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Today's Topics:
1. Re: XO-1.75 relative performance (Peter Robinson)
2. Re: XO-1.75 relative performance (Jon Nettleton)
3. Re: Announcing the development of OLPC OS 11.3.1
(Simon Schampijer)
4. Re: Announcing the development of OLPC OS 11.3.1 (Peter Robinson)
5. Re: XO-1.75 relative performance (Peter Robinson)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2011 22:19:36 +0000
From: Peter Robinson<pbrobin...@gmail.com>
To: Jon Nettleton<jon.nettle...@gmail.com>
Cc: Sridhar Dhanapalan<srid...@laptop.org.au>, Devel
<devel@lists.laptop.org>
Subject: Re: XO-1.75 relative performance
Message-ID:
<CALeDE9PHfDegCJ=seyEecnw-MMrb=vzolhk9zizohwrfbgc...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Jon Nettleton<jon.nettle...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Jon,
We are doing some forwards-planing with regards to the XO-1.75. Would
you be able to tell us what kind of performance we can expect from the
graphics driver that you are working on? Would it support 3D hardware
acceleration?
Well yes and no. ?The graphics hardware does support 3d acceleration,
however currently that is only supported via a binary driver. ?We also
don't have all the documentation nor man power to write a 3d driver.
The nouveau team has had 3 to 4 people working full time on a driver
for almost 4 years and their driver is just getting to a stable usage
point for desktop compositing.
nouveau has been very usable for quite some time. I was using it
without issues back in F-12/13 timeframe without too many issues.
For a general idea of performance our 3d graphics hardware will run
Quake3 at native 1200x900 resolution with medium quality graphics at
about 30fps on average.
We are considering working to get GNOME 3 running, but for that to
work well we'll need some good graphics capabilities.
There should be a distinction between GNOME 3 and gnome-shell.
Gnome-shell is the only part of GNOME 3 that requires 3D acceleration.
?Could our hardware run gnome-shell? ?Well that would take a bit of
time to figure out. ?To my knowledge nobody has shown gnome-shell
running with clutter utilizing the OpenGLES backend. ?Last I remember
clutter didn't support texture from pixmap capabilities with their EGL
backend, so that may still have to be implemented. ?This may have
changed in the last couple of months by I have definitely not seen it
demonstrated or talked about anywhere.
That's not exactly entirely true. There's a number of other apps that
are making using of clutter through clutter-gtk, clutter-gst or MX.
totem is one of these for example. Also before long gnome is planning
on deprecating non gnome-shell based UXs and concentrating on getting
sofware rendering up to a reasonable speed. We can start testing this
in F-17 as it'll be a feature [1]. Phoronix has more details on
llvmpipe [2] and the gallium3D bits [3]
The bigger concern I have with targeting a compositing window manager
is the amount of RAM that it needs. ?Every window also has a
duplicated texture in memory that is used to create the composited
display. ?Generally gnome-shell will use 100+MB's of RAM just to
display the desktop, and there is no way to tweak around this by using
16-bit colors as everything is an ARGB texture. ?On a machine with 1GB
of RAM this isn't so bad, but that is a hefty chunk of memory for a
machine with 512MB's of memory. ?Oh and that is just system RAM it
doesn't take into account the memory that is needed for the actual
graphics engine.
Aren't the production 1.75s moving to 1Gb of RAM due to pricing of the
different units?
To sum things up. ?Yes the hardware should have the capabilities to
run gnome-shell, again I say should as it is very untested. ?I would
not recommend targetting it's use in any future plans unless you have
GNOME and Xorg hackers lined up to spend a good chunk of time working
on it.
Peter
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Gnome_shell_software_rendering
[2] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAxMTI
[3] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAwNTg
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2011 17:11:50 -0800
From: Jon Nettleton<jon.nettle...@gmail.com>
To: Peter Robinson<pbrobin...@gmail.com>
Cc: Sridhar Dhanapalan<srid...@laptop.org.au>, Devel
<devel@lists.laptop.org>
Subject: Re: XO-1.75 relative performance
Message-ID:
<CALHpu37pCRRV5bRZOWw-a7ib+_OpaSDp-WyvtTx_=rctaug...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
nouveau has been very usable for quite some time. I was using it
without issues back in F-12/13 timeframe without too many issues.
What have you been using it for? Gnome-shell didn't exist back then.
