Things got worse for me :(

Shapeshifter · 2009-01-03 03:26:55

Just a random rant about how things got worse on my setup... Really have to release it somewhere. Remember I'm not blaming any arch developers or not even the up-stream devs. I guess I'm just very unlucky.

Pity thing, as some of the updates were nice to have, some of the major updates in the last few months made things worse on my setup. And it's not my fault, really...

1) ipw3945 support was dropped somewhere around 2.6.26 and thus the use of iwl3945 more or less enforced. Even though iwl3945 is supposed to be better, it is not for me and for quite a few other people. With iwl3945 I lose the wlan connection very often and at random, even with a strong signal. Also, the LED blinks in a very annoying manner, and the kill switch behaviour is erratic. Okay I could try and build ipw3945 myself but that's another story...

2) The latest xorg update made performance of the intel gma945 much worse. I even tried running the -git versions of xf86-video-intel and libdrm but it's the same. I get random hickups with compiz-fusion and it seems like some of the textures get lost when switching out from X to another TTY and back (disappearing wallpapers for example). I just have to wait until someone fixes it. Maybe GEM and DRI2 will bring brighter times for intel chipsets.

3) Somewhere around 2.6.25 something happened to the acpi components. One out of 5 times, the lap top refuses to resume and I get kicked to a frozen TTY1 having to reboot. Debugging this is really hard or impossible.

All three of these are major annoyances. I had to write a script that checks if the wlan connection is still okay every 15 seconds and if not, rmmod the module, kill all coresponding processes, and run everything again (just running netcfg -a && netcfg-auto-wireless doesn't work, gives dhcp timeouts or "wireless association failed" and stuff). But still, it happens every few minutes that I have to wait for a minute to reinitialize the wlan connection. compiz-fusion performance is poor. And the resume-problem is so damn annoying it drives me mad everytime.

The worst part about it is, that about half a year ago, everything, really everything was running brilliant, and now my system is crippled.

Anyways, just to point out some of the good changes in the past... wine got much better, as did virtualbox. Both do an amazing job, especially virtualbox. I'm looking forward to 2.6.28 and fastboot, firefox 3 made me switch away from opera after I've been using it since 3.16, and well... that's about it. openoffice 3 ain't that bad either, but I'm using office 07 in virtualbox seamless anyways because I need full microsoft compatibility for that stuff. Also, office 07 powerpoint is way better than the OO pendant. And I guess many users are happy about the latest ATI drivers as well as many other drivers that got better with linux' increased popularity...

Anyways... I just hope things get fixed. It's really frustrating how everything used to run so well and now essential things got gradually worse...

...

fumbles · 2009-01-03 06:10:49

.

Last edited by fumbles (2020-09-26 12:03:14)

Shapeshifter · 2009-01-03 15:56:47

fumbles wrote:

Opera9.6 is way better then FF3.0 (but really it is)

Uhm, actually, opera got worse as well since 9.21. That was the peak. After that, it went down again. operapluginwrap eats my CPU even when there's no flash anymore in recent versions and scrolling in opera in compiz is all fractured. I don't have this problem in any other app.

pyther · 2009-01-03 16:23:28

I was having some problems with my intel card. Random freezes, etc...
With the kernel 2.6.28 and xf86-video-intel 2.5.99 everything is running much better for me.

You can get 2.6.28 from [testing] and if you want I'd be more than happy to post my pkgbuild for xf86-video-intel

Shapeshifter · 2009-01-04 22:48:20

pyther, thanks, I'll just wait until it hits the repos. Will be a while, but I've got semester break anyways, so it's not that crucial at the moment. Just pisses me off

cu3edweb · 2009-01-05 04:27:59

pyther wrote:

I was having some problems with my intel card. Random freezes, etc...
With the kernel 2.6.28 and xf86-video-intel 2.5.99 everything is running much better for me.
You can get 2.6.28 from [testing] and if you want I'd be more than happy to post my pkgbuild for xf86-video-intel

pyther

I used your pkgbuild from another thread. What is your xorg options for the intel driver I am not seeing a big difference in performance?

Thanks

fumbles · 2009-01-05 06:27:06

Shapeshifter wrote:

fumbles wrote:
Opera9.6 is way better then FF3.0 (but really it is)
Uhm, actually, opera got worse as well since 9.21. That was the peak. After that, it went down again. operapluginwrap eats my CPU even when there's no flash anymore in recent versions and scrolling in opera in compiz is all fractured. I don't have this problem in any other app.

Never had a problem with Opera with compiz.
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
7404 luke 39 19 295m 23m 13m R 27 0.6 0:08.95 operapluginwrap
7152 luke 20 0 277m 82m 21m R 1 2.1 0:07.77 opera
7075 luke 20 0 674m 154m 31m R 30 3.9 0:22.54 firefox

I'm not seeing much of a difference? Exactly the same windows open, just after opening. Maybe there is something wrong with your system? Have you tried the latest version 9.63?

