In DragonFly BSD KMS adds support for Intel graphics cards
Francois Tigeot reported on the implementation of KMS module to switch to video mode kernel DragonFly BSD. Code is integrated into the master-branch git-repository DragonFly BSD. Supported graphics cards on the chipset Intel i915.
The basis was taken code for FreeBSD, which has been ported to the kernel DragonFly BSD. In addition to the Francois, the development was also attended by Aggelos Economopoulos, Johannes Hofmann and Matthew Dillon. In particular, the mechanism has been implemented PAT Matt Dillon. KMS support is required to use the latest versions of video drivers from Intel, which has been removed support for switching video modes at the user level (UMS) and left only support KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) to switch video modes at the kernel level.
Instructions for those wishing to try out KMS:
- Download the latest snapshot of the DragonFly BSD for architecture x86_64;
- in / etc / make.conf add “WITH_NEW_XORG = true” and “WITH_KMS = true”;
- set the entire graphics stack of DPorts, including xf86-video-intel;
- to your / etc/X11/xorg.conf in the section Driver specify “intel”.
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Evaluating the effectiveness of dynamic power management patches for discrete Radeon cardsResource Phoronix, previously making preliminary tests of the new power management card Radeon (“DPM”) on the example of APU, produced a new series of tests. In this case study the work of the power management for the relatively powerful family of discrete graphics cards Radeon.The testing work was studied the mechanism of power management DPM graphics card HD4890, HD6770 and HD6870 and a comparison with the power management mechanisms used by default. In addition to the performance in the testing process also took into account the temperature of the GPU and graphics card power consumption.
Almost all tests the performance remained at about the same level as the power management “default” (powerful discrete graphics card Radeon family in most cases, the default start at the maximum operating frequency). However, during testing, a significant reduction was observed and the temperature GPU graphics appreciable reduction of power consumption during most tests.
In general, the tests showed that the new power management works on most GPU is very good (resource names Phoronix tests “Fantastic”). In the test kernel releases 3.11-rc2 and-rc3 fixes several bugs related to the mechanism of DPM, and at the moment, this mechanism is considered to be stable and not having known errors. Nevertheless, for the activation is still necessary to specify radeon.dpm = 1 kernel command line.
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Released Live-distribution Parted Magic 2013_08_01, who joined with systemd-udev on eudev
Presented release Parted Magic 2013_08_01, compact LiveCD / LiveUSB distribution system recovery after a crash. The GUI is based on the environment LXDE. In the minimum console mode distribution can run on machines with 48 MB of RAM to run in Live-mode requires 312 MB of RAM. The size of iso-image 336 MB.In preparing the new version focused on correcting past mistakes. In the announcement notes that Parted Magic 2013_08_01 is one of the most thoroughly tested releases in the history of the project. Of the innovations deserves mention migration from systemd-udev on eudev, developed by Gentoo developers fork udev. Thus, Parted Magic was one of the first distributions referred by default eudev. According to the developers, the use of eudev helped solve a number of long-present unexplained problems.
Among the other changes:
- The redesigned interface to display information about the results of anti-virus updates;
- The program to display a list of installed applications adds support for splitting the output into groups, instead of the linear display a list of thousands of packages;
- Completely revised and given to a single mind boot menu EFI GRUB2 and syslinux;
- Simplifying the process of starting and stopping services Parted Magic;
- The structure includes new programs wxHexEditor, powertop, mbuffer, mhash and emelfm2;
- Added new interface for setting the clock.
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Project Neon began forming experimental builds packages with KDE Frameworks 5
Project Neon began forming daily build packages with lessons learned in KDE Frameworks 5. To assess the current state of development of the next generation of KDE stack prepared a special repository that is available for use in Kubuntu / Ubuntu. In this case, experimental packages are installed in the directory hierarchy / opt and are present in parallel with the stable version of KDE, without affecting its operation.
To set the user session in the Neon 5 LightDM, founded by the work of KDE Frameworks 5 should do:
- sudo apt-add-repository ppa: neon/kf5
– sudo apt-get install project-neon5-session
Formation of Live-assemblies KDE Frameworks 5 and KDE Plasma Workspaces 2 based on Qt5 and Wayland is expected early next year. Issues Kubuntu 13.10 and 14.04 LTS will be supplied with a classic stack X.Org and KDE 4.11. The first stable release of KDE Plasma Workspaces 2 scheduled for release next summer.
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Performance Comparison of OpenGL games in Windows, Ubuntu and FreeBSD
Resource Phoronix tested the performance of gaming applications that are executed in a Windows 8, Ubuntu 13.10-pre and FreeBSD 9.1 (used in assembly PC-BSD 9.1). When testing each system were used three configurations with graphics GeForce 9800GTX, GeForce GTX 460 and GeForce GTX 680, which used proprietary drivers NVIDIA.FreeBSD entourage showed unexpectedly good results, showing similar with Windows and Ubuntu scores in tests Nexuiz, Unigine Sanctuary and Unigine Tropics, and significantly ahead of Windows and Ubuntu in the test Xonotic, which may indicate that FreeBSD is quite suitable for use as a gaming platform . Among the assumptions about the causes of leadership in the test FreeBSD Xonotic, referred to the use of different versions of the driver NVIDIA (310.44 FreeBSD and 325-beta in Ubuntu) and use desktop environment KDE, which is not prone to excessive buffering, which is observed in the process of Unity / Compiz.
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