nixternal

Are you rocking an Intel 945GM chipset with the integrated Intel 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)? If so, this little tweak has helped 3 of us thus far in #kubuntu-devel with KDE 4 and compositing effects.

Step 1: xorg.conf editing

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics Controller"
        Driver          "i810"
        BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
        Option          "AccelMethod"   "xaa"
EndSection

This is what our device section for the graphics card looks like. We added the “AccelMethod” “xaa” option.

Step 2: ~/.bashrc

export INTEL_BATCH=1

Added that line to our ~/.bashrc file.

We then restarted X with a swift Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and then tested this setup with glxgears and we all received an average FPS of well over 1000. Prior to this, my highest FPS was a low 900. After these little tweaks, composite never worked so smoothly in KDE 4 in the past.

Does this tweak work for others using say Compiz? Are there some more Intel tweaks that you know of that help out as well? If so, add them to the comment and attempt to explain exactly what they do. Thanks!

This post is just a quickie in response to Mike Hommey’s recent blog post titled “Javascript performance in browsers“. His post was in response to a Javascript Speed Test ran by CelticKane.com. So far, they have listed all of the browsers that I don’t use. So I decided to test my preferred browser, Konqueror, with this speed test. And without further ado, here are the results:

As it stands, and taking into consideration the results displayed by Mike, Konqueror would roughly be in 4th place. I must say that, Opera is damn fast, and it looks as if the GdkWebKit is looking fairly impressive in speed results.

Now I know that Javascript isn’t that big of a deal, and if anyone knows of some other browser speed tests, let us know. It would be kind of cool to test different browsers on my same machine here to see just how fast the free software browsers are in comparison to the proprietary ones.

• Linux distribution?
• Linux Desktop environment?
• Linux email client?
• Linux web browser?

Myself and Jordan were talking about this yesterday. I am all for more than 1 of each whereas Jordan was just for one. It was interesting to see the arguments on both sides. Today I asked the Chicago GLUG guys on IRC the same question, and it had very similar results as mine and Jordan’s conversation.

So I ask you, is having thousands of distributions bad or good, and why? What about desktop environments?

My arguments all stem from the same topics.

• more options mean more choices - more choices leads to stiffer competition
• more options means stiffer competition - stiffer competition means better software

I am interested in hearing what others have to say. If you blog about it, link back here so we can track it. Thanks!

That’s right! This time it is Hewlett Packard. Wired has a nice blog post about the new deal. HP will sell some pretty nice machines with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 operating system. This current deal is for Australia only at this time, but I am sure it will eventually take off in other countries as well. I have always been an HP/Compaq fan for many years. Yes, working a contract job for them a few years ago probably helped in my liking of them, but I am currently using a Compaq laptop that “just works” with pretty much every Linux distribution I have thrown at it. It is rock solid, very stable, and actually very pleasing to the eye. This is awesome to see yet another major hardware vendor selling Linux, another milestone in the future of Linux.

Not chicken! ShyCon

That’s right, the Chicago community is currently planning a conference to be held sometime in 2007 for free software enthusiasts. Right now it is in the beginning stages and hopefully we can make this a reality. We are in the process of spamming the Chicago mailing lists and hopefully soon we will have a site and mailing list up for this. So if you are in Chicago and are interested in helping plan such a feat, or have some great ideas on what you would like to see, please stop by #chicon on IRC at chat.freenode.net and say hi. Thanks everyone!

P.S.  November 2007 is the first date thrown out as a time line.

THIS has got to be the worst write up I have seen to date. The reason I am posting this is because of just how great the comments are and how wonderful it is to be apart of a community of such great individuals. Of course I got in and put my two cents in, especially after installing Windows XP on my new setup.