This weekend at FOSDEM 2012 what Kristian Hogsberg is expected to say in Brussels will surprise many of you: Wayland 1.0 is gearing up for release as their first stable release. Wayland [a new X server for Linux] is supposed to be ready to take on the Linux desktop world.
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Member since:2006-05-23
Unfortunately it seems to me that the graphics situation has gotten even worse lately. Before KMS, you could disable hardware acceleration if you had problems, and things would generally work (albeit with somewhat poorer performance). Now you're stuck with the fbdev driver as a fallback, and IMO it's a pretty trashy fallback - you can't easily change the screen resolution with it, it won't work at all with some configurations (e.g. PPC Macs that require an unaccelerated framebuffer), and IIRC it has serious problems with multiple monitors.
Granted there is a "Shadow" option for Intel now, that's supposed to work like the old "NoAccel" and "ShadowFB"... Last time I tried it, it made Xorg segfault on start.
Compare FreeBSD 9, which still uses XAA/EXA without KMS. Start the X server... Oops, there's a hardware acceleration bug, and everything is slow with a tendency to freeze. Disable hardware acceleration with "NoAccel" and everything works! Damn shame that the Xfce developers decided to ditch HAL support, and automount/power management doesn't work on the BSDs any more.
Member since:2005-11-14
The graphics situation might be getting worse for ancient hardware, but at some point you can't expect anything else. And although the situation might have become worse for the two of you who run Linux on PPC Macs, it's much better now for those who use current, supported hardware than it was, say, eight years ago when you Mac still wasn't obsolete.
Making use of actual, working hardware acceleration is more important than the ability to turn it off. Which is actually something Linux does better than FreeBSD 9.0 and ATI.
Member since:2006-11-13
Correct me if I am wrong, but there is also VESA drivers you can use. I know I used that the other day as a fallback, but can't remember what Linux distro I used (Slackware, Ubuntu or OpenSUSE - I think it was Slackware).
At least the open source AMD/ATI and nVidia drivers are getting better and better performance wise. But I do understand the issue with bugs. The open source ATI driver has had a painting bug since after Ubuntu 8.04 (I'm a GUI toolkit developer), and it still exists in Ubuntu 11.10 - no movement on the bug report either. :-(
Member since:2010-06-24
The drivers are at fault too. Take dual screen for example. For some reason, both Nvidia and ATI choosed to implement their own dual screen stack in their drivers.
As a result, the ATI implementation sucks badly, because what it basically does is simulate a big desktop, so when you maximize a window, it gets maximized across screens.
Enabling xinerama on the ATI drivers solve this, but then I get tearing everywhere and moving a window put my quad-core and my radeon 6950 on its knees...
When I owned a Nvidia card, I had almost the same problem.
So I hope Wayland can offer a better API so driver vendors just implement what's needed and we get a uniform API that apps can use for multiple screens and other things.
Member since:2006-07-14
I've found the best results come with the Open source Gallium drivers with video cards 2-3 years old. I have two separate screens, and maximizing works as expected on each in all desktop environments and window managers I've tried.
According to Phoronix, the Open Source Nvidia drivers are improving at a pretty decent rate as well. Soon I imagine they'll be good enough for normal desktop use for a majority of Nvidia cards.
Member since:2005-07-11
The radeon driver has supported Xrandr for multi-monitor support for several years now.
Prior to that, though, I found the MergedFB support in the radeon driver to be far superior to nVidia's TwinView.
I was a staunch ATI fan for many many years, going from radeon to firegl to radeon again, always with dual monitors, never with any issues with "maximise covers both monitors".
It was only when the district standardised on nVidia for student desktops that I switched away from ATI. And it's taken a couple of years to get a working xrandr setup using the nouveau driver. Something I had from the get-go with radeon/mergedfb.
Member since:2006-02-01
Curiously, the ATI driver does not maximize the window across screens for me. Maybe because you can select how you want your multidisplay to be handled by the driver.
Member since:2006-07-15
Enabling xinerama on the ATI drivers solve this, but then I get tearing everywhere and moving a window put my quad-core and my radeon 6950 on its knees...
When I owned a Nvidia card, I had almost the same problem.
No it doesnt. I have dual screens ( 1920x1200 ) and it runs as smooth as single.
I have an ati 4890.
Granted, see my previous posts ( on kde 4.8 ) , its basicly :
Funtoo -> flys
openSuse -> crawls
Member since:2006-11-13
Enabling xinerama on the ATI drivers solve this,
That's weird. I use an ATI 45xx (I think) card at work. Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubunutu 10.04 using the open source ATI drivers works beautifully in a dual monitor setup. And no, when I maximise a window, it maximise only on the current monitor, not over both displays. I also don't use Xinerama - that just sucks big time.
I also tried the proprietary ATI driver under Ubuntu 10.04 - yes I have better performance, but the dual monitor setup was more of a pain to setup than with the open source driver (monitor 1 & 2 was swapped around). In both case, I never use Xinerama.
The only odd thing I did find (with some applications), is that popup dialogs might appear centred between the two monitors - but again, only with certain software.
My issue with X11 is the disconnected window frame from the application (application can't reliably query the window frame size or width of borders etc), huge amount of lag while resizing (mouse cursor is faster than the window frame can keep up), tearing while dragging a window around etc.
Member since:2010-04-09
As a result, the ATI implementation sucks badly, because what it basically does is simulate a big desktop, so when you maximize a window, it gets maximized across screens.
Enabling xinerama on the ATI drivers solve this, but then I get tearing everywhere and moving a window put my quad-core and my radeon 6950 on its knees...
When I owned a Nvidia card, I had almost the same problem.
So I hope Wayland can offer a better API so driver vendors just implement what's needed and we get a uniform API that apps can use for multiple screens and other things.
The nvidia blob is a half-assed port of the Windows drivers to Linux, that's why it sucks so badly for things like 2D, etc.
Nouveau already does many things better than the blob, like 2D acceleration, KMS, and other things.
I have no doubt Nouveau will surpass the blob in other areas in the future.
Edited 2012-02-01 21:03 UTC
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Member since:
2006-11-13
I hope so too! The current Linux graphics system and windowing environment is a total joke. I really hope with the fresh start, that Wayland can deliver.