whilo: michaellarabel: ping
michaellarabel: hi whilo
whilo: hi
whilo: i have talked to you about ram benchmarks a few weeks ago, when you were in italy
whilo: michaellarabel: basically the problem is that different distributions report very different ram usages for kde4 here
whilo: but "free" is not supposed to be a good benchmark
Ivanovic: whilo: free is no benchmark *at all*
michaellarabel: are you referring in regards to what is reported in the hardware area?
whilo: no it isn't
Ivanovic: and memory usage can vary from distribution to distribution because it is different
Ivanovic: (differnt compiler options result in different memory usage, add to this stuff like x86 and amd64)
Ivanovic: michaellarabel: have you seen this thread? http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16780
whilo: Ivanovic: i have free -buffers/caches differences like 240 mb on fedora/120 mb on opensuse and 400 mb on kubuntu
whilo: and it is not imagined since i get swapping here
Ivanovic: seeing it i would really *love* to see some "background article" on which frameworks and all the stuff are availale and working together in which way
Ivanovic: whilo: and are you running *all* the same programs?
whilo: Ivanovic: see this is the problem
Ivanovic: as in: same services, same drivers, ...
whilo: but you don't get my point
whilo: i have a problem with bloating ram usage
whilo: from kde3/gnome -> to kde4 is a big difference here
whilo: i have regularly multi sessions running on the machines here which all have max 1gb ram
Ivanovic: interesting, in ram usage i had not too much of a difference between kde3.5 and kde4, only about 50MB more simply because i still run some kde3.5 progs (eg konversation) and thus both are loaded
Ivanovic: michaellarabel: or do you know if there is some article somewhere regarding which audio/video frameworks are there, what they do and how they stack together with which "options" to select (eg phonon supporting xine as well as gstreamer backend, stuff like this)
whilo: Ivanovic: http://whilos.blogsite.org/?p=102 part e)
Ivanovic: i think nowaddays not many really know what all this stuff like pulseaudio, alsa, oss, phonon, gstreamer and such is and how they play together
whilo: i'd like to have serious memory benchmarking
whilo: because at the moment i cannot deal with it since exmap does not build against the kubuntu kernel for example
Ivanovic: whilo: if you want to use kde, don't use kubuntu
Ivanovic: try installing the kde packages via ubuntu, this might work better
Ivanovic: i heard from several people that kubuntu does not work where installing the kde packages via ubuntu works nicely
whilo: well all "works" it is simply a high ram usage. and if i upgrade my lenny clients to kde4 I'll have to deal with machines that have only 512 mb ram, too
whilo: and i need powerpc support
whilo: lenny is really fine and i have found a backport for 4.2, but i'd like to know where my memory problems come from
whilo: i have the problem on the svn build from kde4 on lenny as well
whilo: i have 900 mb ram usage at the moment in free -buffers/ram
Ivanovic: are you still using *any* kde3.something progs?
whilo: and memory benchmarks are really hard to find, so i'd appreciate some serious testing tool and maybe an article about it on phoronix for example
Ivanovic: if you do this would increase ram usage since kde3 libs have to be loaded additionally
whilo: sure, no i don't see any, but in svn builds debugging might be an issue
whilo: ok to get to the point: i'd like to have serious memory benchmarking done
whilo: for example in comparison between distros or desktop environments
Ivanovic: and "serious" memory usage benchmarks (since this is what you want, not memory speed benchmarks) are *problematic*
whilo: Ivanovic: sure, that is why i can't do it myself
whilo: or i can, but i'll most likely do it wrong
whilo: michaellarabel: is phoronix the wrong place for this?
whilo: Ivanovic: and i think if there is some objective benchmarking done, distros and de's might investigate further
whilo: take the ps3 or my via c3 machine for example
whilo: i might not be able to run kde4 on them
whilo: kde4 on a problematic distro
Ivanovic: whilo: not sure, though maybe arch linux is a good alternative when it comes to "reducing memory usage"
Ivanovic: it should work quite well regarding kde4 and is "better configurable" (though more work!) than eg ubuntu (more fine granular)
Ivanovic: and yeah, when it comes to kde4 the problem is that lots of stuff has to play together well, with xorg and the driver/library stack being problematic, too
Ivanovic: add to this the version of qt (makes a huge difference if you use 4.5 or 4.4 when it comes to speed)
Ivanovic: the problem is that a comparision of memory usage is a hell of a problem if you want to view more than gnome (recent), kde3 and kde4 for eg fedora, ubuntu "latest" and opensuse (which is already a case of "got to check 9 distro/DE combinationy which all have a different default setup"
Ivanovic: since it is clearly not enough to say "okay, free says" or "process A uses Xmb ram"
Ivanovic: it is a hell of a lot of work which i have no idea how to do it really *right*
Deanjo: morning, afternoon, evening all
michaellarabel: Hi deanjo
Deanjo: Mornin
Deanjo: Had some bad luck in the family this weekend. My aunt got crushed by two young bulls fighting. They slammed against the gate she was trying to close and pinned her between the gate and the fence. Broken legs, arms, ribs, skull, hip...
Deanjo: She will be going through surgeries for the better part of the year and at her age that's really going to take a toll.
michaellarabel: Ah, sorry to hear that Deanjo.
Deanjo: Ya, went and saw her at the hospital yesterday and could barely recognize her
Deanjo: She's just one massive swelling and bruise.
Deanjo: I'm surprised how she is actually still alive in truth
Deanjo: Gotta head down to their farm this week and put the bulls down.
evocallaghan: WHAT !
evocallaghan: People are sick !
evocallaghan: Deanjo:where are you from?
