Re: HW compatibility research: are intel i5 graphics and realtek net/audio hassle-free?
Hi, I am sorry for being late with an update on this query of mine - it's been almost two months since I asked the question. I did get the HW in Subject (details reminder: GIGABYTE H55M-D2H s1156 MoBo and Intel Core i5 650 3.2GHz with a GPU Core, on-board RealTek net and audio). It works _almost_ without a hassle with Fedora 14 on it. Almost means that there are no problems with networking (I didn't expect any) or audio (normal headset/mike, didn't try HDMI or anything fancy like that :). There is a WEIRD video effect with KDE though. Never saw anything like that: the _text_contents_ of windows (e.g., konsole/terminal) are flipped upside down and left to right. The windows' decorations are in the normal places (e.g., the title bar is on top), but the text in them (e.g., window title) is flipped - upside down and right to left (in English). The _actual_ controls - buttons, etc. - are in the normal positions, but are _shown_ inverted and in the wrong places. Looks like everything related to the desktop (plasma?) is flipped, too, including the session's splash screen (starts normally and flips over after about a second or two), the panel, the application launcher (IIRC it is called kickstart - I mean the equivalent of XP's Start menu), logout/shutdown/lock menu, etc., to the point that I need to guess where, say, the Logout or Restart menu items or the OK button are (I usually know that from experience). Gnome is OK. KDE failsafe is also OK (I found that out by trying - and I've been using failsafe since, and since it works fine I stopped regarding the issue as critical...). I have no idea whether it is a KDE/plasma bug, an X driver bug, a kernel driver bug, or something else. Frankly, I never researched it thoroughly due to other priorities, lack of time, and other reasons commonly known as being a sack of lazy bones. When I upgraded the HW the system ran Fedora 12, which worked fine before and after, except for this issue. I did not modify the settings and customizations that had worked fine with the old AMD 3800+ and nVidia graphics. I upgraded to Fedora 14 (my /home is on a separate partition, so the update didn't touch any customizations either). Today the system is fully updated (kernel, KDE, everything) - the updates didn't fix anything. Google didn't yield any clues, either. I delayed posting the feedback partly for this reason but since it is going nowhere... If anybody knows what it is and how to fix it I'll be happy to know. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: HW compatibility research: are intel i5 graphics and realtek net/audio hassle-free?
try to replace the KDE theme, or the general windows look and feel, and see if this helps. --guy On Sat, 2011-02-12 at 18:20 +0200, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: Hi, I am sorry for being late with an update on this query of mine - it's been almost two months since I asked the question. I did get the HW in Subject (details reminder: GIGABYTE H55M-D2H s1156 MoBo and Intel Core i5 650 3.2GHz with a GPU Core, on-board RealTek net and audio). It works _almost_ without a hassle with Fedora 14 on it. Almost means that there are no problems with networking (I didn't expect any) or audio (normal headset/mike, didn't try HDMI or anything fancy like that :). There is a WEIRD video effect with KDE though. Never saw anything like that: the _text_contents_ of windows (e.g., konsole/terminal) are flipped upside down and left to right. The windows' decorations are in the normal places (e.g., the title bar is on top), but the text in them (e.g., window title) is flipped - upside down and right to left (in English). The _actual_ controls - buttons, etc. - are in the normal positions, but are _shown_ inverted and in the wrong places. Looks like everything related to the desktop (plasma?) is flipped, too, including the session's splash screen (starts normally and flips over after about a second or two), the panel, the application launcher (IIRC it is called kickstart - I mean the equivalent of XP's Start menu), logout/shutdown/lock menu, etc., to the point that I need to guess where, say, the Logout or Restart menu items or the OK button are (I usually know that from experience). Gnome is OK. KDE failsafe is also OK (I found that out by trying - and I've been using failsafe since, and since it works fine I stopped regarding the issue as critical...). I have no idea whether it is a KDE/plasma bug, an X driver bug, a kernel driver bug, or something else. Frankly, I never researched it thoroughly due to other priorities, lack of time, and other reasons commonly known as being a sack of lazy bones. When I upgraded the HW the system ran Fedora 12, which worked fine before and after, except for this issue. I did not modify the settings and customizations that had worked fine with the old AMD 3800+ and nVidia graphics. I upgraded to Fedora 14 (my /home is on a separate partition, so the update didn't touch any customizations either). Today the system is fully updated (kernel, KDE, everything) - the updates didn't fix anything. Google didn't yield any clues, either. I delayed posting the feedback partly for this reason but since it is going nowhere... If anybody knows what it is and how to fix it I'll be happy to know. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: HW compatibility research: are intel i5 graphics and realtek net/audio hassle-free?
