Major Bug in Kubuntu 11.04 Beta 1 (Intel Graphics)

[ktech]

Under Kubuntu 10.10, I am able to over do on eye-candy and still run the system at full speed on my 1.6 Ghz Laptop with 2Gb Ram .

On Kubuntu 11.04 however desktop composition seems slower and many features like blurred glass do not work. I have seen quite a few posts on the Internet about people experiencing this issue.

Taking a look into the matter I discovered that the bug cannot be solved by neither Kubuntu developers nor KDE developers.

Both Maverick and Natty were using the same version of KDE (latest KDE SC v 4.6.2)

The output of Kwin on Maverick is

OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GME GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 1.4 Mesa 7.9-devel
Driver: Intel
GPU class: i915/i945
OpenGL version: 1.4
Mesa version: 7.9
X server version: 1.9
Linux kernel version: 2.6.35
Direct rendering: yes
Requires strict binding: yes
GLSL shaders: no
Texture NPOT support: yes

The output of Kwin on Natty is

OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GME x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 1.4 Mesa 7.11-devel
Driver: Intel
GPU class: i915/i945
OpenGL version: 1.4
Mesa version: 7.11
X server version: 1.10
Linux kernel version: 2.6.38
Direct rendering: no
Requires strict binding: yes
GLSL shaders: no
Texture NPOT support: yes
kwin(10066): glCheckFramebufferStatus failed: "GL_NO_ERROR"

Note the difference in direct rendering.

I notice if I disable Direct Rendering in KDE system settings in Maverick, it tends to reproduce a behavior similar to KDE in Natty.

Note: Many simpler desktop effects do work in Natty however overall performance in 3d acceleration etc is slower than in Maverick. Compiz users may not even notice the problem because of the lack of things like blurred glass etc.

Should I file a bug report for xserver-xorg-video-intel?

Is it likely that this issue will be fixed by final?

[sithlord48]

no issues here.. (other then blur not working, and i think that might be known)



*-display:0
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 03
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: irq:16 memory:98280000-982fffff ioport:60f0(size=8) memory:80000000-8fffffff memory:98300000-9833ffff




OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GME x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 1.4 Mesa 7.10.1
Driver: Intel
GPU class: i915/i945
OpenGL version: 1.4
Mesa version: 7.10.1
X server version: 1.10
Linux kernel version: 2.6.38
Direct rendering: no
Requires strict binding: yes
GLSL shaders: no
Texture NPOT support: yes


this natty box is upto date as of this mornings updates, but i have not had any slowness with the video, if anything its snapper then maverick was (been using natty since alpha1 on this)

[schnelle]

OpenGL version string: 1.4 Mesa 7.11-devel


Mesa version in Natty is 7.10.1. Are you using xorg-edgers ppa?

Downgrade to official packages (Mesa 7.10.1 at the moment, maybe ubuntu guys will include newest upstream release 7.10.2 for the Natty final) and see if your problem still exists.

[ktech]

I used the ppa in an attempt to fix the issue but it did not help. Secondly there is an issue.

In maverick kwin reports that the card has direct rendering capabilities and in Natty it reports no direct rendering capabilities.

Clearly if Natty is unable to access a graphic card's features, there is an issue!

[sithlord48]

have you tried to check this thru the live cd. as you see from my post above i have the same video card. but i don't have this issue of the rendering being slow. I do find it odd that i says no direct rendering, but i can not say my effects are slow or my desktop slugish. the only thing about desktop effects that is not working on natty for me is the blur effect.

is this an upgrade from maverick or a fresh install?

[ktech]

Fresh install, for testing purposes on a different partition. I won't say effects are sluggish to an extreme however 3d performance is significantly less in terms of frame rates in 3d games etc.

I guess if I really look in the matter, I should be able to make it work by compiling the kernel and xorg intel driver myself. I will wait for the final release before doing that however.

With effects off, however I can say that Natty performs better than Maverick. I can cope with no effects; it is not like I loose functionality but of course it would be better if the issue could be fixed.

On another computer with an Nvidia card all effects etc work fine.

Perhaps there might be some mention of graphic acceleration method changes in the Natty change log.

