Appalled with Vista

[drag]

Edit: Some searching shows that the base part of Beryl uses pretty low-level OpenGL stuff that any remotely modern video card with Linux drivers will support (similar to the regular 2D UI that Vista supports). Some of the extra effects are done through OpenGL fragment shaders (analogous to DX8/DX9 pixel/vertex shaders) and will only work on newer cards that support those shader types. So if you want "all" of Beryl, you'll need somewhat newer hardware as well.

The water effects and motion blur is probably what they are talking about. Motion blur works, but it's deadly slow since it's software driven. Water effects don't work at all.

Everything else I've tried does fine though.

edit:

One of the nice thing about OpenGL is that it's designed for writing applications, not nessicarially performing hardware acceleration. Most cards only actually accelerate a portion of OpenGL, which is typically what you'd see in games and the proccessing intensive portions of it.

So for a fully opengl driven interface you actually don't even need hardware acceleration at all. (technically. Although it's not how it works right now with X) It can be all done through software rendering, however that will be slow unless you keep everythig to a minimum.

In otherwords to go from a OpenGL 1.1 video card to a OpenGL 2.0 video card all you need is a driver upgrade, not a hardware one. Of course hardware designed for OpenGL 2.0 is going to perform better.

 

[Nothinman]

Let's send a hundred techs into the field to set up Windows for customers, and a hundred techs into the field to set up whatever distro of Linux you like. Random machines. Some pre-defined set of productivity apps and capabilities, and see what percentage of the installs experience problems that affect the time needed to finish the job.

For the test to be anywhere near fair the techs would have to have some Linux experience too since it's fairly safe to assume that most, if not all, would have used Windows at least once in their life. Unless you plan on using "techs" that have never used either OS before.

You see a slightly long black flicker and nothing more (.5 sec?). A bubble pops in the notification area telling you the driver has been reset and that's it.

When I saw that back in RC2 it would only work once, if the driver had issues twice it would cause a BSOD instead of the nice reset.

With Linux if you have a driver bug.. X just crashes, the video display resets, gdm is restarted and have to log in agian. That is unless the driver puts the video card in a bad state, then it won't come back up (which is what would happen in Vista).

Unless you're using a driver that a kernel module part like the non-free nVidia or or fglrx drivers, then you have an equal chance of the module causing an oops or panic and killing the whole machine.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: drag

Edit: Some searching shows that the base part of Beryl uses pretty low-level OpenGL stuff that any remotely modern video card with Linux drivers will support (similar to the regular 2D UI that Vista supports). Some of the extra effects are done through OpenGL fragment shaders (analogous to DX8/DX9 pixel/vertex shaders) and will only work on newer cards that support those shader types. So if you want "all" of Beryl, you'll need somewhat newer hardware as well.

The water effects and motion blur is probably what they are talking about. Motion blur works, but it's deadly slow since it's software driven. Water effects don't work at all.

Everything else I've tried does fine though.

Yeah, the water effects were singled out as something that specifically requires shader hardware.

It's just dependent on what functionality they actually need from the GPU for various effects and operations. If I'm understanding the stuff I read properly, basic window rendering has the CPU draw to window buffers and then render those via the GPU as textures (possibly with transparency, etc.) That will work with very simple hardware -- but maybe at a higher CPU load for some things than Aero Glass.

 

[drag]

basic window rendering has the CPU draw to window buffers and then render those via the GPU as textures (possibly with transparency, etc.) That will work with very simple hardware -- but maybe at a higher CPU load for some things than Aero Glass.

Ya. that is the basic function of compositing graphical interfaces.

Traditionally MS Windows and X Windows drew the windows directly to the main buffer, the display.

With a compositing display windows are drawn off-screen in their own little buffers. Then the a image of the individual windows are taken then combined together into one big area were they are drawn at once.

So then for a 3d interface the textures are taken and then painted onto just regular OGL or DX primatives.

It's not nessicarially needs to be 3d, but 3d operations are what cards are fast at (they are much faster at that then traditional 2d acceleration, btw) and it makes it easier to do special effects.

Now this is what OS X has always done with it's display. Also the earlier versions of OS X have had completely software-driven composition displays with no hardware acceleration at all and those ran fine on 300mhz G3 machines in my personal experiances. It's not until you had 'Aqua Extreme' stuff talked about before you had serious hardware acceleration.

In fact it's my opinion that stuff like Beryl or Aero interface is just kinda pointless and boring. Sure it's fancy and all that, but the only good part about it is that they offload work from the main cpu combined with the compositing effect makes window moving and such much more pleasent looking and less cpu intensive. (move a window rapidly around on XP or regular Linux desktop and see the tearing and the cpu usage. Then compare that to a composited desktop). (btw traditionally X was the fastest at drawing stuff, MS Windows was next, and OS X was last, but due to compositing people always 'felt' that OS X was faster on slower machines)

Once you get the compositing going then it's not going to be difficult to do some pretty creative stuff.

 

[miniMUNCH]

Originally posted by: tribbles

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH
OP: First off... trying to run Vista on an AMD Dell was your first mistake... the chipset driver support sucks balls. This is not Vista's fault.

