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X graphics get a boost (NewsForge)
NewsForge takes
a look at Novell's Xgl framework improvements. "According to Nat
Friedman, Novell's Xgl architecture will allow a move away from a raster
model of drawing to a vector model, which will provide a "modern" graphics
model that should be usable for the next 10 to 15 years. "We're gonna be in
good shape for that now, this takes away major concerns. The only other OS
that offers the capability to do this is Mac OS X, and the only reason is
because they have a tight link to the hardware ... all we're doing is
taking advantage of that hardware too. Windows doesn't have this yet and we
do ... we're not going to cede 3D graphics acceleration to proprietary
software.""
(Log in to post comments)
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 7, 2006 20:22 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] This is nice and all, but how can we really take advantage of it without proprietary drivers? The ATI FireGL 8800 is pretty long in the tooth, and the newest card I know with open source 3d drivers is the intel 945G, which doesn't even try to compete for performance awards....
This is not a rhetorical question or a troll. Seriously, I want to know... :)
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 7, 2006 20:33 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] You don't need a super-faster powerful 3D engine for the kinds of things a desktop would want to do with 3D. You only need the real basics. A lot of the testing and development of XGL occured on the open source radeon drivers.
The only worrying thing I see at all is the dependency on pixel shaders to do YUV/RGB transformations. Even that might be 'fixed' in some fashion (to do it "properly" would require hardware that integrates its video and 3D engines; upcoming cards should do this due to Microsoft's pressure).
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 7, 2006 20:51 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] Yeah, but sadly, the open source radeon drivers only do 3d for cards that are increasingly difficult to obtain. I'm not sure "look on ebay for an old Radeon!" is a viable long-term solution. :)
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 7, 2006 21:18 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] You can buy a new Radeon 9250 today that is fully supported with the solid open source R200 drivers. The newer R300 cards have a opensource driver that is in the current kernel and X.Org releases, and there are plenty of R300-based Radeon 9[5678]00-series cards to be found, even new.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 7, 2006 21:29 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] Hmmm; the X11R7.0 docs still say "2D only" for the R300. Thanks for the pointer to the Radeon 9250, though (also not in the current docs...).
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 7, 2006 22:27 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] The R300 stuff is in development.
Can't say for sure, but possibly by the time that XGL is actually ready for the casual user, the R300 drivers could be stable and usable enough.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 16, 2006 21:50 UTC (Thu) by anton (guest, #25547) [Link] Thanks for the pointer to the Radeon 9250, though.If you are interested in performance, make sure you get a version with a 128-bit memory interface. You don't see the 64-bit interface advertised much, but either on a Sapphire or a Club3D box I saw a button that said "128-bit" (and my Sapphire 9250 definitely has 128 bits, but they might also make the cheaper ones).
Radeon 9200 not well supported Posted Feb 8, 2006 1:23 UTC (Wed) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link] However, ATI Radeon 9200 in Apple Macintosh Mini does not work [even in 2D mode] under an accelerated driver from X.org today. Only fbdev works for sure. See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3280 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=178433 .
Radeon 9200 not well supported Posted Feb 20, 2006 13:20 UTC (Mon) by daenzer (✭ supporter ✭, #7050) [Link] I doubt the former is Mac specific; there's a bunch of known regressions in the 6.9/7.0 radeon driver, they're being worked on but help is always welcome.
The latter is a driver-independent bug in XAA (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4456), which BTW still isn't fixed; the people in that Red Hat bug report were probably confused by a workaround for another XAA bug in GTK+ 2.8.12 which also happens to avoid this one.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 3:54 UTC (Wed) by N0NB (guest, #3407) [Link] I wish I could agree with this. Based on the nice 3D performance of the Radeon Mobility 7500 on my Thinkpad T42, I bought a 9250 based card for my desktop. The sad thing is that running a second OpenGL app locks the screen hard. If Xscreensaver runs an OpenGL saver it will run fine, if a second one is started the screen locks immediately and the CPU load may or may not skyrocket. Strangely, the mouse pointer will usually continue move but is ineffective.
