Valve & Intel Work On Open-Source GPU Drivers

[johnc]

Valve is targeting their Steam support for Ubuntu, but Ubuntu Unity base is Compiz. Compiz should die, because it's the only reason why gaming performance in Ubuntu sucks.

I've tried everything and I can't get a smooth gaming experience with Ubuntu while running Unity3d, everything is laggy and stuttery including games and desktop experience itself. As soon as I switch to Ubuntu2d I get my performance back, but not everything is perfect because Vsync doesn't completely eliminate tearing.

It's definitely very weird. I thought it was compiz related but the tearing in gnome-shell is even worse for me.

I didn't have tearing problems in GNOME2 + compiz so I don't get it.

I guess the answer will be to automatically turn off compositing when launching a game. I think Windows turns off Aero automatically?

[narciso]

It's definitely very weird. I thought it was compiz related but the tearing in gnome-shell is even worse for me.

I didn't have tearing problems in GNOME2 + compiz so I don't get it.

I guess the answer will be to automatically turn off compositing when launching a game. I think Windows turns off Aero automatically?

Yes, gnome 2 without effects or with metacity causes tearing in the desktop and there's no fix for that. But running without any compositing fixes tearing while watching videos or playing fullscreen opengl games.

With compiz I can have a tear free desktop and tear free gaming, but desktop feel is laggy, and games aren't smooth, even with good framerates on screen.

Best compositing layer I've tried was Mutter, because it provides a tear free desktop and games play smoother, with some occasional lag (Bastion game for ex.).

[AJSB]

XFCE without compositions doesn't need optimizations...

As for XFCE i wasn't asking for optimizations but for solve some problems that is still has....not about performance related.

[AJSB]

Compiz, a hog resource? Wow, are you kidding me?
I've been running Compiz with proprietary drivers from Nvidia and Open Source drivers from Intel, never had any problems with it being a "hog resource".

Do people have computers from 1990 or what? Seriously. In 2006, I had a school project and one of the things I did was playing around with Compiz/Compiz Fusion/Beryl on Ubuntu with AMD open source drivers. The graphic card that was used was quite old. I never had problems with getting it to run - and it ran smooth.

You can say whatever you want but a computer feels always more responsive with all that type of ....well....visual c**p disabled.

No matter the PC, no matter the OS, i always disable all that kind of stuff.

[Figueiredo]

Can Wayland/Weston help fixing this?

[89c51]

Can Wayland/Weston help fixing this?

If the problem is in the drivers then wayland is going to have the same problems AFAIK.

[Figueiredo]

If the problem is in the drivers then wayland is going to have the same problems AFAIK.

And if the binary drivers don't support Wayland then I gess the problem is solved...

[narciso]

And if the binary drivers don't support Wayland then I gess the problem is solved...

I think both AMD and Nvidia will support it if they think it's worth it, and not just another vapourware.

[jmcharron]

Valve is targeting their Steam support for Ubuntu, but Ubuntu Unity base is Compiz. Compiz should die, because it's the only reason why gaming performance in Ubuntu sucks.

I've tried everything and I can't get a smooth gaming experience with Ubuntu while running Unity3d, everything is laggy and stuttery including games and desktop experience itself. As soon as I switch to Ubuntu2d I get my performance back, but not everything is perfect because Vsync doesn't completely eliminate tearing.

I use OpenSuSE 12.1 here and had performance issues and a general distaste for KDE4 with plasma so I switched to KDE 3.5.10 from the build service. All though its starting to show its age a little bit, the build service does a great job of keeping everything from going stale.

I'm running a Sandybridge 2600k + P67 mobo + 2 x nvidia Gtx680 + 8 Gb on a 240Gb SSD, and Ubuntu 12.04 gaming experience sucks compared to Windows.

Also, SLI in linux is unusable because it only hurts performance instead of improving it, so I have it disabled.

I feel your pain, I have experimented with SLI on Linux a couple times and claiming Nvidia has SLI support for Linux is kind of a Joke! I had two 8800GTXs in sli and it worked* but I only gained a 10%-15% fps not anywhere near how they scaled in Windows. Then I had two 465GTX's and SLI made everything all sorts of unstable and performance was abysmal so I went back to using a single card.

I'm running AMD Phenom II x6 1100t - 4gigs Ram - 670GTX - Twin 150g VelociRaptor in Raid 0 + Twin 60gb Intel 330 Series SSDs in Raid 0 on OpenSuSE 12.1

Just as Nvidia removed support for overclocking from their drivers on Fermi and Kepler cards, I think they let what little support for SLI that was there deprecate. I hope RandR 1.5 can improve SLI Linux support but I could be completely wrong about that....

[89c51]

I think both AMD and Nvidia will support it if they think it's worth it, and not just another vapourware.

With Intel backing it and Canonical implementing it (plus other companies and organizations) you wouldn't characterize it as Vapourware. All toolkits work, client side decorations are being worked on, mozilla libre and other apps have their own set of problems but we are getting there.


On topic i was really hoping that bridgman would chime in and bring some good news regarding the whole valve thing.