guy keren c...@actcom.co.il writes: try to replace the KDE theme, or the general windows look and feel, and see if this helps. Oh, that I tried - should have mentioned it. Happens for multiple desktop themes, session splashscreens, window decoration schemes, wallpapers, etc. Regular KDE is all screwed up, with failsafe it is fine. Thanks, Choo, it is a good guess, but it's not it. However! I finally decided to have a look at what failsafe actually does differently. Didn't I say I was a sack of lazy bones? Should have done that a long time ago... Looking at the process table I deduced that choosing failsafe invokes /usr/bin/startkde with --failsafe option. Whatever else it does it turns out that it disables compositing (the script looks at the first argument and if it is --failsafe it sets KWIN_COMPOSE=N and exports it). So I went to system setings and disabled desktop effects, restarted KDE, and voila! It worked... My old nVidia didn't have any problem whatsoever with compositing. The poor i5 went bonkers though... It still looks like some sort of bug. I'd expect the graphics to be sluggish, whatever, but not this weird effect that smells of mixing up co-ordinates and directions and whatever. FWIW, here is the relevant part of the output of lspci -v on this computer: 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: Giga-byte Technology Device d000 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 43 Memory at fb80 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M] Memory at e000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] I/O ports at ff00 [size=8] Expansion ROM at unassigned [disabled] Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [a4] PCI Advanced Features Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 Compare the above to my Lenovo X200 laptop that also has Intel's graphics (older variety) and is perfectly happy with OpenGL compositing and desktop effects: 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 20e4 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44 Memory at f200 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M] Memory at d000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] I/O ports at 1800 [size=8] Expansion ROM at unassigned [disabled] Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 3 Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 Both machines run Fedora 14, exactly the same kernel, KDE, etc. Anyone from Intel here? Have you guys screwed something up along the way? ;-) -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: HW compatibility research: are intel i5 graphics and realtek net/audio hassle-free?
On 12/15/2010 07:25 PM, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 6:06 PM, geoffrey mendelson geoffreymendel...@gmail.com mailto:geoffreymendel...@gmail.com wrote: There are plenty of them around. No one wants them because you can buy a new computer with 1g of DDR2 or DDR3 RAM for less money than 1g alone of DDR(1) RAM. Exactly. There are two different Intel Graphics chip sets. I don't know which is which, but a quick search should answer the question. The earlier ones are chips that Intel bought a license to manufacture. They are not very good in general and have closed source drivers. This makes them OK for Windows, a problem for Linux. The second are the newer ones Intel designed and builds. Well, i5-650 is supposed to be a member of the Clarkdale family, and its little brother (i3-530) was reviewed, e.g., here http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_itempx=NzkwOA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_itempx=NzkwOA - driver problems reported, GPU hangs, etc. But the date is Jan 22, 2010 - maybe there has been driver progress in the last 11 months? My 2 cents: I personally have ASUS P7H55 M-Pro with i3-530 processor + 4GB RAM( bought at KSP for ~1400 NIS) running kernels 2.6.32- 3.6.36.2 Although the latest 2.6.36.2 still continues to patch intel chipset I915 (drm patches) I did not noticed any problem with graphics. The only issue I have is a sound : in 2.6.32 no hdmi sound, alsamixer did not recognize sound card in 2.6.36 - no sound at all, alsamixer shows too much non-existent controls but no hdmi output, it thinks it had Intel IbexPeak HDMI chip I think i will post it in separate post, because I slipped from a subject Intel's support/download page does not say a word about Linux - there are drivers for every Windows in the Galaxy, but there don't seem to be any proprietary Intel HD Linux drivers. Oron, can you comment? ;-) As for buying an I5 processor, there are newer I3's with similar performance (for example 3gHz instead of 3.6gHz) for a lot less money. Indeed, i3-540 3.06GHz is ILS505, while i5-650 3.20GHz is ILS815 at KSP. From what I see, the latter has VT-d that I may want to play with (or maybe not) that comes with Intel