I "fixed" the problem by removing the OpenGL Xcreensaver packages and haven't experienced lockups even though the DRM and DRI drivers are loaded. I am running Debian Sid with Xorg 6.9.0. Hopefully this will be addressed by the next release and I've added info to a relevant bug report on FreeDesktop.org, but so far have heard nothing.
The potential for support of this card is great enough that I've left it in the machine.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 9:40 UTC (Wed) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] Actually reportedly the r300 driver works with r400-class cards too, ie. the architecture is quite similar. If that's true and r300 driver will get stable enough, there are plenty of cards out there. But it might be that the r300 driver maturing will take lots of time.
r500 is completely out of question, I wonder if we ever even see open source 2d drivers for that, even though ATI has always done those before, as r500 doesn't reportedly have a 2d part anymore at all (everything is done using the 3d core).
Anyway, there was a rumor that XGI would open up their drivers completely (currently 2D + tv-out which more official support than ATI or NVIDIA). As long it's a rumor, it doesn't matter, but if it does come true it would make an XGI card to be immediately on my buying list. XGI isn't as fast as the latest from ATI or NVIDIA, but it's not _too_ much behind (like Intel probably is). Probably the faster XGIs are somewhere between Radeon 9800 - X700. (R300-R400 series), which not too shabby.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 14:36 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] "r500 is completely out of question, I wonder if we ever even see open source 2d drivers for that, even though ATI has always done those before, as r500 doesn't reportedly have a 2d part anymore at all (everything is done using the 3d core)."
That's why Xgl is so important.
All graphics cards within a few years are going to be dropping their 2D parts. At the very most they'll have some basic VGA compatibility for booting, and even that will be dropped after the new BIOS replacements are the norm.
Xgl, and more specifically Xegl, is what is going to allow people to continue using new hardware at full accelerated speed long after the 2D-enabled cards are relics.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 19:04 UTC (Wed) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link] Except that the vendors aren't going to release the specs for 3D API, so "fully accelerated speed" is just not going to happen. Neither is stable. It's all great to be talking about reverse engineering them, but given that the r300 stuff still doesn't work reliablly after what, 3 years, I don't have much hope for that approach. Note that I'm not dissing the r300 developers, they've done some impressive work, but they've taken on a really hard task. My only hope is that some vendor will decide that getting 90% of a small market is better than trying to battle Nvidia and ATI in the large market, adn be able to make it work. Go Traversal Go!
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 22:18 UTC (Wed) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link] It's probably worth at least a note that Matrox has at least partial Open Source drivers for its G550 line of cards. I know, these are not exactly 3D barn-burners, and there is still a HAL. Nonetheless, if partial credit is to be given, Matrox at least deserves part of some. See here.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 22:23 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] Yes, that card should also go in the big benchmark comparison testing I'd like to see. :)
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 9, 2006 11:58 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link] Thanks for the URL. Now we need to make these a big seller, so that the graphics people get the clue that more FOSS==better. Then (affixes rose colored glasses) maybe even the wireless vendors will get onboard.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 9, 2006 13:16 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] I wouldn't get too excited. That chipset is over five years old -- see http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=1492. As far as I know, the G550 support is worse than that for the G450, and there's no 3d support for their newer "Parhelia" line, so they're basically trending away from open drivers. :(
(Plus, even the Parhelia cards get pretty low performance marks.)
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 6:49 UTC (Wed) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link] At linux.conf.au, David Arlie was demonstrating Xgl running on top of the ATI R300 DRI drivers. It was obviously stuttering a bit (he said that things were smoother with the proprietary Nvidia drivers), but it definitely looked like this might be usable in the near future.
So there are people working on this stuff, but the progress is slow. The proprietary drivers from both Nvidia and ATI have limited the reduced the demand for these drivers, which has in turn reduced the number of people putting effort into them :(
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 9:33 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] This stuff should run fine on a ATI 9200-style card...
