Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Compositing too slow in KDE

[Bill Longman <bill.longman@gmail.com>]

On 03/22/2011 03:32 PM, Mick wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 March 2011 16:45:54 Dale wrote:
>> Bill Longman wrote:
>>> On 03/20/2011 12:09 PM, Mick wrote:
>>>> On Sunday 20 March 2011 18:38:00 Mick wrote:
>>>>> On Saturday 19 March 2011 23:02:11 Jorge Martínez López wrote:
>>>>>> I also have an ATI card and I do suffer the slow compositing. I solved
>>>>>> it by switching back to the classic Mesa (instead of Gallium).
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks Jorge,
>>>>>
>>>>> I switched to classic too and now it does not crash - however:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. When I start kde compositing is disabled.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. If I click on Resume Compositing, then the first time I try it I get
>>>>> a notification saying:  "Compositing has been suspended by another
>>>>> application" and it remains disabled.
>>>>>
>>>>> 3. The second time I try to resume compositing it works!
>>>>>
>>>>> 4. If at that stage I exit/restart KDE compositing is disabled again
>>>>> ... o_O
>>>>>
>>>>> Why is this happening?  What other application is clashing or causing
>>>>> compositing not to take?
>>>>
>>>> BTW, I just tried this on an older Pentium 4 32bit box with an ATI
>>>> Radeon X600 (RV380) and it is exhibiting similar symptoms, except that
>>>> if I try to resume compositing a second time kwin crashes.
>>>
>>> I have an AMD Phenom II X4 940 with an Radeon 4870 that loves to crash
>>> when I turn on compositing. OpenGL works wonderfully until it crashes
>>> kwin. XRender chews up so much CPU I'd rather not have it.
>>>
>>> I have an AMD Athlon II X4 635 with an onboard Radeon 4200 that loves to
>>> crash when I turn on compositing.
>>>
>>> Both these boxes have SB700/SB800 chipsets. I use xdm on the former and
>>> manually run X on the other. Same problem on both.
>>>
>>> I did not have this problem in xorg-server 1.7 series.
>>
>> I have a very similar setup and it works fine here, AMD Phenom II X4 955
>> Deneb 3.2GHz with a Nvidia GT-220 video card.  I also have the
>> SB700/SB800 chipset as well, Gigabyte mobo.  The biggest difference I
>> see is the video card as far as hardware is concerned.
>>
>> Software, I'm on xorg-server-1.9 here.  I never tried the older series
>> on this rig.  I also still have a xorg.conf file too.  May not matter
>> but just upgraded to a 2.6.38 kernel.  Also, no hal here either which is
>> why I went with that xorg version during my install.
>>
>> I hope this little bit of info helps in some small way.  If you need
>> more info about my setup, let me know.
> 
> So this seems like the xorg-1.9 driver won't play nicely with ATI video cards.  
> FYI mesa classic seems to be better than gallium, although both crash.  As 
> already reported xrender works, but eats up resources.
> 
> Will have to wait for later versions it seems.

Well after fifteen minutes of no crashes, here are my settings:

$ emerge -pv xorg-server mesa cairo $(qlist -IC x11-drivers)

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild   R   ] x11-drivers/radeon-ucode-20110106  0 kB
[ebuild   R   ] media-libs/mesa-7.9.1  USE="classic nptl -debug -gallium
-gles -llvm -motif -pic (-selinux)" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon -intel -mach64
-mga -nouveau -r128 -savage -sis -tdfx -via -vmware" 0 kB
[ebuild   R   ] x11-base/xorg-server-1.9.5  USE="ipv6 kdrive nptl udev
xorg -dmx -doc -minimal -static-libs -tslib" 0 kB
[ebuild   R   ] x11-libs/cairo-1.10.2-r1  USE="X opengl qt4 svg xcb
(-aqua) -debug -directfb -doc (-drm) (-gallium) (-openvg) -static-libs" 0 kB
[ebuild   R   ] x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev-2.6.0  0 kB
[ebuild   R   ] x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard-1.5.0  0 kB
[ebuild   R   ] x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse-1.6.0  0 kB
[ebuild   R   ] x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati-6.14.0  0 kB

My kernel is 2.6.36-r5 gentoo-sources running on the AMD Athlon II X4
machine:
$ zgrep RADEON /proc/config.gz
CONFIG_DRM_RADEON=m
CONFIG_DRM_RADEON_KMS=y
CONFIG_FB_RADEON=y
CONFIG_FB_RADEON_I2C=y
CONFIG_FB_RADEON_BACKLIGHT=y
# CONFIG_FB_RADEON_DEBUG is not set


Wonderfully wobbly windows once again, without widespread (and
unwelcomed) untimely terminations.