Intel Graphics Regressions In Ubuntu 9.04?

[jeffro-tull]

I'm not a huge ubuntu guy, so I don't know how they go about doing it. Even my "preferred" distros, I don't jump on to the new version until usually just before Release Candidate phase. At this point in the 9.04 life-cycle, I feel it'd be foolish to not have debugging symbols in there by default (since it's still very early and there is a very high likelihood that things will break), but, like I said, I'm not much on Ubuntu, so I don't know.

I still stand by what I said the first time Phoronix felt like comparing 8.10 to 9.04 - don't! Too many variables! If you're that concerned with what's happening with their graphics stack, then pull the source code and compile it with an otherwise stable distribution. 9.04 is far enough along that (most likely) not a single dpkg is shared with 8.10, but not nearly far enough along that they're into "fine polish and wax" stage.

[Bryce Harrington]

To echo what several others have already said, yes do not make final judgments on jaunty so soon.

It's sort of like going to a restaurant with a glass wall where you can see into the kitchen, and then reporting about all the undercooked food you saw.

In fact, we just merged this new -intel driver, along with new mesa, xserver, and libdrm last week. Especially with mesa and xserver, those are still -rc versions and likely to get upgraded. I also hope to see a .2 or newer -intel we can upgrade to.

See my blog for more info:

http://bryceharrington.org/drupal/intel-2.6.1

[whizse]

And, like jeffro-tull said, the 9.04 is still an alpha and must have a whole bunch of debugging symbols in each binaries. It would have been nice to precise it in the article I think.

If it's anything like Debian, the debugging symbols are stripped and shipped in separate -dbg packages and only loaded once you fire up gdb.

[Creak]

@SyXbiT: Ubuntu 9.04 is far from being just in bugfix. The feature freeze is on february 16th and the beta freeze is on march 20th. Source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JauntyReleaseSchedule.

So I quite agree with jeffro-tull. I don't see the point of an article that only show the differences between a stable distro and an alpha one. It would have been great to explain why there was such difference though, like explaining that Ubuntu decided to use this driver having in mind that it would be completely operational with the right kernel, mesa and xserver versions.

Once all these packages (that depend each others) will be in the alpha, maybe it'd be interesting to see the performance improvements.

And, like jeffro-tull said, the 9.04 is still an alpha and must have a whole bunch of debugging symbols in each binaries. It would have been nice to precise it in the article I think.

[chaos386]

Guys, what's the point? It's Ubuntu 9.04 - meaning the Ubuntu release that will hit gold master sometime in APRIL of this year. They've got around three more months to spit-shine it.

Honestly, were you guys looking for an excuse to link to yourselves? Or wanted to show off the test suite again? Because I can't see any other reason to have this article exist. Just like I said the last time you guys did a write up on Ubuntu-still-in-very-early-development-and-made-up-of-bleeding-edge-packages-top-to-bottom, much more has changed in the upcoming 9.04 release (compared to 8.10) than the Intel driver. You've got a newer kernel and CLI tools on the bottom, and new GUI on top, and, I wouldn't be surprised, plenty of debugging symbols all along the way.

As someone who uses an X4500 and Ubuntu 8.10 (and doesn't have the HDD space at the moment to install the 9.04 alpha), I greatly appreciate articles like this that show how the performance is progressing.

[d2kx]

talking about how Ubuntu is alpha is NOT VALID.
at this stage in the game, they mostly only do bug fixing, but NEVER major performance enhancements. The speed of 9.04 will likely not be hugely different from alpha3 speeds

odds are ubuntu 9.04 will have intel 2.6.1 (or possibly a bug fix 2.6.x, but it will not magically have a radically different driver)

Linux 2.6.29 to be shipped with Ubuntu 9.04 can completely change the game.

[jeffro-tull]

@SyXbiT:
Oh, they're already in bug-fix mode? Doesn't change anything. If they need to be in feature-freeze, bug-fix mode already, then that still helps prove my point. A buncha new stuff top-to-bottom that needs over three months of bug-fixing? Yeah, you're right. It must be the intel driver, since there's certainly nothing else that might be a regression between the hard drive and your screen.

[SyXbiT]

talking about how Ubuntu is alpha is NOT VALID.
at this stage in the game, they mostly only do bug fixing, but NEVER major performance enhancements. The speed of 9.04 will likely not be hugely different from alpha3 speeds

odds are ubuntu 9.04 will have intel 2.6.1 (or possibly a bug fix 2.6.x, but it will not magically have a radically different driver)

[jeffro-tull]

Guys, what's the point? It's Ubuntu 9.04 - meaning the Ubuntu release that will hit gold master sometime in APRIL of this year. They've got around three more months to spit-shine it.

Honestly, were you guys looking for an excuse to link to yourselves? Or wanted to show off the test suite again? Because I can't see any other reason to have this article exist. Just like I said the last time you guys did a write up on Ubuntu-still-in-very-early-development-and-made-up-of-bleeding-edge-packages-top-to-bottom, much more has changed in the upcoming 9.04 release (compared to 8.10) than the Intel driver. You've got a newer kernel and CLI tools on the bottom, and new GUI on top, and, I wouldn't be surprised, plenty of debugging symbols all along the way.

[bridgman]

Fedora's focus right now seems to be on getting the latest work-in-process features into users hands in order to help the transition to the new Linux graphics stack.

I imagine Ubuntu is picking up this code because they expect it will be solid by the time 9.04 freezes, which seems likely.