As far as open source drivers you have ones for Via and Intel cards. Intel's 915 and 945 "Graphic media accelerator" cards should offer significant performance improvements over their 845 "Blaster Extreme" cards.
Look for them when buying a laptop. Current "Sonoma"-style "Centrino" laptops offer a platform that uses fully open source drivers for all of the hardware and should have good power management features.
Wireless and Video as well as the rest of the system can be used using fully open source drivers.
Beware of buying cards with ATI video card or broadcom wireless. You'll see laptops labled 'centrino' with ATI or Nvidia video cards.. but all 'centrino' will have intel for wireless. It's part of the requirement for licensing the trademarks.
This XGLX isn't going to help out much since it's a full screen hack that runs on a regular X server, but once you get fully standalone X servers it should make it significantly easier to get full featured drivers for Linux. Both for Free software and propriatory driver makers.
Also be sure to write "alternative" card manufacturers.
XGI made significant noise about releasing Free software drivers. They have fully free DRM (not digital rights-related) for the Linux kernel and they open source'd the drivers for 2-d.. however the DRI part is closed source.
They haven't sold shit for new cards against ATI or Nvidia in Windows. And on the low end they are competiting against Intel and Via (which they'll loose).
Make sure that they know that there is a market for fully open sourced drivers. And that it is critical for 3d support for things like XGL.
Their top of the line descrete cards don't compare to ATI or Nvidia, but are significantly faster then the embedded cards from Intel and especially Via.
They need to know that if they open source the DRI portion of the drivers that they WILL have a market from Free software folks. Even if this market is only 5-7% compared to what Nvidia has it will be much more then XGI has right now!
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=32...
If they are able to make money simply because they used open source drivers it will help to show that end users actually care about that sort of thing and follow through with $$.
Same thing for other manufacturers that provide Free drivers themselves, like Ralink with their rt2500 wireless chipsets.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 15:12 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] As far as open source drivers you have ones for Via and Intel cards. Intel's 915 and 945 "Graphic media accelerator" cards should offer significant performance improvements over their 845 "Blaster Extreme" cards. I would really, really love to see a thorough benchmark comparison of all the current open source graphics options -- like, how much are the "significant performance improvments"? How does that compare to the Radeon 9200 series? And how does that compare to, say, an ATI Radeon 8500 from a few years ago? And then, how do all of those compare to the propriatary drivers, both on the same hardware where that's a possibility and on the latest and greatest hardware? I would actually pay money to see this.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 7, 2006 20:43 UTC (Tue) by Quartz (guest, #35770) [Link] So... just in case, this will cover any OpenGL-enabled card? nVidia and ATI? Anything else?
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 7, 2006 22:31 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] Xglx uses the OpenGL support of an existing X server. So, theoretically, if you have a card that can do OpenGL in X today, then you can use Xglx.
Note that Xglx requires that certain operations be accelerated which not all drivers currently do, although the popular ones are being fixed right now.
good news for opengraphics? Posted Feb 7, 2006 22:33 UTC (Tue) by tcabot (subscriber, #6656) [Link] This might be good news for the opengraphics folks. I'm planning on buying one of their cards (mostly because I admire their chutzpah), but I wasn't planning on getting much practical benefit from it since I'm not a gamer so I don't use 3d much.
I'd imagine that many more folks would be interested in opengraphics if there was some big benefit to running basic kde/gnome applications on a 3d card.
good news for opengraphics? Posted Feb 7, 2006 22:39 UTC (Tue) by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624) [Link] There might be more interest if their website worked too!Currently it's giving TikiWiki installation errors.. :-( http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Open-Graphics
good news for opengraphics? Posted Feb 8, 2006 0:39 UTC (Wed) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] Seems to be working now... for me at least...
good news for opengraphics? Posted Feb 8, 2006 0:59 UTC (Wed) by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624) [Link] Excellent - they'd been down long enough to make it into Google's cachebut were probably working on it as I typed. Glad to see them back again..
good news for opengraphics? Posted Feb 7, 2006 23:06 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] Hate to say it, but based on the mailing list discussion rate and the amount of work left to do, it's likely going to be a few years _at least_ before the open graphics project produces anything usable for casual users.
