Beryl options and nvidia

[Marc Schwartz]

On Fri, 2007-01-05 at 12:19 -0800, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> On 1/5/07, Marc Schwartz <marc_schwartz at comcast.net> wrote:
> > Gérard Milmeister wrote:
> > > I have beryl running with nvidia prop. drivers with the following
> > > options:
> > > beryl --use-cow --force-aiglx --skip-gl-yield
> > > There are now problems with black windows etc... that may appear with
> > > other options. The X server is running with increased priority (set by
> > > using schedtool), so there responsiveness is good running tvtime
> > > smoothly even under system load.
> > > There is one small issue however: Before a menu window is filled with
> > > content, there may appear some artifacts in the window background. These
> > > disappear if I use the --force-nvidia option, but then UI responsiveness
> > > is distintively slower and tvtime does not run smoothly anymore.
> > > Is this is a known issue?
> >
> > There are known problems with the current nVidia drivers and the use of
> > Compiz/Beryl, secondary to the current incomplete implementation of
> > texture_from_pixmap (TFP) required for compositing. Based upon the
> 
> incomplete in what way?

Quoting from the 9629 Release Highlights last November 7:

"Added initial support for GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap."

The word "initial" suggests to any reasonable reader that the
implementation is not complete or at least not fully stable and
certainly experience over the two months since then has born that out.

There has been no further mention of TFP in any of the similar highlight
notes for any of the subsequent stable releases, despite hundreds of
posts on nvNews, here and elsewhere relative to ongoing problems with
running any of the composting managers.

> > present timeline since nVidia was made aware of these issues (> 2
> > months), a fix appears to be a low priority for them and their official
> > line is that they are still "investigating the problem".  Taken
> > literally, that would suggest that they have not yet even identified the
> > problem, as opposed to "we are investigating possible solutions".
> 
> And you know this how?

Well, as paid employee of nVidia, perhaps you will do me the courtesy of
formally correct me?  That has been your stock communication on the
nvNews Linux forum for weeks without further elaboration or any sign of
incremental progress. 

Note that I used the words _incremental progress_, not "final, stable,
complete solution". There has been no confirmation of anyone actually
working on the problem other than trying to read between the lines of
the above statement. It does not mean that someone (or even more than
one person) is even working on the problem full time given the other
priorities that seem to be implicit in other statements also made on
nvNews.

> > Even more interesting is that their beta driver web page at:
> >
> >    http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_rel70betadriver.html
> >
> > appears to be now totally blank save the header graphic, presuming that
> > there is not a server problem.
> 
> It doesn't look blank to me.  

Well, it was coming up blank this morning and I re-checked it before I
posted here initially to be sure. I even use three different browsers to
be sure that it was not a Firefox issue. I just checked it once more and
it now comes up, so perhaps there was a transient server problem.

> And i'm not sure why you'd want a beta
> driver when it was replaced with a newer non-beta several weeks ago.

Because, believe it or not Lonnie, there are lots of people here (me
included) who would gladly help nVidia test beta versions of your
drivers to help move things along here. But none have been forthcoming,
which is why I pointed out the beta page above and why I do check it
frequently looking for a new beta version to test.

Beta and even alpha testing are common for folks within this community
and is something that I have done periodically with RH/FC over the past
several years dating back to the late RH 8.0 betas and for other FOSS
projects that I participate actively in.

Ball's in your court.

Marc