TXT (trusted execution technology), unfortunately, and Turbo Boost Frequency that sounds nice to have. Various benchmarks that I saw (lies, damned lies, statistics, and benchmarks) seem to indicate a difference in overall performance, but not all that much. Thanks for pointing this out. As for realtek, they tend to have cheap chips, which generallty work well. If you are concerend about support, check the exact model number of the chip as they keep changing them and the linux drivers do not always keep up. When you buy a mobo make sure you are getting one that supports full 64 bit addressing. The H55 chipset seems OK in this respect - http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/322169.pdf Be warned that most of the current production really cheap (around 600 NIS) LCD screens only have VGA ports. My LCD has a DVI port, but I never bothered to get a cable. There are not a lot of things that run on Linux that use the extra acceleration in expensive graphic cards, on the other hand if you are also going to run Windows on it Not unless it is in a VM for some as yet unidentified specific purpose. (see my other comment below) and play high end games (Fallout New Vegas anyone?) you will need an extra hot graphics card. No, I did say games were out of scope. If you plan on running Windows on it, then IMHO you should buy a name brand such as HP, Packard Bell, etc. The difference in cost between them and a roll-your-own system is about the cost of a Windows license. If you do not plan on running Windows on it, it pays IMHO to buy a local company's product, e.g. Ivory or KSP and avoid the extra cost. No Windows or Mac OSX, so I'll stick to KSP or Ivory who seem to have competitive prices. Besides, I don't like HP for various reasons, and I wouldn't touch PB (they still exist?!) with a ten foot pole. ;-) Thanks, Geoff, -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org mailto:p...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
HW compatibility research: are intel i5 graphics and realtek net/audio hassle-free?
Hi, An old desktop computer of mine is croaking - it still breathes, but with difficulty. A quick check concluded that there are problems with the MoBo, and some with the graphics card, too. Basically, it looks like I need a new MoBo, and since there seems to be a shortage of boards with sockets for Athlon 3800+ or support for DDR1 - also a new CPU and memory. [Even if such boards can be found I am not going to waste time or money on the effort.] The machine is for dual workstation / home server (ssh, web, NFS, version control, bugzilla, stuff like that) use, maybe at times to run a program or two (say numerical but not HPC), web/office/coding, Skype and the likes, occasional video. Nothing particularly high performance, no games, etc. Target distro - Fedora (well, I do intend to use the old disk, which is actually new). I don't want already half-obsolete components, I want it to be reasonably reliable for a few years, I don't want any sluggishness in my normal tasks, and I want it hassle-free. Hassle-free is the topic. I got a quote that seems to be reasonable for a GIGABYTE H55M-D2H s1156 MoBo and Intel Core i5 650 3.2GHz with a GPU Core. Looking at the detailed specs on the 'net (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3572#sp) I see that the MoBo has on-board Realtek network and audio. I searched more, and found a fair amount of complaints about both Realtek (especially audio) and Intel's graphics. I won't bother you with URLs, but what I found was from 2009 and the first half of 2010. Oron posted very useful explanations on this list, too ( http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il/msg55395.html) but that was in May 2009 as well. Any comments? Experiences? Can anyone confirm that the onboard component (graphics, network, audio) will work fine? Is there any need for non-mainstream drivers (kernel, xorg, whatever)? I am not religious about FOSS but I do want yum update to pick the drivers for the new kernels up. Is the built-in i5 graphics enough for the described usage or do I need a decent external card? I saw reports (from about 9 months ago, e.g., http://www.linux-archive.org/debian-user/344759-intel-core-i5-integrated-graphics.html- some doubts about Realtek there as well) that the i5 graphics didn't work with a VGA cable but only with a DVI cable - is it true? HW gurus: I realize there are other options from MoBo/CPU as well, many/most of which are costlier. Any suggestions (besides this stuff won't work) why I should opt for something else, given the described purpose? The proposed configuration was clearly with the price in mind. Thanks in advance, -- Oleg Goldshmidt | o...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: HW compatibility research: are intel i5 graphics and realtek net/audio hassle-free?
