Xorg-server 1.5.3 madness

Question

While xorg-server 1.5.3 itself works just fine on my machine, several drivers don't want to play nice under it.
For instance, synaptics is really shaky, linux-wacom doesn't quite support hot plugging or 1.5.3 at all (all the way to total full blown system hangs under some circumstances), kwin with composite tends to kill my X session when I do certain things, and a few other buggies I can't remember now.
I've been stuck using Catalyst 8.8 for a while now and it's not a perfect release either. 8.5 seemed to do it best for me but if I wanna use that, I have to use an old kernel along with all the old modules that work with it... Not an option.
So I'm probing the community here to see if anyone else has experienced some or all of these issues using xorg-server 1.5.3 (and/or Catalyst 8.11 which are interdependant it seems). Mind you most of the problems might stem from the latter, but since I just had to shell out 500 hard earned ones on a root canal, a new laptop ain't in the budget for quite some time.
Maybe 8.12 fixes some things ? ... Has anyone been succesful using the linux-wacom driver under 1.5.3 ? ..
Feedback would be much appreciated.
- Wanna Upgrade

Answer 1

my wacom works until i lift it from the tablet....*sigh*....once this wacom issue is fixed by the wacom guys, the xorg guys come with a new update which breaks everything and once the wacom guys have fixed it......
I installed the latest wacom driver 0.8.2-1, hal is running, xorg 1.5.3, wacom Intuous 2, arch64. If anyone has some tips on how to get this fixed, thanks