Re: [gentoo-amd64] kde4, xorg, xf86-video-ati/radeon, and multi-panel display

[Beso <givemesugarr@gmail.com>]

2008/11/23 Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>:
> New thread, since the topic wandered from what it was on the old one.
>
> Beso <givemesugarr@gmail.com> posted
> d257c3560811221559h2762345eq6e13c03bf0e6588@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
> below, on  Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:59:53 +0000:
>
>> 2008/11/22 Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>:
>
>>> FWIW, I tried the kde3 krandr-tray applet and it appears to be
>>> outdated, only handling randr-1.0 commands.  I suppose kde4 has an
>>> updated version with the 1.1 and 1.2 commands.  I do have kde4 merged
>>> now, but it's still broken in enough ways I don't use it for everyday
>>> yet.
>>>
>>>
>> well, the system-settings one seems to work quite well for me. it's true
>> that dual head is a little tricky with kde (most of the time makes
>> plasma crash without setting the dual head). also i'm using the 4.2
>> development brach (plaudis kdebuild overlay) that seems to be
>> a little better in terms of usability and functionality than the portage
>> 4.1.3 version.
>
> Yes.  I think their choice of versioning sucked.  For quite some time I
> and others have argued 4.0 should have been 3.8 (developer base and
> technology preview for 4.0), 4.1 should have been 3.9 (public release
> preview for 4.0), and what is 4.2 should finally make the first decent
> 4.x full release, what should have been 4.0.
>
well, 4.0 wasn't even half usable, but only something for bugtesting.
it has been
really awful. the 4.0.x serie has been a real mess. i can see them only as
alpha previews. the 4.1 series in my opinion look like a beta version with a
lot of lacking or not working stuff. now i can see that the 4.2 is almost there.
kwin opengl effects work quite well, most of the apps have been transferred or
are on their way, finally khotkwys works a little more (this one
pissed me off quite
a lot). this way of versioning has also made some kde users to migrate to other
guis like gnome of xfce.

> I've chosen not to try the not-full-releases since I gave up on the betas
> earlier.  Additionally... well let's just put it this way, paludis, no
> way, no how, so that has been another encouragement not to do the KDE SVN
> stuff since the Gentoo/KDE folks started requiring paludis for it.  Thus,
> I'm sticking with 4.1.x since that's what's released.
>
well, i've been back with portage 4.1.2 and 4.1.3 but it lacks stuff
and i don't have
time to set up the ebuilds for what i need. also the 4.2 plasma is a
little more stable
than the 4.1.3 one. what i really lack is koffice that doesn't really
have an ebuild.

> But you're right on plasma.  It still isn't working quite right, in
> general.  It's supposed to let one zoom the desktops, and I can sort of
> do that, but once they get zoomed out, getting them to zoom back in
> /reliably/ has been a problem.  Sometimes plasma crashes, sometimes they
> zoom in but only on one panel's display, sometimes they zoom in but get
> stuck half on and half off the display... it's a mess!
>

sincerely i haven't really understood that zoom function. if you try
to place something
outside the desktop area, when plasma doesn't crash you won't be able
to find it on
any of the virtual desktops you have. also the dashboard looks good
but when you put
a widget on it and then you close it the widget sticks on your
desktop. the ideas behing
are good but i think they've put too many features together without
finishing them.

> Add /that/ to the fact that khotkeys seems to be broken, or at least
> trying to assign anything but default hotkeys to anything fails to work,
> AND that khotkeys is the main way I launch stuff in kde3.
>
this is really true. in fact at some point the hotkeys totally
disappeared... :-(

> Add /that/ to the fact that most of the fancy new effects require opengl,
> they don't work with composite and etc, the other option, but
> unfortunately they don't disable or otherwise indicate the ones that
> don't work, and opengl is limited to 2048x2048 on the radeon 92xx series
> and I'm running 1920x2400 so opengl doesn't work well, or at all in the
> lower 352 px of display, and kde4 has so far been too broken to seriously
> use.
>
the kwin effects now work quite well and don't really crash very
ofthen. the only
problem i find out is i need strigi installed. and if you have it
running it will kill
processor, ram and disk space and you'd have kwin crash sometime.

> I'll post the script in a separate reply...
>
ok, thanks.

>>> The point being that yes, dual-panel works with the freedomware xf86
>>> ati/ radeon driver, at least for my hardware, once it's configured to
>>> do so. However, there are some limitations.
>>>
>> i'll try out to see these days how the fglrx driver works with dual
>> head. i've read that it does behave in quite a good manner. also,
>> now that it has uvd and basic xvmc included i could also think to go
>> back with it. the only problem is xorg compatibility.
>
> As you know I won't even consider the proprietary drivers, here.  I had
> my fill with nVidia, and vowed never again.  Plus, every time xorg adds
> something new, it's the proprietaryware folks that hold it back, by
> months, nearing a year sometimes, from stabilizing.  I /do/ believe KDE
> got it right on that one, not waiting up for nVidia to catch up, simply
> telling folks using the nvidia driver that they'd have a seriously broken
> experience due to their choice of hardware and proprietaryware driver
> that couldn't keep up.
>
well, after merging it today i found out that it still doesn't support
xorg 1.5.2
(it's a blocker for it) so it seems that for now i cannot have that compare.

> As for ATI/Radeon, at some point the new freedomware drivers should in
> general catch up, now that AMD has opened the specs.  I've been waiting,
> as I'd really like to upgrade this 9200.  Apparently the r5xx chips have
> a 4096x4096 virtual 3D area, and it'll be nice getting dual DVI dual-
> link, too, instead of settling for the single single-link DVI and single
> analog that my current 92xx series has.
>
well, radeon is quite reliable and speedy. radeonhd instead it doesn't seem very
good, at least on playing video content. to have the best radeon
experience you'd
have to go with the git version of xorg and drivers. the x11 overlay
is very good
and stable, but it seems that it has some problems wih kde4, especially with
semantic-desktop enabled (which is now about mandatory to have plasma-workspace
to compile).

>>> We should probably start a new thread on that if people want to discuss
>>> the config and how I got it to work.
>>>
>> this would be really interesting.
>
> That'll be another post as well.
>
by the way i'm still waiting for the kernel upgrade script post... :-)

-- 
dott. ing. beso