Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 18, 2011 21:59 UTC (Tue) by lmb (subscriber, #39048)
In reply to: Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld) by drag
Parent article: Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

If only it was so easy. At least one of my X crashes has been reported for months, and reconfirmed on every X server or Intel driver update, without hope. And these are the open drivers, on fairly standard hardware (Lenovo X200s).

The state of X drivers is really a mess, and it seems to be understaffed everywhere, and the proliferation of different hardware and generations and minor variations does not help at all.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 18, 2011 22:55 UTC (Tue) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (3 responses)

Seeing as I have an X200s too, I'm curious as to what crash you're seeing? I haven't experienced any crashes so far. Do you have a link to your bug report?

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 19, 2011 1:33 UTC (Wed) by jeroen (guest, #12372) [Link] (2 responses)

I've also got an X200s and sometimes X crashes on resume from suspend-to-ram. It happens about 5-10 percent of the time. A friend of mine also has an X200s and uses the same distro (Ubuntu 10.10) and doesn't have this problem, so at least not everyone has it. I've never reported it because I don't have more information than "it doesn't work after resume"...

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 19, 2011 10:11 UTC (Wed) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (1 responses)

BIOS issue?

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 19, 2011 12:54 UTC (Wed) by jeroen (guest, #12372) [Link]

I upgraded the bios to the latest version a month ago and it didn't help.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 19, 2011 5:45 UTC (Wed) by jiu (guest, #57673) [Link] (9 responses)

I agree with this, buggy graphics drivers were the reason I switched to Mac a year ago (hoping it would be temporary). The improvements seem to always come too late, when the graphics card and/or the laptop itself are close to being 'obsolete'. The only maker which stands out for the quality of their linux driver is nvidia, and they're closed source - how come intel and AMD don't just put more people on it?

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 19, 2011 10:39 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (8 responses)

Nvidia is hardly quality. It's fast and provides a better API then open source drivers do, but it's not something that is quality.

The trouble we have is that the X Windows Server has a batshit insane driver model. You have 3 or 4 different drivers programmed by different groups that all try to do similar things with the same single piece of hardware.

Get rid of X Windows Server and switch to a driver model were you have one driver that supports many different APIs then you will start to see major improvement. There is only so much you can do to band-aid over broken design.

Also the other major issue with Linux and open source drivers is that despite all the rhetoric and grandstanding when it comes to software the average Linux user does not mind shoveling massive amounts of Windows driver code into their kernel in order to get acceptable graphics performance.

Not only does this remove any motivation for actually fixing anything (since it now works well enough) it also prevents the very thing that would be the first real step to fixing Linux drivers. Any changes to or modifications to X or Linux graphics in a attempt to fix anything will break the Nvidia driver and cause users to cry out bloody murder.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 19, 2011 10:53 UTC (Wed) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (5 responses)

> Get rid of X Windows Server and switch to a driver model were you have one driver that supports many different APIs then you will start to see major improvement. There is only so much you can do to band-aid over broken design.
What was that metal again? Palladium? Titanium? Platinum?

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 19, 2011 11:29 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

Are you thinking of 'Gallium'?

Yeah something like that. I mispoke a bit, we don't need to get rid of 'X Windows' so much as getting rid of X windows having anything to do with graphics drivers.

There should only be one DDX for X on Linux and it should be 'DDX Linux' (or whatever). The same X driver code running on all the different video cards.

Then lower down there should only be one driver for one piece of hardware. Do it's job and do it well with proper layered design of *kernel* <--> *graphics driver* <---> *applications* and all that happy Unixy design stuff.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 19, 2011 17:48 UTC (Wed) by mslusarz (guest, #58587) [Link] (3 responses)

This "one DDX for X on Linux" is called Gallium Xorg state tracker.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 20, 2011 8:38 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (2 responses)

> This "one DDX for X on Linux" is called Gallium Xorg state tracker.

Is that in a usable state? Are any DDX drivers actually using it?

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 20, 2011 9:32 UTC (Thu) by ernstp (guest, #13694) [Link] (1 responses)

> Is that in a usable state?

Not really I think, but I read that someone had tried it and sounded like it runs and works partially at least.

> Are any DDX drivers actually using it?

AFAIK it _is_ a DDX driver.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 20, 2011 9:46 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

> > Are any DDX drivers actually using it?

> AFAIK it _is_ a DDX driver.

Ah, I had assumed from my limited knowledge of Gallium3D that it would only become a DDX driver once it (the state tracker) was combined with a given Gallium3D driver.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 20, 2011 15:56 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (1 responses)

It's fast.

It implements the OpenGL standards correctly and is one of the only drivers to do so.

Nvidia has actual teams of people who test their driver quality using well-designed test suites that cover all the possibilities. Not two developers and a few beta users that only test Tuxracer, glxgears and Compiz.

In my personal experiences the Nvidia driver is very stable. Just don't run it with 4K kernel stacks.

All in all, Nvidia and its Linux driver is the *very best* advanced graphics support available for Linux.

I'm not seeing the lack of quality here.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 23, 2011 2:37 UTC (Sun) by SteveAdept (guest, #5061) [Link]

Agreed. I've gone out of my way to buy a particular laptop because it has an Nvidia video chipset. Their Linux driver may not be perfect, but for my money, it's better than all the alternatives.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 19, 2011 10:32 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

> If only it was so easy. At least one of my X crashes has been reported for months, and reconfirmed on every X server or Intel driver update, without hope. And these are the open drivers, on fairly standard hardware (Lenovo X200s).

It's not easy. It's relatively simple. I never said it was easy. People easily confuse simple with easy and they are completely separate things. I know it's extremely difficult and that why it's not been fixed yet.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)

Posted Jan 19, 2011 12:18 UTC (Wed) by chris.wilson (guest, #42619) [Link]

Remind me. Which bug are you referring to?