If your client didn't want to run Vista business, or better, you should've opted for XP SP2 in the first place.

I am running the following system on Vista Ult. 64 with absolutely zero problems:

E4300 OC'ed to 1066 FSB
2 GB mem
Asus P5B deluxe (intel 965 chipset)
8800 GTS

Aside from a few little bugs (Texas hold'em poker has flickering text) I have experienced exactly zero problems.

I home system is much, much faster than my XP system at school which is 3Hz dual core pentium 4 system with 2 GB of ram. It is not an apples to apples comparison on the hardware, but even so... for me, Vista gets the nod.

Unfortunately, I was not involved in the ordering process. If I had been, I probably would have recommended a Core 2 Duo.

Your experience makes me feel a little better about trying out Vista Ultimate on my Mac Pro.

You should... I don't personally know anyone with a modern intel chipset who has had any significant vista issues.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Originally posted by: Nothinman

why would a computer tech go in to the field and work on a computer with an OS he had never used hands-on. That is a recipe for exactly what happen.

Because Windows is easy to use, isn't it?

Troll . Let's send a hundred techs into the field to set up Windows for customers, and a hundred techs into the field to set up whatever distro of Linux you like. Random machines. Some pre-defined set of productivity apps and capabilities, and see what percentage of the installs experience problems that affect the time needed to finish the job.

tbh, I would guess it would be Ubuntu over Vista, unless you are going to throw in some "windows only app" instead of a more generic set of apps, such as "Office Suite, Mail client" type of stuff...If you want to say "MS Office 2007" then fine, but we are going to throw Beagle, Evolution, and an X server to that list, just to "make it fair".

I would be more than willing to just define the capabilities generically, and let either camp come up with the mix of software needed to get there. I think that would help the Windows case, frankly, since the Linux techs would have a lot more individual apps to configure.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Originally posted by: Nothinman

why would a computer tech go in to the field and work on a computer with an OS he had never used hands-on. That is a recipe for exactly what happen.

Because Windows is easy to use, isn't it?

Troll . Let's send a hundred techs into the field to set up Windows for customers, and a hundred techs into the field to set up whatever distro of Linux you like. Random machines. Some pre-defined set of productivity apps and capabilities, and see what percentage of the installs experience problems that affect the time needed to finish the job.

tbh, I would guess it would be Ubuntu over Vista, unless you are going to throw in some "windows only app" instead of a more generic set of apps, such as "Office Suite, Mail client" type of stuff...If you want to say "MS Office 2007" then fine, but we are going to throw Beagle, Evolution, and an X server to that list, just to "make it fair".

I would be more than willing to just define the capabilities generically, and let either camp come up with the mix of software needed to get there. I think that would help the Windows case, frankly, since the Linux techs would have a lot more individual apps to configure.

How about

1. OS + Patches
2. Drivers (including 3D Video)
3. Office Suite
4. Email Client (Configured)
5. Virtual Machine stuff (VMWare versue VPC?)


because with the execption of configuring the mail client, 3d video, and VMWare, Ubuntu is setup and ready to go after the ~15-18 minute install+patching. 3D drivers (nvidia at least) are another 2 minutes or so, VMWare would be probably 10 minutes, if you include downloading the stuff.

Not sure about Vista, but I can't get XP Pro installed + patched with all the latest critical stuff in that amount of time.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Originally posted by: Nothinman

why would a computer tech go in to the field and work on a computer with an OS he had never used hands-on. That is a recipe for exactly what happen.

Because Windows is easy to use, isn't it?

Troll . Let's send a hundred techs into the field to set up Windows for customers, and a hundred techs into the field to set up whatever distro of Linux you like. Random machines. Some pre-defined set of productivity apps and capabilities, and see what percentage of the installs experience problems that affect the time needed to finish the job.

tbh, I would guess it would be Ubuntu over Vista, unless you are going to throw in some "windows only app" instead of a more generic set of apps, such as "Office Suite, Mail client" type of stuff...If you want to say "MS Office 2007" then fine, but we are going to throw Beagle, Evolution, and an X server to that list, just to "make it fair".

I would be more than willing to just define the capabilities generically, and let either camp come up with the mix of software needed to get there. I think that would help the Windows case, frankly, since the Linux techs would have a lot more individual apps to configure.

How about

1. OS + Patches
2. Drivers (including 3D Video)
3. Office Suite
4. Email Client (Configured)
5. Virtual Machine stuff (VMWare versue VPC?)


because with the execption of configuring the mail client, 3d video, and VMWare, Ubuntu is setup and ready to go after the ~15-18 minute install+patching. 3D drivers (nvidia at least) are another 2 minutes or so, VMWare would be probably 10 minutes, if you include downloading the stuff.

Not sure about Vista, but I can't get XP Pro installed + patched with all the latest critical stuff in that amount of time.

Sure, you can. But the issues with Vista in the field, or any other OS in the field, result from the boundary conditions that you run into. So I'd take this challenge, if in fact we had any practical way of really testing it.

 

[StopSign]

Originally posted by: drag
What is the minimal requirement for you using all of Vista's Areo Glass effects?

If my GMA950 can run it smoothly then any other POS out there can too.