On Dec 15, 2010, at 5:29 PM, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: An old desktop computer of mine is croaking - it still breathes, but with difficulty. A quick check concluded that there are problems with the MoBo, and some with the graphics card, too. Basically, it looks like I need a new MoBo, and since there seems to be a shortage of boards with sockets for Athlon 3800+ or support for DDR1 - also a new CPU and memory. [Even if such boards can be found I am not going to waste time or money on the effort.] There are plenty of them around. No one wants them because you can buy a new computer with 1g of DDR2 or DDR3 RAM for less money than 1g alone of DDR(1) RAM. The machine is for dual workstation / home server (ssh, web, NFS, version control, bugzilla, stuff like that) use, maybe at times to run a program or two (say numerical but not HPC), web/office/coding, Skype and the likes, occasional video. Nothing particularly high performance, no games, etc. Target distro - Fedora (well, I do intend to use the old disk, which is actually new). I don't want already half-obsolete components, I want it to be reasonably reliable for a few years, I don't want any sluggishness in my normal tasks, and I want it hassle-free. Hassle-free is the topic. I got a quote that seems to be reasonable for a GIGABYTE H55M-D2H s1156 MoBo and Intel Core i5 650 3.2GHz with a GPU Core. Looking at the detailed specs on the 'net (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3572#sp ) I see that the MoBo has on-board Realtek network and audio. I searched more, and found a fair amount of complaints about both Realtek (especially audio) and Intel's graphics. I won't bother you with URLs, but what I found was from 2009 and the first half of 2010. Oron posted very useful explanations on this list, too (http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il/msg55395.html ) but that was in May 2009 as well. There are two different Intel Graphics chip sets. I don't know which is which, but a quick search should answer the question. The earlier ones are chips that Intel bought a license to manufacture. They are not very good in general and have closed source drivers. This makes them OK for Windows, a problem for Linux. The second are the newer ones Intel designed and builds. They are well supported by Intel to the point that the open source drivers are as good as closed source ones. That's not a comment against open source drivers, but an acceptance of the fact that writing open source drivers for video chips that are poorly documented (on purpose) is difficult at best. So look for ones that have 100% open source drivers and you should be fine. As for buying an I5 processor, there are newer I3's with similar performance (for example 3gHz instead of 3.6gHz) for a lot less money. As for realtek, they tend to have cheap chips, which generallty work well. If you are concerend about support, check the exact model number of the chip as they keep changing them and the linux drivers do not always keep up. When you buy a mobo make sure you are getting one that supports full 64 bit addressing. Except for a sit it in a corner, use as a file server type machine, I would recommend getting at least 4g if not 8 of RAM. DDR3 RAM is currently very cheap. Geoff. Any comments? Experiences? Can anyone confirm that the onboard component (graphics, network, audio) will work fine? Is there any need for non-mainstream drivers (kernel, xorg, whatever)? I am not religious about FOSS but I do want yum update to pick the drivers for the new kernels up. Is the built-in i5 graphics enough for the described usage or do I need a decent external card? I saw reports (from about 9 months ago, e.g., http://www.linux-archive.org/debian-user/344759-intel-core-i5-integrated-graphics.html - some doubts about Realtek there as well) that the i5 graphics didn't work with a VGA cable but only with a DVI cable - is it true? No idea. Be warned that most of the current production really cheap (around 600 NIS) LCD screens only have VGA ports. There are not a lot of things that run on Linux that use the extra acceleration in expensive graphic cards, on the other hand if you are also going to run Windows on it (see my other comment below) and play high end games (Fallout New Vegas anyone?) you will need an extra hot graphics card. NVIDIA are my favorite in that case, but make sure the exact chipset is supported under Linux, although it may not matter. Most if not all of the things you describe won't benefit from the accerelation in the latest chips if it is not yet supported under Linux. HW gurus: I realize there are other options from MoBo/CPU as well, many/most of which are costlier. Any suggestions (besides this stuff won't work) why I should opt for something else, given the described purpose? The proposed configuration was clearly with the
Re: HW compatibility research: are intel i5 graphics and realtek net/audio hassle-free?