Also, their cards aren't being designed for a 3D gamer. That's something they've been pretty clear about. The OGA will not be a gaming card by any stretch.
good news for opengraphics? Posted Feb 9, 2006 0:28 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] While I can't say for sure what a realistic ETA is for completion, I think your gamer card comments are off the mark.
A large percentage of Linux users, at least the reader clientele here, would probably be satisfied with high quality, well performing Linux Graphics, as opposed to the fastest rendering of random game X which doesn't even run on Linux.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 7, 2006 23:58 UTC (Tue) by Wile_E (guest, #14701) [Link] Wow. I am impressed. One still has to bear in mind that cool visual tricksdon't necessarily improve desktop performance. We need sensible applications that use those new techniques to improve usability. However Novell already shows this Exposé-style desktop managing tool, which is a great example for sensible usage of the new techniques.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 1:17 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] A lot of the visual tricks do help usability, too.
Nat (I think) made the example of how windows are (un)minimized to/from the taskbar. That makes it clearer and more obvious what the relationship between the taskbar and the windows are.
The movement animation for switching virtual desktops also makes the metaphor clearer for many people.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 4:30 UTC (Wed) by russell (subscriber, #10458) [Link] Does anyone have a use for translucent windows? They always get mentioned as a benefit, but for me, I can't think of a situation where it doesn't just make things worse by making more visual clutter. I do like the window scaling demo, that I will find useful.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 6:36 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] I don't know of a practical use for arbitrary transparent windows, but transparent window decorations (things like drop shadows) can be effective at providing visual cues without taking up as much screen space, because people's brains automatically see as separate effects the two things affecting the same pixels. Low-detail transparent windows are also useful for things like clocks, where the window underneath isn't significantly complicated, and the window on top doesn't require a lot of attention to details.
Actually, some applications have a nice use... Posted Feb 8, 2006 11:16 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] for translucency. For instance, I worked in a GIS application that had tobring a lot (12 lines x 30 columns) of info about some point in a map, and the info window obscured a large portion of the map. So (I was working over Win2000) I created the info window 60% transparent and high-contrast (fonts white over black background) and voilá... the map is completely unobscured again AND the info is highly visible... some more tricks to pass clicks thru the transparent window and we were all set. It was one my my nicest (visually speaking) hacks, and I'm still proud of it some years later.
not much but... Posted Feb 8, 2006 9:21 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] The only thing I can imagine is having a semi transparent xosview. Could save me some window moving from time to time. Although not as much now as I have a 16:10 display
not much but... Posted Feb 8, 2006 14:42 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Myself, a couple of lines of fvwm config has my procmeters at the side of the screen auto-lowering themselves below all other windows with a single keystroke, and back again with another keystroke.
You don't need translucency for this. (It would look cool, though.)
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 14:42 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] Those desktop widgets things could use this, and they would be accelerated when displaying over the desktop.
Popup menus will no longer be forced to completely obscure information in the application, which is sometimes necessary to know which menu item you need to pick.
Temporary popup notifications will not obscure all your work.
When you're moving windows around, the transparency can help you see the layout of your other windows.
Drag-n-drop icons won't obscure what you're trying to drop them onto, improving accuracy in some cases.
People who like to keep movies playing in a corner of their screen won't be forced to keep all their actual work out of that corner at all times.
Transitional effects can be nicer looking and, in some cases, possibly improve the user experience through improved metaphors.
