I'm a total ATI g00b so it's fine with me that ATI has sucha firm grip on the laptop market, but all of the new laptops I've been looking at to buy have IGP graphics cards (I'm a poor student). Should I find an affordable lappy with AGP, or possibly Nvidia graphics, or is IGP supported under Linux with the ATI drivers?

Thanks all

Hi,
Well if you'd like proof. Here I am. I've got an HP laptop thats fairly new and its got an ATI IGP inside. I'm running Suse 9.1 and XP Home. I've fairly new to Linux but I just got my SuSe9.1 working. I'm picky when it comes to my configuration and its taken me a few months to get everything the way I want it. I've tried a few other distros on my laptop and none are as good as Suse. It detects most things but you need to make sure you select the packages you're lookin for.
Back to the graphics card, I have 24bit color but I'm still trying to figure out 3d graphics on SuSe but other than that, I hope it answers your question.

I'm actually a Suse nut. I've been on it for a little over a year now. However, I'm movin' on so this lappy will be getting Gentoo. But so long as the IGP graphics works you just made my day. I can save a ton of money with IGP, and get more RAM in the process. Thanks for the help!

Its no problem with newer distributions, the ATI IGPs work in Vesa-mode and in 2D-mode without problems. But if you need a good 3D-performance you should buy a laptop with a "true" graphics-card. It is possible to activate 3D in Radeon IGP-Chips but it is complicated, you have to patch and compile your own X-Server and possibly the kernel. But even if you get this to work the performance under linux is very low (even much lower than with the ATI Rage 128 family).
You can get some older games working quite tolerable (Unreal Tournament, Q3, Halflife ...) but you have to lower the resolution to 800x600 or even 640x480.
So if you only need 2D or if you are an experienced user and need only low 3D-performance you can buy such a laptop, otherwise it is nothing for you.
ATI provides no Linux drivers for Radeon-IGP, you can buy a driver at http://www.xig.com that probably supports the full 3D-performance but you have to pay for it so it is likely nothing for a poor student.

Thomas

Hmm...thanks for pointing that out. This will be my second main computer, and I have an ATI Radeon 9800 on my main PC so any 3D necessities are taken care of. I'll probably just get this one running adequately and use the Freedesktop.org XServer instead, since you can't use 3D with that anyways P

XFree4.4 supports those chips, as I found out from someone in the fora (forums?). See this. I read that SLAX comes with XFree4.4, so if it's anything like Knoppix, you could just burn it onto a CD, and take it to the store to try out on the laptop you're interested in, and you can judge for yourself.

Looks like it only supports them in 2D. Interesting nonetheless. Regardless, I'd be using Xorg if I upgraded from XFree86 4.3.0. Although I'm leaning towards the Freedesktop.org XServer.

The ATI IGP chipsets turned me off HP laptops and this is why i now own a Toshiba A30-714. Even for a desktop I will never buy ATI.

the performance on 2d isn't great at all, you will kick yourself in the head for actually buying an HP imo... I spent much time last year trying to get it to work but no luck. I was even on the mailling list on xfree86.org and trying out every new patch.

anyways, cheers.

While on the ubject of the IGP cards, anyone have experience getting the Radeon Mobility U1 (IGP 340 i think) to work correctly outputting through the s-video port? I'm trying atitvout but not having results. I might ave just found the way to do it, but the only tv with an svid port I have access to is at my friends house so I can't try it now. Doing -r ntsc, and then -f l didn't produce any errors for telling it to display on my lcd, which is better than I was getting last night. Anyone have experience? (laptop is a hp pavilion ze4430us)

IGP runs perfectly fine on Suse 9.1/Gentoo, only problem is the resolution. 1280x800 is the native res and that's a bit whacky Anybody know the fix to get my screen running in this res and not a fat, stretched, 1024x768?

define runs perfectly; my performance sucks...

Aye, I've heard the performance is poor. For that reason I'm going to install the Freedesktop.org XServer on this lappy. I have my main box with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, so I have 3D accel, and I left a 25gb partition for Windoze just so that I could get my money's worth with the IGP chip. Xorg seems to run it fine, I just had to specify the ATI Integrated chip and manually change the resolutions. Anybody else know a better chip for an IGP Radeon to pick?

Libzhark, what distro do you use? I also have a ze4430us. I got SuSE 9.1 on it, running fine, no 3d. Share some tips? --Bill

theres a howto with the radeon 340 on this site. Haven't tried it yet but take a look
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/answers.php

Mr_C, Thanks! If and when I get the time and energy to read up on it, I might try this. It looks like it should work. I read through it, and could follow the directions, but I'm a newb and don't want to risk hosing my system. I think I'd get lost if one little thing went wrong. One thing I'm nostalgic about with microsoft: everything is all done, in a nice little package. If only there were some cool little rpm file or shell script I could run and make it all better! Disregard previous rant. Thanks again!