The GPU Acceleration Situation In Firefox 6

[strcat]

They've updated the build to use gcc 4.5, with -03 optimization flags and PGO. So Mozilla builds should be noticeably faster than before, although I'm not sure if that will carry over into distro builds or not.

Arch Linux started using PGO with firefox 5.0[1] and I think firefox overrides the CFLAGS optimization level. I'm sure you could file bug reports and get it enabled in other distros.

[1] https://projects.archlinux.org/svnto...86_64/PKGBUILD

[smitty3268]

FF6 also brings updates to the Mozilla linux build

They've updated the build to use gcc 4.5, with -03 optimization flags and PGO. So Mozilla builds should be noticeably faster than before, although I'm not sure if that will carry over into distro builds or not.

[HokTar]

I don't understand. Wasn't Gallium3D supposed to be better than classic by now? And even have less bugs?

What's going on?

Here is the summary for you.

[smitty3268]

I don't understand. Wasn't Gallium3D supposed to be better than classic by now? And even have less bugs?

What's going on?

The bug Firefox had with the Gallium drivers was within Firefox itself. They tracked down and fixed that bug, but didn't want to change the whitelist in FF6 without a full round of testing first.

FF7 will still only require Mesa 7.10.3, so the drivers have been good at least since that point. If I recall, the Gallium drivers were fine in 7.10.0 as well, it was some bug affecting both classic and Gallium that made them bump it to 7.10.3.

Edit: the actual bugfix may have been ported from FF7 into 6, so if you run FF6 and bypass the whitelist it may work correctly. But i'm not 100% sure whether that bug got fixed there or not.

[RealNC]

I don't understand. Wasn't Gallium3D supposed to be better than classic by now? And even have less bugs?

What's going on?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The GPU Acceleration Situation In Firefox 6

Mozilla Firefox 6.0 is to be officially released on Tuesday (it's already out if you look on FTP mirrors) with faster performance, better start-up times, improved plug-in management, greater HTML5 support, more permission controls, and several other features. What's not talked about much, but is huge for the affected Linux users, is that the GPU acceleration situation begins to be sorted out...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTc4Nw