bodom_lx blog and things|

For people having Intel graphic chipset under Gnu/Linux, performance using 3D applications or Compiz-* window manager effects has always been a problem. Intel drivers for Xorg never gave problems but have also never been brilliant. I always looked around searching for xorg.conf tuning configuration entries.
Today I was simply browsing Ubuntu Wiki and discovered the UxaTesting page. I wanted to know something about UXA and Intel drivers, so I found a Wikipedia definition:

In computing, UXA is the reimplementation of the EXA graphics acceleration architecture of the X.Org Server developed by Intel. Its major difference with EXA is the use of GEM, replacing Translation Table Maps.

Yeah cool, the official Xorg Wiki Intel Graphics Driver page Gives also some more information, so if you've got one of these chipsets (you can verify using lspci | grep VGA ):

• i810 and variants thereof
• i815
• i830M
• 845G
• i852GM
• 855GM
• 865G
• 915G and variants (GMA 900)
• E7221
• 945G and variants (GMA 950)
• 946GME
• G33
• Q33
• Q35
• 965G/Q
• G35
• G41
• G43
• G/GM/Q45

You may want to try out the new acceleration method by adding this line


Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"


To your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, in section "Device".

Please note that:

1. UXA is not yet stable as EXA. Try it out, signal your experience on the Ubuntu wiki page and fill out a bug if necessary
2. You will need at least Xorg server 1.6.0
3. You will need at least xf86-video-intel-2.6.2 drivers
4. I don't think this is mandatory, but please tell me if you encounter differences when updating to 2.6.30.x kernel. I already have 2.6.30.0 on Sid so I don't know if with a previous version this is working

On Debian Sid I just had to add the Option line to my xorg.conf file.
The performance differences are noticeable and incredible. Everything runs faster and smoother.
My glxgears output went from 60 FPS (using EXA) to 425 FPS (using UXA).
This is a 700% performance improvement!

I've never been a big fan of rpm-based Gnu/Linux distributions, since I've always preferred the stability of Debian and Debian based distros, with their great dpkg system.
The problem with Debian on Macbooks is that I do not see both the stability and performance anymore, as I have to use Lenny/Sid. Etch is too old and I don't have the time (*sic*) to play with it to make it work well. Lenny should be next to be released but I don't feel the very famous stability AND lightness of Debian distributions on this release, like I was accustomed in the past years. Is this because I own a Macbook? Maybe, but a Macbook Santa Rosa is nothing more than an Intel-powered notebook with some strange input devices and a strange non-bios system

Regarding Ubuntu, I believe that this distribution has become naff and really slow. See this Slashdot discussion on this topic.

Yesterday I stumbled to Scientechie review of Fedora 10, which convinced me to try it out.
The software shipped with Fedora 10 is aligned with the one provided with the other distributions: Gnome 2.24.0, kernel 2.6.27.5, NetworkManager 0.7.0 (svn) and so on. Read the release notes for more information.

Fedora 10 really surprises me, as it is the first Gnu/Linux distribution in many, many years that makes me feel again the great stability and performance of the Penguin. Therefore I'm writing this review that is also a how-to, as it contains some fixes for Fedora 10 and Macbooks.

(more...)

I really like (and miss) Linux Mint Menu (mintmenu), so I installed it on my Debian Sid box and here is how I managed it:

• Install mintsystem and mintmenu deb packages, either by adding mint repository to yout sources.list file or by downloading them from mint packages or simplier, by grabbing them from my blog
• Help it to recognize your applications by symlinking some files in /etc/xdg/menus (as root):
  

  ln -s gnome-applications.menu applications.menu
  ln -s gnome-preferences.menu preferences.menu
  ln -s gnome-settings.menu settings.menu

• Add mintMenu to your Gnome panel..

et voilà! Here are the two deb files I'm using:
mintsystem_61_all
mintmenu_4.2_all

Here is an updated screenshot:

MintMenu complete under Debian Sid

If you also want to enable beagle or tracker, be sure to add the correct search command in the preferences of mintMenu (see the screenshot)

When I announced BD-incollo 6 days ago, I also mentioned that I would have launched the service today. I really did that, and I'm very proud to announce the first site that runs BD-incollo.
http://incollo.com! Very easy
Incollo.com is a collaborative debugging tool like Pastebin or other similar services, but it's slightly different from it. And it's different from other Pastebin clones even written using Rails or Django.
Here are the most exciting features:

• It's Fast. Very Fast
• Written thinking about usability
• A very clean interface, a minimalist design that gives space to the code (as it should always be)
• It's possible to search through pastes, like in a forum
• A Paste is not deleted after 30 days or something similar. A paste is deleted after it is no more interesting! It's deleted after 60 days of no visualizations
• The system is anonymous. It won't store your information! Paste whatever you want but please use your brain! A Paste may be reported to the administrator!
• You don't really have to play with options and there are no required field other than the Paste itself. You may paste a text and directly hit the submit button
• Quite every page is XHTML 1.0 compatible
• It works well and has nice urls, thanks to Django
• Compatible with every browser (tested with Internet Explorer 6,7,8, Mozilla Firefox 3, Apple Safari, Google Chrome)
• Resolution friendly! Liquid design that adapts to every monitor resolution (tests from 1024x768)
• Developer friendly! Every functionality of incollo.com can be used with max 2 mouse clicks and without a mouse scroll!
• Tested with lots of pastes, quite every source code should be perfectly viewed (this does not happen with every pastebin clones I've tried)
• Uses Pygments for code highlighting
• Languages supported: ActionScript, Assembly (various), Boo, Befunge, BrainFuck, C, C++, C#, Common Lisp, D, Delphi, Dylan, Erlang, Haskell (incl. Literate Haskell), Java, JavaScript, Lua, MiniD, MooCode, MuPad, OCaml, PHP, Perl, Python (incl. console sessions and tracebacks), Redcode, Ruby (incl. irb sessions), Scheme, Visual Basic.NET, Django/Jinja templates, ERB (Ruby templating), Genshi (the Trac template language), Myghty (the HTML::Mason based framework), Mako (the Myghty successor), Smarty templates (PHP templating), JSP (Java Server Pages), , Other markup, , Apache config files, Bash shell scripts, BBCode, CSS, Debian control files, Diff files, Gettext catalogs, Groff markup, HTML, INI-style config files, IRC logs (irssi style), Makefiles, MoinMoin/Trac Wiki markup, Redcode, ReST, SQL, also MySQL, Squid configuration, TeX, Vim Script, Windows batch files, XML

This is an example of Paste with Incollo.com:
http://incollo.com/7dca5011

You are really welcome to report any bugs or leave a feedback! Remember that this is my very first Django project, and I created it in about 6 days!

Of course, I'm already beginning to think about new features

When I write an article in my poor English, I like to check it with the Google Translate service. While I was checking my last post, I noticed a funny error in the translation, look at it:

It's curious, because if you try to translate just "Debian Etch", the translation is "correct".

Happy new year everybody!
I'm sure you found my site offline quite a lot of times in the last week. I decided to format the whole server and to move from the UML virtualisation system to the more convenient Xen system, which is still in beta testing at Linode but full working for my personal needing. The decision to switch to Xen was because of its support to multicore CPUs, needed by a couple of applications I'm using for personal studies.
The linux distribution I've chosen is Debian Etch again, stable, quite fast and easy to be maintained.
The software has been updated and some security tips have been adopted, and thanks to the free resources upgrade by Linode, Apache server has came back.
I'm really enjoying my VPS experience =)