They have been incrementally adding features but it has taken time. I
have never used nouveau because there has been no power control
features, not something we I can do without. I am not trying to say
something negative on the project, I just think it is a good barometer
for people to realistically grasp how long it takes to mature modern
graphics drivers without documentation.
There should be a distinction between GNOME 3 and gnome-shell.
Gnome-shell is the only part of GNOME 3 that requires 3D acceleration.
?Could our hardware run gnome-shell? ?Well that would take a bit of
time to figure out. ?To my knowledge nobody has shown gnome-shell
running with clutter utilizing the OpenGLES backend. ?Last I remember
clutter didn't support texture from pixmap capabilities with their EGL
backend, so that may still have to be implemented. ?This may have
changed in the last couple of months by I have definitely not seen it
demonstrated or talked about anywhere.
That's not exactly entirely true. There's a number of other apps that
are making using of clutter through clutter-gtk, clutter-gst or MX.
totem is one of these for example. Also before long gnome is planning
on deprecating non gnome-shell based UXs and concentrating on getting
sofware rendering up to a reasonable speed. We can start testing this
in F-17 as it'll be a feature [1]. Phoronix has more details on
llvmpipe [2] and the gallium3D bits [3]
Is this argument for or against GNOME 3? You point out a lot of
libraries that require clutter, but none that are hard dependencies of
GNOME. I understand a lot of projects are dependant on clutter, but
none are hard dependencies of the GNOME project.
The use of software rendering via llvm is great, but unfortunately
that is targeted at modern multi-core processors that have cycles to
spare. This does not target at the limited resources an XO has
available.
?Oh and that is just system RAM it
doesn't take into account the memory that is needed for the actual
graphics engine.
Aren't the production 1.75s moving to 1Gb of RAM due to pricing of the
different units?
Not that I have heard but we will see. Regardless I don't see any
justification that would suggest we should target gnome-shell as a
desktop.
I understand the push to proliferate GNOME, however as Linus and many
other GNOME expatriates have emphasized it is not the right fit for
everyone. I have been a gnome-shell contributor and propenent from
early on, but I can' t suggest it is a good alternative for limited
resource computers, when it continually fails me on my quad-core
desktop with a top of the line video card, which I originally ran the
nouveau drivers on but had to switch to the binary nvidia drivers
because it ran the fan at 100% the entire time.
-Jon
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:38:23 +0100
From: Simon Schampijer<si...@schampijer.de>
To: devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: Announcing the development of OLPC OS 11.3.1
Message-ID:<4eb78aef.5010...@schampijer.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
On 11/04/2011 09:45 PM, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:
Martin,
In 11.3.0 a few activities didn't include translations because of problems
with packaging of the activities.
Probably will be a good idea update these activities.
I can prepare a list of recommended activities if you want.
Gonzalo
Are those really critical items? I would only do the really really must
do changes besides any 1.75 bug fixes. Because (a) this release should
be only about bug fixes in my opinion and (b) preparing/testing/shipping
this takes time away from our new dev cycle.
Regards,
Simon
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2011 08:09:36 +0000
From: Peter Robinson<pbrobin...@gmail.com>
To: Simon Schampijer<si...@schampijer.de>
Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: Announcing the development of OLPC OS 11.3.1
Message-ID:
<calede9o5thcj7wcfunk+aag8khsuecwsrh9myonxqqdjmfp...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 7:38 AM, Simon Schampijer<si...@schampijer.de> wrote:
On 11/04/2011 09:45 PM, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:
Martin,
In 11.3.0 a few activities didn't include translations because of problems
with packaging of the activities.
Probably will be a good idea update these activities.
I can prepare a list of recommended activities if you want.
Gonzalo
Are those really critical items? ?I would only do the really really must do
changes besides any 1.75 bug fixes. Because (a) this release should be only
about bug fixes in my opinion and (b) preparing/testing/shipping this takes
time away from our new dev cycle.
I think translation updates should be OK but only in the form of
translations in a dot release of the existing version of Activities we
ship.
Peter
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2011 08:27:24 +0000
From: Peter Robinson<pbrobin...@gmail.com>
To: Jon Nettleton<jon.nettle...@gmail.com>
Cc: Sridhar Dhanapalan<srid...@laptop.org.au>, Devel
<devel@lists.laptop.org>
Subject: Re: XO-1.75 relative performance
Message-ID:
<calede9owu1ttnaaswygzfyk1atc-edgecieoogg+c+wh32u...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 1:11 AM, Jon Nettleton<jon.nettle...@gmail.com> wrote:
nouveau has been very usable for quite some time. I was using it
without issues back in F-12/13 timeframe without too many issues.
