Intel Ivy Bridge: Unity/Compiz Continues To Impair The Linux Desktop

[ninez]

" Compiz has turned out to be a shivery wreck that is unlikely to see dramatic improvements in the near future."

I find this to be offensive. I worked myself into a severe depression trying to get everything working and this is all you can say.

I wouldn't let that bother you, Sam. Phoronix articles are often pretty slanted and sensationalist in nature.

He may not like compiz, but really who cares? If i recall correctly, Phoronix also has had an article or two dissing Gnome3 too.

I for one, use Compiz (0.9.8/bzr) and like it quite a bit. (which you would probably already know).

While Kwin is very good, i wouldn't want to KDE (too much bloat). Gnome-Shell also is not my cup of tea (too rigid, ugly). Compiz is lite, can be used standalone, or with another DE. It works with my (Wacom) tablet *significantly better* than any of the alternatives, in large part due to it's plugins and CCSM and the granular control it provides.

I see bugs getting fixed all the time, including those that i report (some i hadn't reported, that on update disappeared). I've seen improvements visually, such as at one point compiz becoming smoother (on Nvidia), or more recently your reworking of the menus/shadows ~ which seems to be better. I've also seen reduced resource consumption too. One prime example of that would be that compiz (0.8.x through 0.9.6) used more CPU when idling and/or when using blur, this isn't the case for me anymore. building compiz from source is MUCH better than even 3/4 weeks ago ~ i was able to ditch most of my build script, and replace it with just a few lines ~ being as only one branch is needed, and the build system (now) allows everything to be built at once. ~ which i personally really like

I could think of a lot more examples, but i think what my point is that some of us do like/use compiz, we can see the project improving and value the work that goes into it, even if someone like Michael doesn't.

I think especially in the last few months, there has been lots to be happy about concerning the direction of Compiz.

cheerz

[lem79]

" Compiz has turned out to be a shivery wreck that is unlikely to see dramatic improvements in the near future."

I find this to be offensive. I worked myself into a severe depression trying to get everything working and this is all you can say.

Don't take it to heart Sam, you guys are doing a good job. With the version of Compiz/Unity in 12.04-proposed at the moment, it virtually needs no tweaking at all (nvidia binary driver), whereas previous versions (back to 11.04 I think) needed extensive tweaking to get proper performance. Keep it up, many of us appreciate your work.

[Linuxxx]

" Compiz has turned out to be a shivery wreck that is unlikely to see dramatic improvements in the near future."

I find this to be offensive. I worked myself into a severe depression trying to get everything working and this is all you can say.

That's just another sign that Micheal's brain is slowly saying goodbye; after all, bavarian beer is one of the reasons for the severe speech impairments most Bavarian have.

[randomizer]

Not really: 10-15% makes a huge difference once the FPS drops (E.g. 25fps vs 30+fps) *

- Gilboa
* Generally speaking.

You can't assume that the 10-15% difference would still apply at lower framerates.

[gilboa]

You can't assume that the 10-15% difference would still apply at lower framerates.

I never assume anything.
Hence I generalized.

- Gilboa
* Generally speaking.

Though, I would imagine that games that GPU intensive will most like show the same performance drop across the board.

- Gilboa

[smitty3268]

I never assume anything.
Hence I generalized.



Though, I would imagine that games that GPU intensive will most like show the same performance drop across the board.

- Gilboa

Anything running over 100fps is likely running into completely different limitations than something running < 50fps.

It just is. Maybe you'd have the same 15% drop there, but it's much more likely to be different. Either greater or less than that, which way who knows.

[ninez]

There's an interesting branch proposed for merging into compiz/0.9.8 that would seem to address Intel performance problems;

https://code.launchpad.net/~vanvugt/.../+merge/108307

it would seem for Intel, this merge will likely increase performance in a noticeable way;

--- Intel driver ---

BEFORE:
Application FPS = 5500
Compiz XDamageNotify per sec = 11000
CPU usage = 4%
Compiz frame rate = 30 FPS

AFTER:
Application FPS = 5500
Compiz XDamageNotify per sec = 120
CPU usage = 1-2%
Compiz frame rate = 60 FPS

RESULT:
2x frame rate
50-75% reduction in CPU
99% reduction in X event traffic

It looks like this should fix some Intel problems, assuming it gets merged. it would seem to fix some bottle neck that affected intel, as the nvidia results were consistent 60 = FPS, while both intel and nvidia saw a 99% reduction in X event traffic.

it looks promising

I assume (barring no problems) this code will be merged and intel (gfx) users should see some improvement.