Deanjo: Saskatoon
Deanjo: Saskatchewan Canda
Deanjo: Canada
Azerthoth: Southerner
evocallaghan: I really though it would be England
evocallaghan: that's the sort of thing that goes on every day in England
Azerthoth: ooh ouch, just read back, sorry to hear that Deanjo
evocallaghan: Any way, I am deeply sad to hear that Deanjo , I wish her the very best !
Deanjo: Ya, these bulls are overly aggressive compared to the rest.
Deanjo: Great genetic builds body wise but too aggressive to be trusted around people.
evocallaghan: crazy stuff
evocallaghan: are they acturally Candana bread though?
Deanjo: No Brahma's
evocallaghan: Ah
Deanjo: Which are by nature more aggressive then other breeds but these two are more then usual. They were bred using a out of herd prize bull.
Deanjo: Genetics gone bad
Deanjo: My uncle asked me to take care of it for understandable reasons why he doesn't want to do it himself.
Azerthoth: Deanjo maybe you can get her to laugh a bit (later) by telling her she can have her revenge by eating steak (dont know if that humor is appropriate, I'll leave that to your discretion)
Deanjo: Heh, no worries, already planning the family BBQ when she's finally able to return home.
Deanjo: Ultimate revenge, eating the product that injured you.
redeeman: ah this must be some record!
redeeman: first time in years nvidia wasnt the cause of me loosing uptime :)
Deanjo: Let me guess, in a drunken state you tried plugging in that ISA card into that PCI-e slot again.
Azerthoth: interesting nvidia has never caused me a reboot
Deanjo: Same here. (except when a kernel update was to be applied)
Azerthoth: well that, but thats kernel not nvidia
Azerthoth: otherwise, rmmod nvidia, modprobe nvidia, /etc/init.d/xdm restart
Deanjo: Your not thinking like a foss zealot though Azerthoth. It's ALL Nvidia's fault
Azerthoth: oops, OK, I'll whip myself with a wet floppy
Deanjo: Global warming, nvidia's fault, gas prices, nvidia's fault, me not getting any last night, nvidia's fault
maligor: the nvidia kernel module will eventually also grow into a complete kernel
Deanjo: Who cares. It works
Azerthoth: he shoots he scores
maligor: you could say the same about windows
maligor: and biggest issue in windows is that there's a crapload of totally asswards written drivers
Deanjo: Frankly if nvidia decided to completely say "fuck xorg at all" and came out with their own solution it would not matter to me if it worked
maligor: embrace and extend eh
Deanjo: xorg is getting to the point where the bandaids are getting too complicated. Time to start anew
Deanjo: Of course the same can be said about the kernel. Things would be a lot simpler to finally send some of that old legacy stuff into it's own legacy branch.
Azerthoth: or maybe 2.8.x series, but noooooo
Deanjo: heh, fuck that, go straight to 3.0.0 series. I want to be able to use my nic to render h264
Deanjo: :P
Deanjo: Audio and video are still weak points in linux. Rethinking of those entire subsystems is completely overdue
Deanjo: Until that happens I really can't see linux making huge inroads into the desktop space.
Deanjo: And you have to admit, if it wasn't for nv producing blobs for so many years the adoption of linux would be years behind.
redeeman: Deanjo: nope, my father plugged in a faulty appliance, causing the error-relay thingie (hpfi in danish) to cut power
Deanjo: Love it or hate it, nv's blobs provided the only real good performance solution in linux for a better part of a decade.
redeeman: and this box wasnt (now is) blessed by an UPS
redeeman: i am not questioning their 3d performance
redeeman: i know full well they still provide the fastest there is
Deanjo: I'm just thinking back to 1999ish days redeeman and using linux. To use it as a desktop was a nightmare because of really crappy video. When nv showed up with the blobs all of a sudden even considering it for desktop use became a feasible reality.
Deanjo: Even BeOS provided a better desktop experience
redeeman: back then nvidias blob was a hell of alot more stable
Deanjo: Well alot of the issues you see now are because of the lack of a hardware 2d engine in the newest chips
redeeman: nope, my issue is the stability
redeeman: well.. my BIGGEST issue
redeeman: their 2d-on-3d support is also laughably slow, but i can accept that
Deanjo: which comes from using the 3d hardware for 2d purposes
redeeman: yes but it can be done faster with pure software rendering
redeeman: so they should just cut their losses and do that
redeeman: either way, im more concerned about my computer locking up requiring the power plug
Deanjo: IDK about that, here it performs fine
redeeman: sure... try kde 4
Deanjo: np
Deanjo: works fine
Deanjo: especially the 4.2 with QT 4.5
redeeman: doesn't here, 4.5 made little difference
Deanjo: made a big difference here
redeeman: did you switch to raster?
Deanjo: yes
redeeman: so that's AVOIDING nvidias 2d acceleration
redeeman: using qt's own software rendering
redeeman: THATS why it got better :)
redeeman: unfortunately the raster backend is giving me a few issues, so i had to switch back
redeeman: so you see, nvidias 2d sucks ass
Deanjo: Even though I did switch to raster, using nv's 2d did not come close to making it unusable
Deanjo: Sure not the absolute greatest top notch but far from being unusable
Deanjo: I would say it's akin to using a custom tweaked kernel to a out of the box kernel
Deanjo: It's certainly no worse then the intel or ATI experience
redeeman: you wouldn't call it basically useless when the mouse stutters while marking lots of elements on the desktop or in a filemanager?
Deanjo: I didn't experience that
redeeman: i suggest you redirect your browser to various forums (including nvnews linux section) and watch then
Deanjo: The only issue with stuttering I have experienced recently is because of the current kernel i/o issue
Deanjo: (which ironically doesn't seem to be present with btrfs for me)
Deanjo: It will be interesting if Oracle decides to hybrid btrfs and zfs into something