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):
- 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).
- Upgrade your Xorg Intel drivers with the 2.7.1 version on the same ppa.
- 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
- 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 »
I had an idea, I don’t remember exactly who asked me for it (maybe Gyb), but it is really simple: rename all menubarstyle, toolbarstyle, menuitemstyle (etc etc…) into style[menubar], style[toolbar], style[menuitem]… same thing for other options (color[scrollbar], color[focus], shade[lightborder] etc etc…).
We actually need to write a little parser for them in murrine_rc_style.c and/or clearlooks_rc_style.c.
The thing is: I don’t have time for it in these months.
So, if someone wants to write a small patch for it… it will be merged! 
Have a good weekend…
Posted in English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine | 4 Comments »
I’ve just created the official group (I mean, the first and so the official ) “GNOME Italia” on Facebook…
Here’s the link, if you want to share it and join it: GNOME Italia on Facebook
Ho appena creato il gruppo ufficiale (o meglio, il primo e quindi ufficiale ) “GNOME Italia” su Facebook…
Ecco il link, se volete condividerlo e aggiungervi: GNOME Italia on Facebook
Posted in English, GNOME, Italian | 3 Comments »
Just a small post about linux on the Samsung NC10.
Ubuntu Jaunty is out (it has some issues) and for a better linux experience with this netbook there’s a PPA and a Forum (I signed up today, it has both an English and an Italian section)!
So, if you are a NC10 owner, bookmark these links and spread the voice to your friends! 
OT: I forgot to say I have released murrine 0.90.3 few weeks ago with a bounce of fixes to the focus drawing function…
Posted in English, Murrine | 7 Comments »
Today should be released GNOME 2.26.0? Yes, so congrats to us!
Talking about Murrine, I’ve released 0.90.1 and 0.90.2 which contains mainly bugfixes.
0.90.1 was relased with a typo (sorry!!!) which caused a crash, thanks bitzer for pointing that out.
Changelog for 0.90.1
Changes in this release:
- High roundness values are now correctly limited.
- Use focus_color in draw_entry if the theme uses it.
- Removed shadows from GtkCombo and GtkComboBoxEntry.
- Code polishing and bugfixing.
Changelog for 0.90.2
Requires Gtk+ 2.12.0
Changes in this release:
- Fixed a crash when using focus_color.
- Now focus_color and scrollbar_color accept symbolic colors.
Download
Download link, as always:
http://download.gnome.org/sources/murrine/0.90
Posted in English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine | 30 Comments »
Murrine is a Gtk+ engine, written in C language, using cairo vectorial graphics library. By default it comes with a modern glassy look, elegant and clean on the eyes. But it is also extremely customizable, and allows the user to achieve an incredible variety of styles.
Wow, new rockin’ release!
Enjoy.
Download the source code!
Changelog
Too many changes to be listed, let’s take a summary.
This new version is extremely customizable with a huge number of new
options. Those new options allow the user to achieve an incredible
variety of styles.
In order to add those features the engine was rewritten in many parts,
sometimes even 2 or 3 times! This results in a simpler code, more
readable and more maintainable, with a lot of custom code moved from
each widget drawing function (before) to a general murrine drawing
support file (now). For example adding a new glaze style will now cost
about 20 lines and it will be applied immediately to every single
widget.
Murrine can finally use the alpha channel to draw a real transparent
theme, all it needs is an application using the RGBA colormap and a
theme with the rgba option enabled.
During the whole development, murrine was kept in sync with
every bugfix that hit gtk-engines, so this new version can also be
considered much more stable than the previous one.
Links
Website: http://www.cimitan.com/murrine
Source Code: http://download.gnome.org/sources/murrine
SVN: http://svn.gnome.org/svn/murrine
Bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org
Posted in English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine | 22 Comments »
UPDATE: should be out soon http://download.gnome.org/sources/murrine/0.90/
I’m still not sure but maybe I will publish a Murrine development release in this weekend (with development I mean it won’t be called 1.0, maybe 0.90 or similar).
I’d like to have it included in Jaunty, because ubuntu is actually shipping an old bugged svn snapshot and I’m a bit tired of closing bugreports about that obsolete version.
If you have some last requests, please take a look at that post.
Posted in English, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 2 Comments »
I may have some time this weekend and the next weeks to continue working on both Clearlooks and Murrine GTK+ engines.
I need ideas
This post remembers you that I’ve opened a section where you can easily submit your mockups for Murrine. Use gnome bugzilla for Clearlooks.
Posted in English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine | 16 Comments »
Here you can find an example of the “pulseaudio glitches” we (unlucky netbook’s owners) hear.
I decided to reinstall pulseaudio, because I share Lennart’s idea that it’s better to start fixing drivers and applications as soon as we can: it’s useless, imho, to stop freesoftware’s development just because vendors/drivers/applications are bugged.
Some things work better than in the past months, banshee seems to be almost glitch-free (it wasn’t when I tried it in december).
I’m going to share with you my glitch-free experience: 
just recordered, sorry for the white noise but the netbook’s speakers have a low power noise removed thanks to audacity.
pulseaudio-frozenbubble-no-noise (FLAC, 1.8 MB, I can hear more glitches here)
pulseaudio-frozenbubble-no-noise (WAV, 3.2 MB)
pulseaudio-frozenbubble (FLAC, 2.0 MB, I can hear more glitches here)
pulseaudio-frozenbubble (WAV, 3.5 MB)
Pulseaudio 0.9.14, snd-hda-intel (Realtek ALC 272), Fedora Core 10.
Also, CPU usage for pulseaudio is between 10% and 35% (and ~25% without the g-f feature). Not really fun for the laptop’s battery.
Posted in English, GNOME | 14 Comments »
After reading Aruiz and Dylan I think I could ask your attention on that topic.
I like Dylan’s idea of a Do-ified GTK+ 3.0, it seems innovative, making user interaction more accessible and faster. At least, this is my personal opinion.
From Dylan:
@Cimi: it would be great to see Do-like functionality incorporated in Gnome 3, not just on the desktop, but also at the application level. Programs like the Gimp or Inkscape use a lot of keyboard shortcuts that may be hard to memorize all-at-once. Using the Do-metaphor *within* the application will let you invoke functions quickly, and discover keyboard shortcuts in the process.
I don’t have anything against Mono, but for Do to become an integral part of the Gnome Desktop, I think it would almost have to be part of GTK+, because it needs to communicate with other parts of the interface to know which functions are applicable given the situation (it makes no sense to list ‘Crop to selection’ as an option when nothing has been selected).
I must agree with him, sometimes keyboard shortcuts are complicated to use: how can I remember alt+g, alt+k, alt+y, alt+s, ctrl+alt+h, ctrl+alt+h+super+t+f12+enter+backspace? (omg I’m not playing the piano 
I just want to use my computer!!!)
Typing “fullscreen” is easier than remembering Totem is using “F11″, Banshee “F”, another application “Ctrl+Alt+F” and so on… And while “fullscreen” is something known and famous, what about exotic shortcuts that almost each application has? Those are just useless… and dangerous! Imagine if I press “Ctrl+W” on an important document because I forgot the right command…
Now, your thoughts please
Posted in Compiz, English, GNOME, GTK, Icons, Murrine | 73 Comments »
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