lewispm wrote:Will the 9.04 xorg server version ever be backported to 8.10, or is it safe to upgrade forever on this version of linux mint?
No, such a major change so low on the application stack won't be backported, which is more for new versions of apps. However that doesn't mean it's safe to upgrade forever, Felicia will only be supported for another year, but that's long enough to let you install mint 9 LTS soon after!
lewispm wrote:The installed version is 2:1.5.2-2ubuntu3 and synaptic wants to install 2:1.5.2-2ubuntu3.1
In this case, it's a reasonably safe upgrade (though it's probably marked as level 4 or lower in mintUpdate, so proceed with caution). The version number after "ubuntu" is just a re-packaging, which means there weren't any major changes, just a couple of bugfixes. It's the major version before the "ubuntu" that you want to look out for, which means a new upstream release, though as I said before that shouldn't happen.
As for the hardware issue (which will be identical in mint), ATI dropped all support for our mobile radeon cards back in February (in windows too), so their proprietary drivers are no longer available, leaving the open-source "radeon" driver in its place (is this what you mean by generic). The good news is that before they dropped support they publicly released the full hardware specs, so the radeon driver should improve rapidly (though I haven't had any problems so far), so keep checking back with new releases (you can try out the live CD to test incompatibilities) to see if the situation has improved. In the meantime, enjoy Felicia!