There are plenty of uses for transparency and transparent windows. And when people stop thinking about how the desktop works *now* and start thinking about how it *could* work, more uses are sure to be found.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 10, 2006 3:11 UTC (Fri) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link] Does anyone have a use for translucent windows? They always get mentioned as a benefit, but for me, I can't think of a situation where it doesn't just make things worse by making more visual clutter. I do like the window scaling demo, that I will find useful.Technically, I think "translucency" implies a certain level of diffusion (think greasy paper or typical shower-door coverings); what you're referring to is more properly called "partial transparency." Regardless, I tend to agree, at least with respect to the usual kind of constant partial transparency. However, I could imagine that a terminal window that ranged from 60% transparent in blank areas to 100% opaque near text--with some smooth dropoff in between--could be handy for cases where you just need to become aware of some generally rare or slow-to-occur condition in an underlying window (e.g., syslog error or end of a long compile or end of commercials/FBI warning on TV/DVD). Time-varying transparency (i.e., that goes away while you're typing but slowly returns when you're not) might also be a useful option in some situations. Then again, suitable window decorations (e.g., a barely exposed, skinny "acceleration meter" indicating scroll rate of an underlying window) or any of the more traditional visual alerts would probably be far more useful to most people. It sure would be fun to be able to experiment with this stuff, though. Who knows what wackiness some geek might come up with, given the tools to do it easily? Greg
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 13:59 UTC (Wed) by carcassonne (guest, #31569) [Link] Kinda nice, but I think I'll stay with simply pressing a key combination to immediately switch to another KDE desktop. Without the rotating dizzying cube, that is. I don't see the point in that.And also, that's the first time nowadays that I can click on an app and get it running in a very short time - with this dual core AMD X2 with 4 GB of RAM - that I won't find ways to slow this process down. At least not in the near future. I want to enjoy speed for a little while ! Call me oldtimer, but what else will be there ? Apps that jumps at you and stops with a screeching sound of brakes ? ;-)
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 14:45 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] [quote]Kinda nice, but I think I'll stay with simply pressing a key combination to immediately switch to another KDE desktop. Without the rotating dizzying cube, that is. I don't see the point in that.[/quote]
The point is that for people who don't understand virtual desktops, it makes their use and function a little more obvious. To many people it just seems like a way of hiding windows. With this, it is obvious that it changes the workspace entirely.
And you'll always be able to switch off the animation. (If not, file a bug against whichever WM/compositor you're using that forces the animations.)
[quote]And also, that's the first time nowadays that I can click on an app and get it running in a very short time - with this dual core AMD X2 with 4 GB of RAM - that I won't find ways to slow this process down. At least not in the near future.[/quote]
This new technology should only speed things up, on the graphics end of things. Any slowdowns aren't going to be because of X, they're going to be from things like laoding too many libraries or fonts or other data. (Read the GTK+ performance improvement articles by Federico for an exmaple of the kind of stuff that makes GUI apps slow; X itself is never at fault, though sometimes apps which misuse X cause slowdowns.)
[quote]Call me oldtimer, but what else will be there ? Apps that jumps at you and stops with a screeching sound of brakes ? ;-) [/quote]
Someone somewhere will want that. They can do it. You can ignore it.
It's open source, after all. So long as there is someone who wants it done the "old way," there will be someone who makes sure the old way still works.
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge) Posted Feb 8, 2006 15:51 UTC (Wed) by hein.zelle (guest, #33324) [Link] The point is that for people who don't understand virtual desktops, it makes their use and function a little more obvious. To many people it just seems like a way of hiding windows. With this, it is obvious that it changes the workspace entirely.Although this is probably true for a new linux user or one that comes from a windows background, the concept of desktop switching should take about 3 minutes to explain and get used to. In my opinion the problem is not to get people to understand what happens, but to get them to try it out in the first place. I see a lot of new linux users that simply don't realize the feature exists, and I doubt a visualization of desktop switching is going to improve that, given that they don't switch desktops period.
for what it's worth Posted Feb 9, 2006 8:20 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] You don't need XGl for nifty 3D desktop paging. I've used 3ddesktop for that for years: http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/I bound it to Alt+Esc, so when I want to impress some friends who are not familiar with the multi desktop aproach, I can use it quickly. Explains it instantly what I am talking about. And sometimes it could even be useful, since I recognice the desktop I'm searching for a little faster than with the window list I normally get.
But I'm curious how it'll look like when videos still run while paging and such stuff :)
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