Starting xorg 6.8.0 is painfully slow. This could probably be caused by the lack of DRI (that in 6.7.x worked well). Xorg, in fact, uses i810 as a driver for most Intel8x0 cards. However, when starting 6.8.0, it is now said that kernel module i915 is missing. I haven't been able to find any module with that name in latest gentoo-dev-sources (2.6.8-r4). The only reference to i915 i have in kernel sources is in intel-agp, but modprobing it doesn't solve the issue. Surfing the web, I found some references to a patch for the kernel. However, I don't think it is included in kernel sources yet. If I understood right, it would be better to have it as a patch in gentoo-dev-sources until official inclusion in the kernel by linus. Some links I saw: http://www.faqchest.com/linux/KERNEL/kern-04/kern-0408/kern-0408174/kern04082905_08953.html and a message from Dave Airlie: http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0408.3/1296.html
Created attachment 39256 [details, diff] i915 patch for inclusion in gentoo-dev-sources I tried manually applying the attached patch, it worked well and solved the issue reported in the bug. Xorg is still _really_ slow on startup (>2min versus 15-20sec in xorg 6.7), but that has to be another issue. The patch solves the problem stated in this bug.
forwarding your request to the kernel team
The newest x11-drm (20040827) does have an i915 module.
seeing as we provide it in the ~x86 x11-drm package, taking x11 off this bug. I leave it to the kernel team to decide if they want it in the kernel or not.
Nope, we'll leave it to the DRM guys to get into the mainstream kernel. For now, please use the ~arch x11-drm package.
(marginal note) it seems i915 has been accepted as a part of the mainstream kernel and will be inside 2.6.9 vanilla sources.
