Intel Mobile 945GM/GMS 943/940GML GPUs and KDE 4.5.1

You might be screwed.

[Snowhog]

Re: Intel Mobile 945GM/GMS 943/940GML GPUs and KDE 4.5.1

You might be screwed.

Still reading through that. Interesting. I may not be screwed.

When I purchased my current laptop, it had Windows Vista Home OEM on it. All the 3D effects worked, to include blur (which the article explains, is one of the issues with direct rendering and Intel GPUs):

The Intel driver seems to be able to support shaders for hardware that is not programmable, that means: software emulation. That’s a rather stupid idea. You use shaders because you want to have the power of the GPU, not the slow general purpose CPU. A GPU (even a bad one) is magnitudes faster in image processing tasks than a CPU and is highly parallel.

I setup two additional partitions on my internal HD yesterday, with the intention of installing/playing with Kubuntu 10.10. Maybe, instead, I'll 'copy' my Kubuntu 10.04 (root and home partitions) on to them, boot into the copy, and upgrade to KDE 4.5.1 there. In fact, that's a very good idea. I can 'live test' the impact of KDE 4.5.1 and all subsequent updates to it there, without sacrificing my 'production' installation.

Back in a bit. Rebooting into GParted to 'do the deed.'

[Snowhog]

Re: Intel Mobile 945GM/GMS 943/940GML GPUs and KDE 4.5.1

Well, that didn't go well. :P

I established two additional partitions, equal in size to my root and /home production partitions. I then copied the root and /home partitions to these two new ones. Now, copying partitions keeps the /dev/sdx designation of the 'copied to' partitions. So the contents of my production root partition - /dev/sda1 - was copied to /dev/sda7, and the contents of my production /home partition - /dev/sda5 - was copied to /dev/sda8. I then rebooted into my production OS.

In Dolphin, clicking on either of the two new partitions (labeled Testing-Root and Testing-Home) I was denied, being told that /etc/mtab was reporting that the partitions were already mounted! Of course, neither actually were.

So, I need to be educated on how to do what I have in mind.

I want to copy my existing root and /home partitions to two new partitions on the same HD my production OS is on.
I want to be able to access this 'copy' via the production OS grub menu, just like I would if I had installed an additional OS onto my HD. How do I accomplish this?