[gentoo-amd64] Terminal resizes very slowly

[gentoo-amd64] Terminal resizes very slowly

[Mark Knecht]

Hello,
   I first noticed this as I started playing around a bit with XFCE on
my AMD64 machine. The environment is nice and has most of what I might
look for in a post-Gnome world, but the default terminal resizes VERY
slowly. It can take a few seconds to drag the lower right corner.
There are no speed problems moving the terminal around, only resizing
it. It doesn't matter if I enable or disable transparency.

   The executable is /usr/bin/Terminal. The default terminal in Gnome
is /usr/bin/gnome-terminal which is fast for resizing. Both terminals
have identical results whether I'm running Gnome of XFCE.

   I doubt it matters but glxgears is fast enough - about 2K
Frames/second, but I suspect that's not a measure that matters.

   How would I determine what the root cause of this problem is? I
presume it's not the actual code of Terminal but rather some sort of
machine configuration issue.

   VGA is an ATI R300 family device running the radeon driver. Not
sure what matters in the kernel config so let me know what to look for
and I'll report back on that. xorg.conf is pasted below. There are no
error messages and only a couple of warnings in the Xorg.0.log file.
Maybe I need to enable something in there that I don't know about or
something simple like that?

Thanks,
Mark




lightning ~ # cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Module"
    Load        "dbe"  	# Double buffer extension
    SubSection  "extmod"
      Option    "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension
    EndSubSection
    Load       "glx"
    Load       "dri"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"
    FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"
    FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
    FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier	"Keyboard1"
    Driver	"kbd"
    Option "AutoRepeat" "500 30"
    Option "XkbRules"	"xorg"
    Option "XkbModel"	"pc101"
    Option "XkbLayout"	"us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier	"Mouse1"
    Driver	"mouse"
    Option "Protocol"    "Auto"	# Auto detect
    Option "Device"      "/dev/input/mice"
    Option "ZAxisMapping"   "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "My Monitor"
    HorizSync   30.0 - 81.0
    VertRefresh 50-75
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "** ATI Radeon (generic)               [radeon]"
    Driver      "radeon"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen 1"
    Device      "** ATI Radeon (generic)               [radeon]"
    Monitor     "My Monitor"
    DefaultDepth 16

    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes       "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes       "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"

    Identifier  "Simple Layout"
    Screen "Screen 1"
    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
   Mode 0666
EndSection

lightning ~ #

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Terminal resizes very slowly

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> Section "Device"
>    Identifier  "** ATI Radeon (generic)               [radeon]"
>    Driver      "radeon"
> EndSection

Try adding this line to that section:

Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"

Nikos suggested it on this list a while back and it made my XFCE with
ATI graphics card perform much faster... a night and day difference.

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Terminal resizes very slowly

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Paul
Hartman<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Section "Device"
>>    Identifier  "** ATI Radeon (generic)               [radeon]"
>>    Driver      "radeon"
>> EndSection
>
> Try adding this line to that section:
>
> Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"
>
> Nikos suggested it on this list a while back and it made my XFCE with
> ATI graphics card perform much faster... a night and day difference.
>
>

OK - that helps a lot when using a solid background on the terminal,
and helps at least a little when using transparency. Thanks.

Do you see a big difference when using transparency on terminals?

- Mark

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Terminal resizes very slowly

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 5:50 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Paul
> Hartman<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Section "Device"
>>>    Identifier  "** ATI Radeon (generic)               [radeon]"
>>>    Driver      "radeon"
>>> EndSection
>>
>> Try adding this line to that section:
>>
>> Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"
>>
>> Nikos suggested it on this list a while back and it made my XFCE with
>> ATI graphics card perform much faster... a night and day difference.
>>
>>
>
> OK - that helps a lot when using a solid background on the terminal,
> and helps at least a little when using transparency. Thanks.
>
> Do you see a big difference when using transparency on terminals?

I don't use transparency, so I have no idea. Sorry.

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Terminal resizes very slowly

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Paul
Hartman<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 5:50 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Paul
>> Hartman<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Section "Device"
>>>>    Identifier  "** ATI Radeon (generic)               [radeon]"
>>>>    Driver      "radeon"
>>>> EndSection
>>>
>>> Try adding this line to that section:
>>>
>>> Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"
>>>
>>> Nikos suggested it on this list a while back and it made my XFCE with
>>> ATI graphics card perform much faster... a night and day difference.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> OK - that helps a lot when using a solid background on the terminal,
>> and helps at least a little when using transparency. Thanks.
>>
>> Do you see a big difference when using transparency on terminals?
>
> I don't use transparency, so I have no idea. Sorry.
>
>
It's not critical, but I sort of like the softer look.

gnome-terminal resizes fast in XFCE but on my system has some really
ugly flashing in it as it does the resize.

Thanks for the help on the acceleration option. that's a good one and
I think you recommended it maybe a month or two ago when I was having
trouble with my wife's machine. Didn't help there on that problem but
certain helps here.

Cheers,
Mark

[gentoo-amd64] Re: Terminal resizes very slowly

[Duncan]

Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> posted
5bdc1c8b0906251550i682319ecp7189f52e4cfefbb7@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:50:51 -0700:

>> Try adding this line to that section:
>>
>> Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"
>>
>> Nikos suggested it on this list a while back and it made my XFCE with
>> ATI graphics card perform much faster... a night and day difference.

FWIW, EXA (as opposed to XAA) will eventually become the default.  It may 
be on ~arch xorg-server/xf86-video-ati already, I don't know as I've been 
using EXA for years, now, since I first started playing with composite 
(back when it was still buggy and could crash X on occasion), back in 
early 2006, KDE 3.5.1 and xorg 7.0.

Yes, it does make a BIG difference.  But as I said, it was originally 
buggy, so wasn't the default.  With the stable xorg and drivers, it's 
obviously still not the default, but it will be eventually, as XAA is 
being deprecated and may eventually be removed.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman