Intel Video Performance in 9.10 Alpha 3

I don't know whether to categorize this article as good news or bad news

Phoronix is a Linux technology website focusing on product reviews, distribution screenshots, interviews, and news. It is one of my favorite Linux sites and the best site for info on Linux graphic drivers. Friday Phoronix published an article detailing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Alpha 3's Intel video driver's performance on the Dell Mini 9's, it wasn't completely positive:

"We also wanted to deliver new OpenGL results from Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 3 using an Intel 945 IGP found in the Dell Mini 9, but that was to no avail. The Intel graphics performance was bad in Ubuntu 9.04, but at least World of Padman, OpenArena, Tremulous, and Urban Terror were able to run successfully. With Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 3 on the Dell Mini 9 and with each of these games being run through the Phoronix Test Suite, the system would lock-up at various points. None of the tests had finished successfully even when trying to run them multiple times"

Good thing misery loves company, because they said the same thing about the performance of Intel G43 chip in their test machine:

"This same problem had then occurred with the Intel G43 too. Mesa 7.5 has regressed badly in this area, but hopefully hitting in time for Ubuntu 9.10 will be Mesa 7.6 or at least more updates and patches to Mesa 7.5.x."

I agree Mesa 7.5 has brought some serious regressions. Even the Mesa developers recommend waiting for the Mesa 's 7.5.1 bug-fix release. There is some good news that at the end of the Phoronix article that should bring hope to Mini 9 users:

"While it cannot be told via benchmarks, Ubuntu 9.10 is running better with Intel graphics using UXA and is certainly more stable, artifact-free, and causing less problems. As Canonical's Bryce Harrington recently shared, the bug count for the Intel driver within Launchpad has dropped quite a bit. Hopefully though these Intel 2D/3D performance problems will be fixed within the next three months for Ubuntu 9.10."

I have personally found that Karmic's Intel video and flash playback performance is much smoother than 9.04. I am running Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Alpha 3 on both my Dell Mini 9 and my media box with an Intel X4500HD integrated chip and loving UXA's performance and stability for the first time since Ubuntu 8.04.

With Mesa 's 7.5.1 bug-fix or 7.6 release around the corner, there still is time for Ubuntu's developers to get Intel video driver working properly. I'd like to know how anyone else is finding UXA and Intel performance on 9.10 Alpha 3.

Source: http://www.phoronix.com

Have a question or problem that this article doesn't cover? Ask our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google Group for help.

Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 "Karmic Koala" on The Dell Mini 9

There are some exciting features planned for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. The biggest news is the work being done on the Intel video driver. Recently Canonical's Bryce Harrington reported on the improvement of the Intel graphic driver on the Ubuntu developer mailing list. The 2.6.30 kernel will ship with Kernel Mode Setting enabled for Intel graphics and the driver will more than likely switch from the current EXA acceleration method to the new UXA method. GRUB2 has been implemented and the goal is to work towards a 10 second boot. There is a new power management system,DeviceKit-power, that should help improve battery life. A new Fn key maphandler, udev-extras. ext4 has been selected as the default file system and should significantly increase disk performance.

Installation
I used a Crucial Gizmo! 4GB USB flash drive and Ubuntu 9.04's USB Startup Disk Creator to install Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2. Using the default ext4 files system, I setup a 4.8GB partition for the / directory, 7.8 GB for /home directory and 1.9GB for swap. The installation process was smooth. The only issue, and it is a know bug, is that the system will fail to reboot cleanly after the install. You will have to manually power-cycle the system to finish the install reboot. The system will shutdown and reboot properly after this.

Grub 2 & Booting
GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for Karmic, replacing the previous GRUB "Legacy" boot loader. GRUB 2 is a complete rewrite whose goals include making GRUB cleaner, safer, more robust, more portable and more powerful. It does offer a graphical menu but for now it's just a blue screen. As you can see from the video, I toggled between the two kernel entries so you can see how Grub 2 looks at this point in development. So far the only difference is the boot menu is blue. Hopefully Ubuntu can put something together as nice as Debian's Grub 2 menu for Ubuntu 9.10 when it ships.