On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 6:06 PM, geoffrey mendelson geoffreymendel...@gmail.com wrote: There are plenty of them around. No one wants them because you can buy a new computer with 1g of DDR2 or DDR3 RAM for less money than 1g alone of DDR(1) RAM. Exactly. There are two different Intel Graphics chip sets. I don't know which is which, but a quick search should answer the question. The earlier ones are chips that Intel bought a license to manufacture. They are not very good in general and have closed source drivers. This makes them OK for Windows, a problem for Linux. The second are the newer ones Intel designed and builds. Well, i5-650 is supposed to be a member of the Clarkdale family, and its little brother (i3-530) was reviewed, e.g., here http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_itempx=NzkwOA - driver problems reported, GPU hangs, etc. But the date is Jan 22, 2010 - maybe there has been driver progress in the last 11 months? Intel's support/download page does not say a word about Linux - there are drivers for every Windows in the Galaxy, but there don't seem to be any proprietary Intel HD Linux drivers. Oron, can you comment? ;-) As for buying an I5 processor, there are newer I3's with similar performance (for example 3gHz instead of 3.6gHz) for a lot less money. Indeed, i3-540 3.06GHz is ILS505, while i5-650 3.20GHz is ILS815 at KSP. From what I see, the latter has VT-d that I may want to play with (or maybe not) that comes with Intel TXT (trusted execution technology), unfortunately, and Turbo Boost Frequency that sounds nice to have. Various benchmarks that I saw (lies, damned lies, statistics, and benchmarks) seem to indicate a difference in overall performance, but not all that much. Thanks for pointing this out. As for realtek, they tend to have cheap chips, which generallty work well. If you are concerend about support, check the exact model number of the chip as they keep changing them and the linux drivers do not always keep up. When you buy a mobo make sure you are getting one that supports full 64 bit addressing. The H55 chipset seems OK in this respect - http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/322169.pdf Be warned that most of the current production really cheap (around 600 NIS) LCD screens only have VGA ports. My LCD has a DVI port, but I never bothered to get a cable. There are not a lot of things that run on Linux that use the extra acceleration in expensive graphic cards, on the other hand if you are also going to run Windows on it Not unless it is in a VM for some as yet unidentified specific purpose. (see my other comment below) and play high end games (Fallout New Vegas anyone?) you will need an extra hot graphics card. No, I did say games were out of scope. If you plan on running Windows on it, then IMHO you should buy a name brand such as HP, Packard Bell, etc. The difference in cost between them and a roll-your-own system is about the cost of a Windows license. If you do not plan on running Windows on it, it pays IMHO to buy a local company's product, e.g. Ivory or KSP and avoid the extra cost. No Windows or Mac OSX, so I'll stick to KSP or Ivory who seem to have competitive prices. Besides, I don't like HP for various reasons, and I wouldn't touch PB (they still exist?!) with a ten foot pole. ;-) Thanks, Geoff, -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
