Intel Linux Driver Kills The Netbook Experience

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Originally Posted by tball

@Michael

Couldn't you make a benchmark comparing a default ubuntu installation with an ubuntu installation modified with thiese packages?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1130582

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People are getting a bit silly with this. If you are using integrated Intel graphics it is unlikely you are a gamer. If you have a normal system then Ubuntu Jaunty will work fine for a normal 2d desktop. Even my EeePC 900 with a 900 mhz single core Celeron and 1gb ram works OK as a normal Web surfing emailing computer. TV show avis play full screen and smoothly with Compiz desktop effects enabled. Flash videos on YouTube play OK in a window but are a bit jerky full screen, but YouTube videos have always looked awful full screen. Only jump through these hoops if you are having problems or desperately need the increased performance.

So, copy the contents of her home directory to a DVD, including hidden files. Reinstall Kubuntu with a separate Home partition, copy the files back and it should be fine. Only copy documents, music, videos and thunderbird and firefox, let the rest be rewritten in the install.

If she already has a separate home partition then boot into Gnome and delete the .kde folder, then restart with the Kubuntu install and format / but not /home and you should end up with a stable system. I would still backup the .thunderbird .firefox and music videos and documents just in case.

:)

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Originally Posted by grege

People are getting a bit silly with this.

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Perhaps, perhaps not.

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If you are using integrated Intel graphics it is unlikely you are a gamer. If you have a normal system then Ubuntu Jaunty will work fine for a normal 2d desktop. Even my EeePC 900 with a 900 mhz single core Celeron and 1gb ram works OK as a normal Web surfing emailing computer. TV show avis play full screen and smoothly with Compiz desktop effects enabled. Flash videos on YouTube play OK in a window but are a bit jerky full screen, but YouTube videos have always looked awful full screen. Only jump through these hoops if you are having problems or desperately need the increased performance.

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It degraded considerably from 8.10 to 9.04 on Ubuntu with my 4G. NBR was fluid to use. NBR now is clumsy as hell on it. Before, I could actually get Caster to play on the thing- as in ~19-22fps play. Now...I'm doing good to get 10fps. No, I'm not "gaming" with it, but a drop of that much performance isn't really acceptable.

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Originally Posted by Svartalf

Perhaps, perhaps not.



It degraded considerably from 8.10 to 9.04 on Ubuntu with my 4G. NBR was fluid to use. NBR now is clumsy as hell on it. Before, I could actually get Caster to play on the thing- as in ~19-22fps play. Now...I'm doing good to get 10fps. No, I'm not "gaming" with it, but a drop of that much performance isn't really acceptable.

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I quite agree it should be fixed, I turned off compiz on my 900 and the things i do are fast enough. It depends on the use you put your netbook to. For me xv video playback is smooth, even fullscreen. All the menus are instant and Firefox and Thunderbird are fine and typing in OpenOffice is unaffected. I am not about to muck about with upgraded kernels and drivers. Different strokes for different folks, if you need 3d functionality then it is a pain.

I still say to the original point of this thread, that the symptoms reported are not really due to the intel driver, but more likely issues with the SSD.

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Originally Posted by joffe

Oh yeah, 'just' upgrade the kernel. :rolleyes:

So for those of us who can't 'just' upgrade the kernel this release is going to be broken until 9.10? Sigh.

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Redhat backports fixes, drivers, and whatnot to their older enterprise versions all the time. Ubuntu could do the same. Will they is the question.

I can tell for sure that it's not being silly about speed, it is having an smoother more responsive system for use.

Right now, on my netbook, using default installation, on 8.10 and 9.04, you have to tweak the xorg.conf file a bit to have at the end a good desktop working, but you notice quickly the slowdowns.

If you do the tweaks, you'll notice the regression fixes instantly. And with computers with thsi kind of hardware, it's necessary. On my rig with an e8500, nvidia 9800gtx, 4gb ram, etc etc... i don't care about this stuff at all ;-)

On a side note, until 2.6.30rc4 comes out, use the rc2. With rc3 it slows a bit in fps.

And if you suffer the MTRR bug commented in the thread, once you do the fix, you are able to play 720p videos with no problems.

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Originally Posted by Eversmann

I can tell for sure that it's not being silly about speed, it is having an smoother more responsive system for use.

Right now, on my netbook, using default installation, on 8.10 and 9.04, you have to tweak the xorg.conf file a bit to have at the end a good desktop working, but you notice quickly the slowdowns.

If you do the tweaks, you'll notice the regression fixes instantly. And with computers with thsi kind of hardware, it's necessary. On my rig with an e8500, nvidia 9800gtx, 4gb ram, etc etc... i don't care about this stuff at all ;-)

On a side note, until 2.6.30rc4 comes out, use the rc2. With rc3 it slows a bit in fps.

And if you suffer the MTRR bug commented in the thread, once you do the fix, you are able to play 720p videos with no problems.

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Just a quick question, which netbook do you have? I am thinking that the Atom based machines might have more of an issue than the Celeron ones. GMA900 verses GMA950. Also the amount of system ram might be an issue.

Just for info, on my spare desktop with Debian Squeeze and a GMA3100 with a 2.26.29 kernel and intel 2.70 3d performance is also abysmal, while 2d and xv are fine, including HD TV. I will fix it on that machine when I can be bothered.

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Originally Posted by grege

I still say to the original point of this thread, that the symptoms reported are not really due to the intel driver, but more likely issues with the SSD.

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You're barking up the wrong tree there.

The SSD in MY netbook isn't replaceable and did NOT exhibit the symptoms prior to the update.

Say what you will, combine the problems with the Intel drivers with the drag that ext3 presents (And the stalls/freezes people are reporting are more due to the combination of the two- I got freezes with NVidia hardware under very heavy disk I/O load until I moved to reiserfs or XFS for the filesystem. And I do nasty things to hard disks up at my day job... ;) )

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Originally Posted by Svartalf

You're barking up the wrong tree there.

The SSD in MY netbook isn't replaceable and did NOT exhibit the symptoms prior to the update.

Say what you will, combine the problems with the Intel drivers with the drag that ext3 presents (And the stalls/freezes people are reporting are more due to the combination of the two- I got freezes with NVidia hardware under very heavy disk I/O load until I moved to reiserfs or XFS for the filesystem. And I do nasty things to hard disks up at my day job... ;) )

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Yet, I had many stalls on 8.10 until I reverted to ext2, then never had another one. In 9.04 I still do not suffer from stalls or freezes and I still use ext2. I have Compiz effects turned off and my netbook is perfectly usable. I only get 130 fps in glxgears, but 2d is OK if not spectacular. Mine uses a standard Gnome desktop with the bottom toolbar removed and a task switcher added to the top toolbar.

There are many combinations of Netbook CPUs, chipsets and hard drives.
My EeePC900 (Celeron/GMA900/2xSSD) works well enough for what it is used for, there is no typing lag and all the normal stuff works normally. I have 2gb of map tiles for Viking GPS software, consisting of 250,000 small pixmaps. With ext3 it was a nightmare of disk stalls lasting 30 secs or more, with ext2 I have had not one.

Different Netbooks different results.