Why did Ubuntu ship with bad Intel Graphics drivers?

[danbuter]

I finally attempted to install 9.10. I got halfway through on my netbook, and the screen conked out. So that was a no-go. I then tried Fedora, and it is working fine. So that's what I'm using now. But I really don't understand how something this important was allowed to ship in a final release. Especially when other distros have fixed it.

[cariboo]

It depends on what Intel graphics chipset you have. My media center pc has the 945 chipset and uses the i915 driver. It works great for what I use it for.

[orlox]

There was a licensing issue that ended up causing doom for those who wanted to use the gma 500 graphic card. The problem was actually a mismanagement from intel (if I recall correctly).

However, in karmic many people obtained severely improved performance for their intel cards, with respect to the mess it was from a couple of releases ago...

What is your video card??