5 ms·

I can only say the same. Bought a mighty expensive Sony netbook only to figure out that this integrated PowerVR graphics chip is a total disaster. In Windows an

by buster 14y ago

I can only say the same. Bought a mighty expensive Sony netbook only to figure out that this integrated PowerVR graphics chip is a total disaster. In Windows and much more in Linux, where it is 1. a pain to even bring to work and 2. so slow that it's barely usable. I must say i am really disappointed by Intel, which (in my oppinion) had and have great Linux support in their products. But not in this one. Stay away from Atoms with non-Intel Graphics.

gcb 14y ago
you mean, intel, the manufacturer of wifi drivers that only works with binary blobs? or the manufacturer of GPUs that work wonders with linux because they have no feature at all? i wouldn't count them so happily as linux supporters.
- hollerith 14y ago
  >GPUs that work wonders with linux because they have no feature at all? That's a little unfair. They might suck at 3-d immersive games, but some of us do not want to play 3-d immersive games, and the GPU integrated into my Core i5 does everything I want it to except perhaps smoothly play 1080p video. (720p playback OTOH works flawlessly.)
  - mattst88 14y ago
    Your Core i5 should have graphics with VA-API (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API) support, which shouldn't have any trouble playing 1080p video.
    - hollerith 14y ago
      I tested your assertion (on a clip with 48 frames/sec) and I could not get the video to skip. So, strike the part of my previous comment about 1080p video. (Maybe Adobe's notorious Flash Player for OS X was the cause of the skipping I observed in the past. If you give VLC a .flv file, does VLC use Adobe's player to play it?)
      - jdpage 14y ago
        It does not. FLV is just a container format for MPEG-4 video (and possibly other codecs).
        willvarfar 14y ago
        Kind of true, but I can still believe flash itself is the slow-down (from someone who once ported flash to a smartphone and saw the code and all)
        jdpage 14y ago
        Indeed, we are in agreement -- because FLV is a simple container format, it indicates that VLC is not using Flash Player, and is in fact notably more efficient in decoding.
- mattst88 14y ago
  Intel was the first vendor to have open source OpenGL 3.0 drivers, and have really driven Mesa development for the last few years. That hardly feels like "no features at all." Disclaimer: I'm starting at Intel on the open source graphics team next month.
  - gcb 14y ago
    Didn't know about first opengl3 drivers.
  - fsniper 14y ago
    So as a professional opinion, what do you think of intel creating unusable, proprietary software drivers for third party licensed chips?
    - mattst88 14y ago
      I don't really know anything about those drivers (they're not handled by the open source team). No one on the open source team likes them either. It has seemed to me that using these PVR chips has always been a stop gap measure for Atom until the in-house graphics were ready (where ready means sufficiently energy efficient or something). This seems to be confirmed by the fact that ValleyView graphics are going to be coming to Atom.
- buster 14y ago
  No, i have never had problems with Intel hardware in my laptop. The graphics drivers are extremely stable and have very few glitches. I can remember fglrx crashing my desktop or having graphics glitches oftne enough, but i can't remember one time where the intel driver wasn't working. Can't remember having problems with Wifi either. Also this article is full of praise for the WLAN experience: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_6205_wlan&num=1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel... If all linux drivers would work as flawlessly as the intel graphics drivers, that would be awesome :) (Of course it would be great if the Wifi driver would be completely open source as well!)
- raverbashing 14y ago
  >> the manufacturer of wifi drivers that only works with binary blobs? All wifi cards nowadays depend on a binary blob. Some of them depend on that being uploaded by the computer. >> i wouldn't count them so happily as linux supporters. Their support is certainly above average and they usually go the extra mile in supporting (except in PowerVR case of course) Other vendors are much worse
aw3c2 14y ago
I got an Atom with Intel graphics and NVIDIA Ion I can switch to. I really like it for gaming. Apart from it being a bit hacky (not grandma-friendly, not even dad-friendly) I am having no problems with it. On the contrary, I am glad I bought it.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- cskau 14y ago
  Sounds like my own Asus eeePC 1215N. I however never managed to get the NVIDIA chip working in Ubuntu. Whenever I want to use the graphics (games, WebGL, etc..) I have to reboot to windows. How did you get your system to run, if you don't mind me asking? In any case the poor experience of this system is what have made me aim for a AMD or at least clean (as in no NVIDIA or other chips) Intel system for my next machine.
  - benmccann 14y ago
    ATI has always had far worse Linux support than NVIDIA. I'm not sure if the situation has changed since AMD bought them, but I'd be hesitant to suggest going that route.
    - aw3c2 14y ago
      I chose the system because I had terrible experiences with amd/ati on Linux. I use bumblebee, acpi_call and bbswitch. with that I can launches processes that use the nvidia chip by pretending a command, for example "optirun ioquake3". that launches a secondary x server and using virtualgl streams the frames to my primary one. works quite well! edit: darn, replied to the wrong comment.
sciurus 14y ago
Are you talking about the VAIO P series? I had a VGN-P788K; I purchased it for $300 off ebay, but I recently resold it. It worked pretty well with the Linux 3.2 kernel in Ubuntu 12.04. There are definitely annoyances, but if you want the smallest laptop possible it may be worth it. The specs were pretty nice - 1.4 pounds, 8" 1600x768 display, 1.6 GHz Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, 64GB solid state drive, 802.11n wifi, built-in webcam, and integrated bluetooth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_VAIO_P_series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_VAIO_P_series
- buster 14y ago
  No, the Vaio X series. I will most likely reinstall it this weekend for my next vacation. Hopefully it's better today, but i doubt it ;)
  - sciurus 14y ago
    I wanted to get one of those, but even used they're still expensive. I think Ubuntu 12.04 or Fedora 17 will run acceptably. For Ubuntu, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1984236 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1984236 is the place to get help.

