Install Xorg on Dell Latitude D630 with Intel GM965 (X3100) graphics chipset (CentOS 5.1)

Important

DISCLAIMER: You cannot held me responsible for any loss or data or inoperability of your system. You do this on your own responsibility.
NOTE: - I will place synonyms in brackets to help people find this topic and fix there graphics problems.
- If you are not an experienced user, please let someone who knows more about it do it for you. (feel free to ask for help to me if you want)


Introduction and explanation

I installed CentOS and the graphics worked out of the box. BUT !!! It looked like, even the resolution was set correctly (checked with xrandr) I still got blurry (vaporous, not sharp) graphics. It seemed like there was an ancient chipset in the notebook although it was pretty new.

During tests in different distros (distributions: Gentoo, Debian, ArchLinux) I have noticed that the standard installed (stable) drivers were not working like they should.
On ALL distros I got it fixed by installing the correct version of some packages:

X.org (xorg): >= v1.3.0 (cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep Window)
i810: >= v2.0.0 (cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep intel)
or (cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep i810)
libdrm: >= v2.3.0 (ls /usr/lib | grep libdrm)
or (ls /usr/lib64 | grep libdrm)

Software, minimum version, Command to show version


You might think, ok, just update these packages and it is done. In Gentoo, Fedora 7, Debian and ArchLinux this is true.
But CentOS introduces a problem: these versions are not in the repos.
Because CentOS is based on RedHat/Fedora I had the idea to install the RPM for the Fedora distribution. This was a success.
Let's see


How I did it

I visited rpm.pbone.net. It is a search engine for RPM packages.
I searched for the Xorg package with version 1.3 or higher for Fedora (Fedora 7; I took 7 because it are testing drivers, in 8 there are development drivers).
I downloaded it and tried to install it:

rpm --install xorg-x11-server-Xorg-*

This gives alot of messages about conflicts. This is very normal because the old version is still there.
Removing it will make it possible to install the new version (maybe there is a nicer way of doing this, let me know if so)

rpm remove xorg-x11-server-Xorg

This asked me if it is OK to remove some other packages as well (total of 32). Confirm.

Lets retry installing it

rpm --install xorg-x11-server-Xorg-*

This time I get a warning about some unsolved dependencies.
Go download the packages for the same Fedora version that are mentioned by the output.
Now lets install them:

rpm --install xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.3.0.0-9.fc7.x86_64.rpm xorg-x11-drv-evdev-1.1.2-3.fc7.x86_64.rpm xorg-x11-drv-keyboard-1.1.0-3.fc7.x86_64.rpm xorg-x11-drv-mouse-1.2.1-2.fc7.x86_64.rpm xorg-x11-drv-vesa-1.3.0-6.fc7.x86_64.rpm xorg-x11-drv-void-1.1.0-4.fc7.x86_64.rpm libdrm-2.3.0-5.fc7.x86_64.rpm

At last we have to install the new intel(xorg-x11-drv-i810 package) driver. Be the version is above 2.0.0.

rpm --install xorg-x11-drv-i810-2.0.0-4.fc7.x86_64.rpm

(Be sure you have printed this out or on another screen.) Now press CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE. Xorg will not be able to start anymore. Type CTRL-ALT-F1.
Log in as the root user.

Let Xorg generate the basic config file:

X -configure

Only one thing to do :D: Copying the config to the correct place.

cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Testing
Go to runlevel 2 and back to runlevel 5 (or restart by typing shutdown -r now or by CTRL-ALT-DELETE)

init 2; init 5

If this gives problems, type them in seperately.


I noticed after the next login (and also when removing the xorg server) that KDE was not installed anymore on the system.
Just reinstall it:

yum install kdebase

Have fun!