Super Jamie · 2009-01-05 13:48:03

Baww browser wars I have no idea how people can stand Webkit's font rendering, Safari and Opera may have some technical merits, but they're so damn ugly!

The ipw3945 driver has been problematic for me too, I'm still running an intrepid-proposed kernel on my laptop because of a bug that shipped with Ubuntu 8.10 and hasn't been fixed in the main repos yet. I assumed the random LED blinking was just Dell's non-standard implementation of the front panel controller.

agapito · 2009-01-05 13:52:38

Use ndiswrapper guys....

pyther · 2009-01-05 15:03:19

cu3edweb wrote:

pyther wrote:
I was having some problems with my intel card. Random freezes, etc...
With the kernel 2.6.28 and xf86-video-intel 2.5.99 everything is running much better for me.
You can get 2.6.28 from [testing] and if you want I'd be more than happy to post my pkgbuild for xf86-video-intel
pyther
I used your pkgbuild from another thread. What is your xorg options for the intel driver I am not seeing a big difference in performance?
Thanks

I just used the default settings. I have weak card though so the smallest improvements help a lot!

As for ndiswrapper, ndiswrapper is filthy, and it seems as it isn't being developed anymore.

Last edited by pyther (2009-01-05 15:04:18)

TecnoVM64 · 2009-01-05 15:35:40

Well my setup got somewhat messed up for a few weeks too:
1. ALSA for some reason had a lot of those azx_get_response_timeout messages and then headphone jack wouldn't work, fixed with probe_mask=1
2. ndiswrapper refused to connect, it also used to hang any kernel above 2.6.25 (hence I couldn't upgrade), fixed by using wl and then I upgraded to 2.6.27
3. NVIDIA driver, for some reason I can't use 640x480 res, and I have some windows games that only use that (oldies), workaround was running it on a window, I need to fix that
4. KDM (kdemod-legacy) refuses to start on battery power, I could have used GDM or anything else but I decided to move to another DE, moved to XFCE (tried lxde but damn that panel is fugly!)
And well... right now, nothing else

Last edited by TecnoVM64 (2009-01-05 15:37:33)

Super Jamie · 2009-01-05 21:46:16

agapito wrote:

Use ndiswrapper guys....

That's even worse. At least using the linux driver, we discover bugs, report them, and Intel have pretty good development commitment to fix them in a timely manner.

For all my complaining, Intel are actually doing a great job with their open source network and video drivers, even if this one particular driver isn't exactly polished for my purposes in its' first mainstream release.

Far better than nVidia, who just give you a closed binary blob and have no commitment to improving their Linux user experience.

Last edited by Super Jamie (2009-01-05 21:47:15)

Shapeshifter · 2009-01-06 00:40:42

I agree regarding ndiswrapper, Super Jamie. But btw, opera doesn't use webkit...

Also, fumbles, I was talking about a specific bug in opera. Maybe it's gone by now, but opera used up all cpu when using flash and even _after_ all tabs containing flash were closed. It just hung and ate my battery. In any case, there are still some things that annoy me in firefox, but with all the addons, I find it to be better than opera. And believe I really was a long time opera user since 3.16 on any machine I got it to. But ff3 really works for me...

Well, when I first set up linux/arch on my lap top I was so happy to have intel components all over, as they were supported best, but by now, ati have cached up a little, nvidia were never that bad (though closed) and the performance of my intel wifi and inte gma950 graphics is degraded...

dunc · 2009-01-07 20:51:29

Super Jamie wrote:

Baww browser wars I have no idea how people can stand Webkit's font rendering, Safari and Opera may have some technical merits, but they're so damn ugly!

Webkit's the only HTML engine that kerns properly; one advantage of Apple's involvement, presumably. (I used to have a good example URL, but I've lost it. ) Although, to be fair, the actual glyph rendering isn't always as pretty as Gecko, and I've yet to find a Webkit browser that lets you force your own fonts as easily as Firefox, which can be annoying.

b9anders · 2009-01-07 22:23:41

Shapeshifter wrote:

Just a random rant about how things got worse on my setup... Really have to release it somewhere. Remember I'm not blaming any arch developers or not even the up-stream devs. I guess I'm just very unlucky.
Pity thing, as some of the updates were nice to have, some of the major updates in the last few months made things worse on my setup. And it's not my fault, really...
1) ipw3945 support was dropped somewhere around 2.6.26 and thus the use of iwl3945 more or less enforced. Even though iwl3945 is supposed to be better, it is not for me and for quite a few other people. With iwl3945 I lose the wlan connection very often and at random, even with a strong signal. Also, the LED blinks in a very annoying manner, and the kill switch behaviour is erratic. Okay I could try and build ipw3945 myself but that's another story...
2) The latest xorg update made performance of the intel gma945 much worse. I even tried running the -git versions of xf86-video-intel and libdrm but it's the same. I get random hickups with compiz-fusion and it seems like some of the textures get lost when switching out from X to another TTY and back (disappearing wallpapers for example). I just have to wait until someone fixes it. Maybe GEM and DRI2 will bring brighter times for intel chipsets.

