"Ask ATI" dev thread

[storma]

**silence is heard as all eyes turn to bridgman**

EDIT: bugger, in to late..

[RealNC]

And the real question is: How would you compare the user experience of Vista+ATI vs Linux+ATI

[bridgman]

I actually like the "glass" part of the Vista UI, but haven't had time to see if there is an equivalent effect I can get on Linux. The last time I ran KDE was at home with OpenSuse 10.3 (I think); didn't like KDE 3.x much at the time. Gnome and I seem to get along pretty well; haven't tried KDE 4.x though. The ability to pop a new tab in IE by clicking on the stub tab at the right of the active windows is really nice and I use it a lot, which is a point in favor of IE/Vista over Firefox/Linux.

On the other hand, I do like the Compiz cube more than anything I have seen on Vista. I don't ever rotate the cube other than to show off what the drivers can do, but it is handy to be able to flip from one screen to another when reviewing documents and code. I dno't have the opportunity to play many H.264 videos so Xv has been enough for me -- BigBuckBunny plays ok at 1080p in H.264 but I have a quad-core CPU and a fast 5xx graphics card which probably both help. I'm planning to replace that with a slow 7xx card (4350 if I can find one) once I get my monitor back from Richard (see below).

Richard is using my 22" monitor to work on Mesa 6xx/7xx so my desktop Linux system at the office is down for a few days; in the meantime I put Intrepid on my laptop - a Thinkpad T41 with an M9 GPU. That doesn't work so well with Compiz and I had to turn off desktop effects to get consistently useable performance.

When I have a choice I tend to prefer the Linux system over the Windows one, even though right now I'm having to use a wussy Thinkpad with an even smaller screen than my XP box. I haven't seen performance problems running fglrx, radeon or radeonhd although I admit that probably means I need to get some slower hardware. All this stuff really did work out of the box for me, although I understand it isn't doing that for everyone.

Nobody ever likes my answers

[enderandrew]

KDE 3.5 and KDE 4.2 are both very good on openSUSE 11.1. I'd give them both a try.

KDE 4.2 has its own composite window manager and effects, so you don't need to Compiz with it.

You can get a "glass" look in KDE with the Crystal window decoration.

[Zhick]

The ability to pop a new tab in IE by clicking on the stub tab at the right of the active windows is really nice and I use it a lot, which is a point in favor of IE/Vista over Firefox/Linux.

Double-Clicking in the Tab-bar has the same effect in Firefox (opens up a new tab).

Nobody ever likes my answers

That's not true. You're posts are usually very elaborate and helpful, and I think they're the primary reason for some r600/r700-people here not to give up on AMD/ATi.
The only ones who seem to critisize every post of yours are the OPEN-UP-FGLRX!!111-people. :P

[energyman]

Double-Clicking in the Tab-bar has the same effect in Firefox (opens up a new tab).

same with konqueror.

That's not true. You're posts are usually very elaborate and helpful, and I think they're the primary reason for some r600/r700-people here not to give up on AMD/ATi.
The only ones who seem to critisize every post of yours are the OPEN-UP-FGLRX!!111-people. :P

yeah. I really like reading bridgeman's posts.

[Kano]

@bridgman

Pressing ctrl+t is usually faster and works since early mozilla ages ctrl+w to close.

[NeoBrain]

I actually like the "glass" part of the Vista UI, but haven't had time to see if there is an equivalent effect I can get on Linux.

Compiz supports transparent windows and can blur things "below" a transparent window, if that's what you want. But AFAIK it only works with OpenGL 2, so no support with OSS drivers

[Qaridarium]

RHEL / OpenSuSE (currently v11) / Ubuntu (currently 8.10), and any distro which is similar to those in terms of xorg and kernel is likely to work as well. The chances of fglrx working go down pretty dramatically as you move to newer kernel and xorg contents.

ah yes ubuntu debian 5 uses the same techniks as ubuntu 8.04 uses so ubuntu works and debian not ? why ?

[Qaridarium]

Nobody ever likes my answers

no we like it... and yes the opensource driver has a good stability..
i wrote with radeon 6.10 vor now..

but i wan't 3D..