A Look At Why Linux Graphics Drivers Have Issues

[Schugy]

Some 3D works in Kubuntu 12.04 but isn't accelerated. x1250 + xserver-xorg-video-radeon 1:6.14.99~git20111219.aacbd629-0ubuntu2

[liam]

Intel is the most bugged, but I already knew it

They are, of course, also the most used graphics by a big margin.
Maybe there is a pattern here...

The only problem I can recall having is that I've never been able to get video acceleration to work. Neither with Ironlake or SNB.

[AJenbo]

Posibly also that 8xx is now unsupported.

[Gusar]

Posibly also that 8xx is now unsupported.

It's still supported, actually. There are some fixes going into kernel 3.4 and SNA explicitly supports 8xx hardware. I know that for a while 8xx was only usable with shadowfb, but it's possible this has changed now. Though I don't have the hardware to actually test.

[AJenbo]

Hmm I'lll try and test it on 3.2 and possibly 3.3. There might actually be some devide with some 8xx being supported. Though I'm fairly sure it was droped from Xorg, so accelleraion (2D) might be limited.

[Gusar]

Hmm I'lll try and test it on 3.2 and possibly 3.3. There might actually be some devide with some 8xx being supported. Though I'm fairly sure it was droped from Xorg, so accelleraion (2D) might be limited.

The only thing that was dropped is DRI1 drivers from mesa, which are for 3D. But that doesn't affect 8xx, because it's supported by the DRI2 i915 driver. And even if it wasn't, you can compile DRI1 drivers from mesa-7.11 source and they'll work with mesa-8.x too, because the libgl interface is stable.

Nothing was dropped from X. 2D accel is provided by UXA or SNA. And like I said, SNA explicitly supports 8xx. But it's not default yet, so make extra sure your xf86-video-intel is compiled with it. And use the latest version of course, which is 2.19

Edit: When I talk about 8xx above, I mean Gen2 hardware. I mention this because there's also i810, which is Gen1.

[perpetualrabbit]

Interesting chart. The article is short on analysis and meaningful hypothesis. The chart colors appear to have been chosen by a tetrachromat.

Hahaha, a tetrachromat, I was thinking the exact same thing.

The graphs on phoronix tend to have similar colours which makes then often really difficult to interpret.

[AJenbo]

Sorry your right it was of cause mesa and not Xorg that doped the DRI1 drivers. However not enabled by default and in -dev doesn't count as working in my book, but its good to see that it is being worked on

Edit: When I talk about 8xx above, I mean Gen2 hardware. I mention this because there's also i810, which is Gen1.

Yeah that was the divide that i seamed to remember and the cards i was thinking about are i810. Do you know what my chances with this hardware going forwarded?

[Gusar]

Yeah that was the divide that i seamed to remember and the cards i was thinking about are i810. Do you know what my chances with this hardware going forwarded?

Oh, you have an i810? I kinda wish I had that, just to play around with. As far as I know, this is the situation:

- concerning modesetting, there's no KMS, but X should have the correct resolution. no idea about dual-screen, probably not supported
- concerning 2D, there's only XAA, which is useless nowadays, so you're basically without acceleration. you do get Xv for video playback, at least that
- concerning 3D, there is a kernel DRM module and a DRI1 driver. the intel manpage says only 16bit is supported, but no idea if even that still works

[AJenbo]

Honestly i really don't care about 3D on a pre OGL 2.1 card. But KMS and possibly some 2D would be nice.