Cimi’s Official Blog

Get a dramatic 2D graphics boost on your netbook 28 June, 2009

After having tried thousands of different drivers, kernel versions, patches etc etc… I’ve finally found a combination that made me excited (wohoo!).

I own a Samsung NC10 with an Intel Atom N270 and an Intel GMA 950 (i945). I’m running both Arch Linux (i686) and Ubuntu jaunty (lpia).

Few notes:

• This how to should work with any netbook, since they share almost the same hardware.
• I haven’t used a benchmark, but applications (Firefox, Gnome Do’s Docky, KDE 4 and more), and the difference is so visible that it doesn’t require a benchmark.
• I don’t know if it depends on the lpia architecture (I’m running Ubuntu lpia) or some patches applied to the drivers, but Ubuntu’s 2D graphics are a little bit faster than my Arch Linux installation with kernel 2.6.30 and drivers 2.7.1 (same versions).
• I had the boost in both Arch Linux and Ubuntu, though Ubuntu is faster.
• I’ve compared the 2D graphics with Moblin too, but its newer drivers using UXA are noticeably slower (Firefox/Gecko is incredibly slow when scrolling heavy webpages like facebook or my custom gmail).
• Newer Intel drivers (2.7.99.x and similar) support only UXA acceleration, and they perform a little bit slower than 2.7.1 without greedy migration heuristic (unfortunately that means a big difference). Greedy migration heuristic does not work with UXA.
• With this new combination, 2D graphics are really close to my Windows XP installation (Firefox scrolling).

Instructions (Ubuntu lpia combination, adjust the steps to your distro):

1. Install kernel 2.6.30 from this ppa (even if it has the “nc10″ tag, it doesn’t have custom patches and should work with any netbook).
2. Upgrade your Xorg Intel drivers with the 2.7.1 version on the same ppa.
3. Enable greedy migration heuristic creating an empty /etx/X11/xorg.conf with those lines:
   

   Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "exa"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
EndSection


4. Optional: install client-side-windows Gtk+ branch (helps Gtk+ scrolling and resize).

I really hope you will get the same boost I had, and I’m looking forward to newer Intel drivers: it is just question of time… the team rewrote both xorg driver and the DRM code to ensure a great future to these video cards, and the performance drop is physiological to the transition… I suspect UXA will achieve those performance in less than a year…

Posted in ArchLinux, English, GNOME Do, GTK, Howto | 6 Comments »

DO it!!! Yes, go and DOwnload DO 0.8! 30 January, 2009

29 January 2009 will be another great day for our free software desktops, GNOME Do 0.8 is released!

This is a fantastic release: it’s not just few bugfixes, it’s much much much more! Jason Smith did an amazing job rewriting the whole graphical interface code, allowing Do to feature shiny animated interfaces… for all your tastes!

Send to pastebin, imageshack, manage your music collection, access files, browse google docs, open conversations, add bookmarks, control your jedi lightsaber… EVERYTHING: just with one simple key!

GNOME Do 0.8 will dramatically change the way you interact with your desktop, saving a lot of time for better moments with your girlfriend (or your lightsaber!) I would really love to see GNOME Do or something similar in our GNOME 3.0 shell. This is the key, the Do key.

While I mentioned Jason for the graphical part, I can’t forget David Siegel, Alex Launi, Chris Halse Rogers and every contributor!!! They did an amazing job, they *are* an amazing team.

So, that’s all folks: go and spread the voice

It’s time to rock on for 1.0!

Posted in Compiz, English, GNOME, GNOME Do, GTK | 28 Comments »