I hear you on some of it. I have the same wifi and graphics card. iwl3945 has been a bumby ride to say the least although the past few months has given me a stable experience (even then, I experienced an odd glitch yesterday that forced a reboot to make it work). And the flicker on opera IS annoying although not as bad on the daily build. Still not bad enough for me to switch to firefox, although it is much better than it used to be. I finally did get the new xorg to work properly with a new xorg.conf recently but still with the reduced performance. The answer to all these problems is very simple though: don't upgrade. It's taken me some time to realise that arch is NOT an even ride in the long run if you don't take an active role in maintaining your install. The ignorepkg function is every archers friend for stability. I am still on x server 1.4 and old intel drivers and enjoying full compiz effects and I don't mean to upgrade until the new intel driver, x server 1.6 and kernel .28 have hit the repos.

That said, I am really excited about the upcoming times for linux and arch. I expect intel cards to receive a significant performance boost with GEM and dri2 properly implemented, when kernel mode setting arrives in the .29 kernel, plymouth should be an option for non-fedora users as well which promises to give us the proper bootsplash linux has been crying out for. Hotplugging, even though I'm not using it now, is rather awesome. I recently installed grub2 with graphical menu after normal grub gave trouble booting other distros on ext3 partitions and it is just made of pure win, kde 4.2 will be out soon promising more goody. A few months from now, we will have awesome machines.

Last edited by b9anders (2009-01-07 22:32:41)

Nezmer · 2009-01-08 00:25:21

dunc wrote:

Super Jamie wrote:
Baww browser wars I have no idea how people can stand Webkit's font rendering, Safari and Opera may have some technical merits, but they're so damn ugly!
Webkit's the only HTML engine that kerns properly; one advantage of Apple's involvement, presumably. (I used to have a good example URL, but I've lost it. ) Although, to be fair, the actual glyph rendering isn't always as pretty as Gecko, and I've yet to find a Webkit browser that lets you force your own fonts as easily as Firefox, which can be annoying.

You can use custom user styles (CSS) in midori .

I force my favourite font by touching '~/.local/share/midori/styles/whatever.css'
and adding this css code :

html,body,* {   
        font:favourite font !important ;
        font-family:favourite font, sans-serif !important ;
        font-family:favourite font, serif !important ;
        font-family:favourite font, monospace !important ;
}

Last edited by Nezmer (2009-01-08 22:20:35)

Shapeshifter · 2009-01-08 19:32:36

You can apply custom styles in opera as well through userjs/ccs files, and firefox does the same with the "stylish" addon or user css files. no big deal really.

I tried upgrading to .28 from testing and after that didn't change anything with my intel graphics performance, I also build libdrm-git, xf86-video-intel-git, dri-intel-git and mesa-git from AUR, and after that, things got _really bad_. With XAA rendering, X was completely destroyed (green stripes, flickering when starting X, nothing visible) and with EXA I got around 5fps in compiz whereas before I had around 60fps (though with framedrops for a few weeks).

Reverted to stable and everything is back. But that really didn't work out properly. May have been due to a bad commit but this was total fail.
I just hope they'll fix gem.

Last edited by Shapeshifter (2009-01-08 19:33:23)

dunc · 2009-01-08 20:13:27

Nezmer wrote:

You can use custom user styles (CSS) in midori .

Heh. I said "easily". Thanks for the tip, though.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-01-03 03:26:55

Things got worse for me :(

#2 2009-01-03 06:10:49

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#3 2009-01-03 15:56:47

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#4 2009-01-03 16:23:28

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#5 2009-01-04 22:48:20

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#6 2009-01-05 04:27:59

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#7 2009-01-05 06:27:06

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#8 2009-01-05 13:48:03

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#9 2009-01-05 13:52:38

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#10 2009-01-05 15:03:19

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#11 2009-01-05 15:35:40

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#12 2009-01-05 21:46:16

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#13 2009-01-06 00:40:42

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#14 2009-01-07 20:51:29

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#15 2009-01-07 22:23:41

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#16 2009-01-08 00:25:21

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#17 2009-01-08 19:32:36

Re: Things got worse for me :(

#18 2009-01-08 20:13:27

Re: Things got worse for me :(

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