[Discuss] First impressions of KDE4

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2010-01-10 22:32-0800 John Blomfield wrote:

> My chip set is nvidia nForce 570 SLI.  I have never played with X 
> configuration so I have no idea what XAA and EXA are!

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86_Acceleration_Architecture and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXA.  Wikipedia is an excellent source of
background information about most of the acronyms that are thrown around in
the X world.  Also, it is an excellent source of information about
video chipsets such as those from NVidia (see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_chipsets).

> How do I know if I have "good X configuration"?

Good question.  It is probably important for all Linux users to develop
their X skills since in the future you will be making purchasing decisions
which will be disappointing unless you have some idea of how well your
particular video chip is supported under Linux.  What complicates the matter
now is the reorganization of the xorg.com version of the X software (much
more than just the replacement of XAA by more modern acceleration methods)
that has been mostly completed over the last few years, but which still
needs quite a bit of debugging and stabilization work.  Fortunately, there
are lots of articles at Phoronix which have reviewed all of the changes as
they occurred in the X stack, and the Intel, ATI, and Nvidia video chipset
manufacturers responses to those X stack changes (and a lack of such
response from VIA and SIS). So it is a good idea to attempt to
follow most of the Phoronix X stories to gain experience with the
X vocabulary if nothing else.

Also, it might help to look carefully at the X configuration file (probably
/etc/X11/xorg.conf); the X log file (/var/log/Xorg.0.log) for how X
configures itself with help from that configuration file, and the results of
the xdpyinfo and xrandr commands (as well as possibly glxinfo).  You should
compare that information with your video chip and monitor specifications to
make sure your X software is not running anything outside spec or giving you
any errors or dropping any important extensions.  There is a ton of
information in all of those commands, but with the help of man pages (e.g.,
"man xorg.conf", "man xrandr", etc., you should gradually expand the bits
you understand over the years.  For example, if you learn from those
commands that DRI has been dropped (as it is with our SIS chipset), you
should conclude your 3D rendering will be slowed to unusability so the
OpenGL part of KDE4 (e.g., the 3D screensavers and cool 3D desktop effects)
as well as all 3D games will not be accessible to you. (Check wikipedia for
background about DRI and OpenGL.)

Bottom line, pay attention to the X stack of software and its configuration
since that stack controls your video chip (as well as mouse and keyboard)
and therefore controls whether your experience with Linux and KDE will be
good or bad.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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