Hi,
First I wish to thank to everyone involved in making Fedora what
it is in the moment - one of the best linux distributions for years,
and my choice for more than 10 years also. Thank you to all of you
guys!
In short for those impatient to read all the mail - I'm a bit
sceptical for the newer version in rawhide of Xorg (1.4.99 currently)
for it's lack of speed and bad usability compared to older release 1.3.
First a little background:
Around January 2007 I've tested for the first time desktop
effects. I'm using KDE so at this time my only choice was Beryl.
I've tested it on two boxes - first was with Intel 865 chipset and
integrated video (for short box1), second box with ATI Radeon 9550
(for short box2). On those two boxes Beryl was working fine at this
time, but because of other personal reasons (read: my eyes was
going mad with those effects :)) I've uninstalled it.
As you know there is no more Beryl for KDE, only Compiz, but it
doesn't matter for this writing. At December 2007 if you remember
there was a big change to the Xorg and a warning that it may break.
So I didn't installed it until January or February - I don't
remember correctly. This was needed because the older Xorg 1.3.0
was crashing when I've tried to start Compiz on KDE 3.5.7 or 3.5.8.
That's why I've installed the new Xorg, can't remember the exact
version, but it also didn't worked - with box1 it started but there
was no window borders. With box2 the ATI card was blacklisted and
I've needed to export a variable to make it start. It didn't work -
the whole desktop was white. In beginning of March I've tried on
box2 too the new Xorg too, but the desktop was white again. That's
for Compiz testing.
Now for the Xorg 1.4.99.
My impression and the numbers show that it is slower compared to
1.3. In January XAA in 1.4.XX was noticeably worse than XAA in 1.3.
Fonts in konsole were broken and I've needed to switch to EXA,
which is extremely slow, close to unusable - scrolling was slow,
switching to another desktop screen was slow, even switching to
another konsole tab was slow with time around 1-2 sec for
switching, so I've been forced to go back to Xorg 1.3. This month
I've tested the new Xorg again. XAA is almost as in 1.3 release but
with two problems - one is the 10-15 seconds needed for this fog
effect at KDE4 shutdown, which is not so important, but the worse
problem is that with video players I have (mplayer, vlc) starting
to watch some video file makes them spit out the message BadAlloc
for xv output even on smallest resolutions I've tested - 320x240.
mplayer:
xv X11/Xv
x11 X11 ( XImage/Shm )
So I think it's on all resolutions, and vlc is even crashing, but
that is not Xorg problem. As you know xv is faster than x11, that's
why I have it set default. Only x11 output is working with XAA on
the box1, I'll test on box2 to be sure it is not problem with
i810/intel driver only. On box1 I've tried to watch video with EXA
where xv output is working, but it was very slower compared to Xorg
1.3 - on the older version it was possible to watch even HD
resolutions 1920x1080 with almost no problems, but with Xorg 1.4.99
with EXA it is problem watching smoothly even 800x600/1024x768.
To summarize the problems of the new Xorg:
- XAA is a bit slower than before, with not working xv (or maybe it is
changed in some way that compatibility with applications is broken)
- EXA is extremely slow and almost not usable
- Compiz is making the desktop white on my ATI and with no window
borders for Intel, even ATI card is blacklisted but worked fine a
year ago
- compared with glxgears the newer Xorg is slower for Intel with arount
20-30%, no change for ATI, I don't play 3D games to check this fully
- in KDE4 screensavers are missing and can't test opengl there but
arount January they were crashing in KDE 3 on box1 (intel), and
working very slow on box2(ati) with Xorg 1.4.XX EXA.
So as it looks like this Xorg release is planned for Fedora 9 I have
some questions arising from those observations, even if some of
them are upstream too:
- Isn't Xorg 1.4.99 much worse than the older 1.3? (with not fully
working even XAA, with EXA not ready at all to be acceptable replacement)
- Is it planned (Fedora or upstream) Xorg to be fixed before Fedora 9 is
out, and if not (because ot upstream not ready) isn't it better to
stick with the older version until the new is usable even for
rawhide?
For some of the problems maybe it's better to fill bugzilla because
searching in it didn't show anything.
Regards
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