[ktech]

error post

[sithlord48]

intresting. i dont do much gaming on this machine (its a netbook). on others i have suspended the effects as most 3d games will suffer a slowdown with them turned on. this of couse will depend on the game and the video card. but this intel card is not for games to begin with it does not even have shader support.(and i think its stuck w/ around 16MB ram) so don't expect to much from this card. Although if it were faster in maverick there could be some changes to xorg, the driver, mesa, kwin,the kernel, etc that could be the cause of this. if thats the case i have not noticed them.as a test i just ran glxgears twice first w/ effects on


chris@null:~$ glxgears
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
249 frames in 5.0 seconds = 49.651 FPS
281 frames in 5.0 seconds = 56.128 FPS
285 frames in 5.0 seconds = 56.852 FPS
294 frames in 5.0 seconds = 58.718 FPS
289 frames in 5.0 seconds = 57.704 FPS
295 frames in 5.0 seconds = 58.869 FPS
284 frames in 5.0 seconds = 56.699 FPS

yes w/ v.sync on but then i tried it with out the effects, on



chris@null:~$ glxgears
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
206 frames in 5.0 seconds = 41.171 FPS
244 frames in 5.0 seconds = 48.566 FPS
226 frames in 5.0 seconds = 45.018 FPS
225 frames in 5.0 seconds = 44.988 FPS
211 frames in 5.0 seconds = 42.195 FPS
225 frames in 5.0 seconds = 44.646 FPS
219 frames in 5.0 seconds = 43.787 FPS


and as you can see for some reason it slower with the effects off. can you do the same to compair. glxgears is in the mesa-utils package so you will have to install that.

[ktech]

I am on Windows Xp right now so I will post when I get time. I have already tried glxgears however and my frame-rates were similar to your I think.

However glxgears is not exactly supposed to be a benchmark!

My most significant loss is that on Maverick I can play 1080p video smoothly and on Natty 720p sometimes skips while 1080p just doesn't work. This occurs both with vlc and Kaffeine. (Don't really use dragon player)

My computer is a netbook too. I don't expect it to perform like an Nvidia on windows however previously on linux it seemed to perform just like any other machine.

I does aero on Vista and Windows 7 and even somehow manages to play spore smoothly.

[sithlord48]

I does aero on Vista and Windows 7 and even somehow manages to play spore smoothly.


thats compairing apples to oranges :D its not secret that windows drivers get more attention from the video card makers. they almost always proform better for windows.

[ktech]

I does aero on Vista and Windows 7 and even somehow manages to play spore smoothly.


thats compairing apples to oranges :D its not secret that windows drivers get more attention from the video card makers. they almost always proform better for windows.


Anyways, just wait and see I bet in this case this is a temporary quirk; nothing that can't be fixed as it worked before. As I said useless wasting time fixing the beta as I may have to re do my modifications to the final.

If you can, please check out 1080p video playback on natty and let me no if it works.

[sithlord48]

[quote=If you can, please check out 1080p video playback on natty and let me no if it works.[/quote]

thats gonna depend greatly on the video card, and on my netbook w/ a res of 1024x600 its not possible to play stuff at 1080 p or i (w/o scaling) as its resolution is 1920x1080 when view at 1080. however on another machine it will depend on your video card and it only matters if you have a display that can display at 1920x1080 or higher.

[ktech]

Ok then, I was referring to an external monitor actually.
Edit: Seems like scaled down 1080p also does not work at 1024x600 or 1366x768 (my netbook res) scaled 720p video works though.

About your statement about better drivers on windows

In my opinion actually this does not really apply to Intel driver (actually they are open source) but on the fact that nowardays direct X is miles ahead of OpenGl. It is much easier to access graphic card features and simpler to develop in 3d with the Windows API's than in linux.

Linux is having a bad time with graphics; newer Nvidia laptops using optimus are not supported, which leaves only ATI cards for high end systems compatible with linux.

[7penselen]

Just Installed Natty on my eeepc 1000H.

KDE requires minimal compositing to look nice, without any compositing it all it really looks ugly. But it is possible to use compositing without OpenGL, but based on XRender. You don't have all effects but the most important are available.

You can switch on in the systemsettings > Desktop Effects > Advanced > Compositing Type > XRENDER.

This is well usable till a good fix is coming for the mentioned bug.

[schnelle]

http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2011/04/why-blur-does-not-work-in-kubuntu-natty-with-intel/

This problem is now fixed in Natty. If you have intel card blur should work now.

[jorgebirck]

OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ironlake Mobile GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT x86/MMX/SSE2

Kwin effects very slow. Intel i3.