Booting the Mini in Ubuntu 9.10 is quick but nothing special. Average boot up time, from powering on to a usable desktop, was about 25 seconds. Work is being implemented towards a 10 second boot time but currently 9.10 Alpha 2's times are not much faster than Ubuntu 9.04.

Video
The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 driver has received some significant upgrades. The 2.7.99.1 Intel driver switched the acceleration mode to uxa and have stripped out exa acceleration altogether. Karmic has enabled kernel mode setting for Intel graphic chips. I followed these instructions for setting up uxa acceleration. The uxa acceleration has not crashed or throw up any weird errors throughout my testing. Some have reported problem, developers are asking for testers to report bugs upstream using these guidelines.

Flash Video Playback

• YouTube's windowed and fullscreen mode work great. No pausing in video or audio during fullscreen/windowed transition. HD video still doesn't work properly, it suffers from choppy audio/video playback and transition pauses. Turn off annotations for best results. Highly watchable.
• Hulu.com's playback is much better than 8.04 and 8.10. Windowed and fullscreen videos work well. Transitioning from windowed to fullscreen is still is a problem. Highly watchable.
• LiveLeak.com's video playback is smooth and fullscreen worked well. Highly watchable.
• Gametrailers.com's windowed mode works well, fullscreen causes video to become choppy. Watchable.
• TheOnion.com's video playback is smooth and fullscreen works well. Highly watchable.
• CNN.com's video is choppy, audio works well. Live streams work very well. Watchable.
• Break.com's video playback is slightly choppy. Drag to resize does not work. Watchable.
• NFL.com's windowed mode is great, fullscreen causes audio to become choppy. Watchable.
• Metacafe's video playback is smooth and fullscreen worked well. Highly watchable.
• Blip.tv's video playback is smooth and fullscreen worked well. Don't be fooled, the home page video doesn't work but the videos contained in the site are good. Highly watchable.
• Revver.com's video playback is smooth but no full screen. Highly watchable.
• Vimeo's video and audio was extremely choppy, fullscreen does not work. Unwatchable
• Spike.com's video playback is smooth and fullscreen works well. Highly watchable.

Compiz
Compiz runs out of the box. It's snappier than Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04. I'm throwing everything I can at it and I haven't had any tearing or stuttering, shadowing, ghosting or bleeding.

Wireless
Wireless does not work out of the box like Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04. It does work once you install the Broadcom STA wireless driver. I was able to connect to both WEP and WPA networks without a problem. I am getting the same rock solid performance as in Ubuntu 9.04.

Wired
Worked out of the box. No problems or speed issues.

Audio
Unlike Intrepid and Jaunty, audio works without configuring or having to turn up the speaker volume. The internal mic, external mic and headphone all work.

Webcam
Worked out of the box. To test the webcam, install Cheese.

Bluetooth
Worked out of the box and includes the ability to enter the device PIN codes through the GUI.

Card Reader
Worked out of the box. Secure Digital (SD) & SDHC (High Capacity), MultiMediaCard (MMC) and Memory Stick all worked.

Fn Keys
The brightness, volume, suspend, fullscreen keyboard shortcuts all work with any extra configuration. The wifi on/off (Fn+2) does not.

Suspend & Hibernate
- Suspend works incredibly well. I suspended my computer over and over without a problem.
- Hibernate will not work if you do not have a swap partition. If you have a swap file, Hibernate does not work properly yet. It takes about 15-20 seconds for your machine to turn off and it will only wake up to a blank screen.

Aircraft Manager
Jitender's aircraft manager package for Jaunty works in Karmic Alpha 2 and turning wifi and bluetooth on and off worked flawlessly.

Download Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Alpha 2
Pre-releases of Karmic are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable
system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even
frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and
those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs. The final, stable version will be released on October 29th, 2009.

Have a question or problem that this article doesn't cover? Ask our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google Group for help.