Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 20th Feb 2006 12:22 UTC, submitted by Rahul
Updated: Fedora was right in the middle of announcing all this properly, so here is the updated item containing the official names. Videos included, as well as the inevitable 'Why not Xgl?'. "AIGLX is a project that aims to enable GL-accelerated effects on a standard desktop. We have a lightly modified X server (that includes a couple of extensions), an updated Mesa package that adds some new protocol support and a version of metacity with a composite manager. The end result is that you can use GL effects on your desktop with very few changes, the ability to turn it on and off at will, and you don't have to replace your X server in the process." This is part of Fedora's Rendering Project, and instructions on how to install all this are available too.
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Member since:2005-07-12
Windows versions of Firefox and Thunderbird are faster. On Linux they are so slow.
On Windows I think they are using the native widgets.
On Linux the widgets are drawn by GTK, I think. It is just weird because other GTK apps are faster (e.g. epiphany).
I would like to know why they are so slow on Linux. Does anybody know?
Member since:2006-01-12
Actually, all Mozilla apps use XUL as their toolkit. This is even true on windows. The reason why you don't notice any substantial difference between the native widget and the XUL version is because of their use of the native theme APIs to render parts of the XUL widgets.
As for performance, Gecko 1.9 (the rendering engine used by Fx and Tb for HTML and XUL) is set to revamp the underlying graphics layer and use Cairo instead for all rendering. Gecko 1.9 will also feature reflow re-architecture which will speed up the rendering engine further.
If you are interested, you might want to test some of the experimental nightlies (at the moment only available for windows and linux)
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2005-07-24
It is my opinion that much of X's perceived slowness and much of Gnome's perceived slowness is really Firefox and Thunderbird drawing performace on X. (I can't speak for the Windows version since I don't have a Windows machine.)
Firefox and Thunderbird are *very* popular applications and run on many people's desktops.
Try this experiment:
1. Open up 2 Gnome apps.
2. Move one window around while overlapping the other and observe the performance.
3. Now open up a Gnome app and move it around on top of a Firefox session. Observe the major difference in performance.
4. Substitute Thunderbird in the same experiment, if you like.
My intent is not to criticize the Mozilla guys; I'm sure they have good reasons for doing things the way that they do.
Anyway, I imagine there is room for performance improvements in Gnome. (Can't speak for KDE as I'm not as familiar with using it on a day to day basis.) I've been hearing very good things about Gnome 2.13/2.14 performance.
Anyway, I run a lot of my users on xdmcp Gnome desktop sessions into a central server at 100mbit. The hardware I use is usually either old or very inexpensive. For reasons of standardization, I leave the X driver set to vesa, which means no hardware acceleration. And interestingly (to me anyway) I have never gotten a complaint about redraw speed from anyone. It's just not an issue for my users.
When I hear people complaining about X's slowness, I sometimes wonder if it's like people who trash transistor amplifiers because vacuum tube amplifiers are so superior. Maybe they are superior and maybe they aren't, but how many non-audiophiles people are going to notice or care?
Edited 2006-02-20 19:50