by buster 14y ago

gcb 14y ago

you mean, intel, the manufacturer of wifi drivers that only works with binary blobs? or the manufacturer of GPUs that work wonders with linux because they have no feature at all? i wouldn't count them so happily as linux supporters.

hollerith 14y ago
>GPUs that work wonders with linux because they have no feature at all? That's a little unfair. They might suck at 3-d immersive games, but some of us do not want to play 3-d immersive games, and the GPU integrated into my Core i5 does everything I want it to except perhaps smoothly play 1080p video. (720p playback OTOH works flawlessly.)
- mattst88 14y ago
  Your Core i5 should have graphics with VA-API (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API) support, which shouldn't have any trouble playing 1080p video.
  - hollerith 14y ago
    I tested your assertion (on a clip with 48 frames/sec) and I could not get the video to skip. So, strike the part of my previous comment about 1080p video. (Maybe Adobe's notorious Flash Player for OS X was the cause of the skipping I observed in the past. If you give VLC a .flv file, does VLC use Adobe's player to play it?)
    - jdpage 14y ago
      It does not. FLV is just a container format for MPEG-4 video (and possibly other codecs).
      - willvarfar 14y ago
        Kind of true, but I can still believe flash itself is the slow-down (from someone who once ported flash to a smartphone and saw the code and all)
        jdpage 14y ago
        Indeed, we are in agreement -- because FLV is a simple container format, it indicates that VLC is not using Flash Player, and is in fact notably more efficient in decoding.
mattst88 14y ago
Intel was the first vendor to have open source OpenGL 3.0 drivers, and have really driven Mesa development for the last few years. That hardly feels like "no features at all." Disclaimer: I'm starting at Intel on the open source graphics team next month.
- gcb 14y ago
  Didn't know about first opengl3 drivers.
- fsniper 14y ago
  So as a professional opinion, what do you think of intel creating unusable, proprietary software drivers for third party licensed chips?
  - mattst88 14y ago
    I don't really know anything about those drivers (they're not handled by the open source team). No one on the open source team likes them either. It has seemed to me that using these PVR chips has always been a stop gap measure for Atom until the in-house graphics were ready (where ready means sufficiently energy efficient or something). This seems to be confirmed by the fact that ValleyView graphics are going to be coming to Atom.
buster 14y ago
No, i have never had problems with Intel hardware in my laptop. The graphics drivers are extremely stable and have very few glitches. I can remember fglrx crashing my desktop or having graphics glitches oftne enough, but i can't remember one time where the intel driver wasn't working. Can't remember having problems with Wifi either. Also this article is full of praise for the WLAN experience: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_6205_wlan&num=1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel... If all linux drivers would work as flawlessly as the intel graphics drivers, that would be awesome :) (Of course it would be great if the Wifi driver would be completely open source as well!)
raverbashing 14y ago
>> the manufacturer of wifi drivers that only works with binary blobs? All wifi cards nowadays depend on a binary blob. Some of them depend on that being uploaded by the computer. >> i wouldn't count them so happily as linux supporters. Their support is certainly above average and they usually go the extra mile in supporting (except in PowerVR case of course) Other vendors are much worse

aw3c2 14y ago

I got an Atom with Intel graphics and NVIDIA Ion I can switch to. I really like it for gaming. Apart from it being a bit hacky (not grandma-friendly, not even dad-friendly) I am having no problems with it. On the contrary, I am glad I bought it.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
cskau 14y ago
Sounds like my own Asus eeePC 1215N. I however never managed to get the NVIDIA chip working in Ubuntu. Whenever I want to use the graphics (games, WebGL, etc..) I have to reboot to windows. How did you get your system to run, if you don't mind me asking? In any case the poor experience of this system is what have made me aim for a AMD or at least clean (as in no NVIDIA or other chips) Intel system for my next machine.
- benmccann 14y ago
  ATI has always had far worse Linux support than NVIDIA. I'm not sure if the situation has changed since AMD bought them, but I'd be hesitant to suggest going that route.
  - aw3c2 14y ago
    I chose the system because I had terrible experiences with amd/ati on Linux. I use bumblebee, acpi_call and bbswitch. with that I can launches processes that use the nvidia chip by pretending a command, for example "optirun ioquake3". that launches a secondary x server and using virtualgl streams the frames to my primary one. works quite well! edit: darn, replied to the wrong comment.

sciurus 14y ago

Are you talking about the VAIO P series? I had a VGN-P788K; I purchased it for $300 off ebay, but I recently resold it. It worked pretty well with the Linux 3.2 kernel in Ubuntu 12.04. There are definitely annoyances, but if you want the smallest laptop possible it may be worth it. The specs were pretty nice - 1.4 pounds, 8" 1600x768 display, 1.6 GHz Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, 64GB solid state drive, 802.11n wifi, built-in webcam, and integrated bluetooth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_VAIO_P_series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_VAIO_P_series

buster 14y ago
No, the Vaio X series. I will most likely reinstall it this weekend for my next vacation. Hopefully it's better today, but i doubt it ;)
- sciurus 14y ago
  I wanted to get one of those, but even used they're still expensive. I think Ubuntu 12.04 or Fedora 17 will run acceptably. For Ubuntu, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1984236 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1984236 is the place to get help.