What have you been using it for? Gnome-shell didn't exist back then.
They have been incrementally adding features but it has taken time. ?I
have never used nouveau because there has been no power control
features, not something we I can do without. ?I am not trying to say
something negative on the project, I just think it is a good barometer
for people to realistically grasp how long it takes to mature modern
graphics drivers without documentation.
Actually it did! It was the first release that Fedora has it in there
[1] , I packaged all the dependencies [2] as I packaged Moblin 2. It
worked fine for the testing of Moblin although as you mention the
power management was limited. My point still remains it was usable a
lot earlier than the 3-4 years you mentioned. They've also had to
reverse engineer it without any form of documentation.
The gnome team are working for a minimal subset of implemented
features for less capable cards so they run faster using SW rendering.
See some of the links I provided previously.
There should be a distinction between GNOME 3 and gnome-shell.
Gnome-shell is the only part of GNOME 3 that requires 3D acceleration.
?Could our hardware run gnome-shell? ?Well that would take a bit of
time to figure out. ?To my knowledge nobody has shown gnome-shell
running with clutter utilizing the OpenGLES backend. ?Last I remember
clutter didn't support texture from pixmap capabilities with their EGL
backend, so that may still have to be implemented. ?This may have
changed in the last couple of months by I have definitely not seen it
demonstrated or talked about anywhere.
That's not exactly entirely true. There's a number of other apps that
are making using of clutter through clutter-gtk, clutter-gst or MX.
totem is one of these for example. Also before long gnome is planning
on deprecating non gnome-shell based UXs and concentrating on getting
sofware rendering up to a reasonable speed. We can start testing this
in F-17 as it'll be a feature [1]. Phoronix has more details on
llvmpipe [2] and the gallium3D bits [3]
Is this argument for or against GNOME 3? ?You point out a lot of
libraries that require clutter, but none that are hard dependencies of
GNOME. ?I understand a lot of projects are dependant on clutter, but
none are hard dependencies of the GNOME project.
No, its not an argument about gnome 3. Its to point out that
gnome-shell isn't the only bit of gnome-shell that uses/requires
3D/OpenGL GPU functionality. totem is one of them that we use.
The use of software rendering via llvm is great, but unfortunately
that is targeted at modern multi-core processors that have cycles to
spare. ?This does not target at the limited resources an XO has
available.
I don't disagree, my point is though that this is the way the gnome
project is going and that its likely fallback mode will soon
disappear.
?Oh and that is just system RAM it
doesn't take into account the memory that is needed for the actual
graphics engine.
Aren't the production 1.75s moving to 1Gb of RAM due to pricing of the
different units?
Not that I have heard but we will see. ?Regardless I don't see any
justification that would suggest we should target gnome-shell as a
desktop.
I'm staying we should target gnome-shell, my point is that if we want
to keep using the gnome desktop in upcoming releases we might not have
a choice. Read the previous links and you'll actually see the details
of the point that I raised.
I understand the push to proliferate GNOME, however as Linus and many
other GNOME expatriates have emphasized it is not the right fit for
everyone. ? I have been a gnome-shell contributor and propenent from
early on, but I can' t suggest it is a good alternative for limited
resource computers, when it continually fails me on my quad-core
desktop with a top of the line video card, which I originally ran the
nouveau drivers on but had to switch to the binary nvidia drivers
because it ran the fan at 100% the entire time.
I'm not and have never said its the right and only desktop. On the
flip side I've not had many issues with gnome-shell in the F-15/16
timeframe and regularly will suspend/resume my laptop for weeks on end
without issues now. Moblin/Meego ran quite happily on my original atom
netbook which is of similar vintage and speed as the XO 1.5 without
massive issues. I have no doubt issues with some nouveau cards is
largely due to they are reverse engineered. The ATI and Intel GPUs
which have published docs don't seem to have nearly the amount of
issues on the NV based one.
Peter
[1]
http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/12/Everything/source/SRPMS/gnome-shell-2.28.0-3.fc12.src.rpm
[2]
http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/12/Everything/source/SRPMS/mutter-2.28.0-2.fc12.src.rpm
------------------------------
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