richard kweskin
2014-11-21 09:09:10 UTC
Thank you, Mike Cammilleri, for bringing this up.
I am also very keen to have more information on this topic. I think it
worthwhile to mention a few things. On the site
http://www.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/Performance/ the topic
of acceleration is discussed and there is mentioned an older form of
acceleration named XAA and a newer form named EXA. The relevance for our
discussion is that some graphic card chipsets in older pcs won't work
with EXA unless we abandon the usual xorg driver and use the basic one
called vesa. This results in slower performance and without some
features provided by the non-vesa drivers.
Versions of xorg.core from 1.13 onwards no longer have XAA which did
work with these chipsets. This issue is present in all Linux distros.
Two are Ubuntu and Debian which I am following. In Ubuntu 12.04
xorg.core is at version 1.11 and so has XAA and these older graphic
cards still work without resorting to downgrading the driver used to
vesa. Debian Wheezy (stable) uses xorg.core 1.12 and also has XAA.
Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian Jessie (testing) use newer versions of xorg.core
and don't have XAA so these older chipsets only work with vesa.
Completely separate is the choice of desktop. My preference is lxde and
others much more knowledgeable than myself here in Greece prefer
gnome-fallback (gnome-flashback in some distros.) A site mentioning this
is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_GNOME_3 where mate is
also mentioned. My two cents on this is that because mate is using
gnome2 code which is no longer actively developed while gnome-fallback
is using gnome3 code which is may be an important difference.
Last point (sorry for length) is that Alkis Georgopoulos and the others
in the technical support team here in Greece who have been developing
and improving the use of ltsp for about 8? years now and have more than
400 state run schools using ltsp have said that the choice of
gnome-fallback was more about it using metacity while unity introduced
in Ubuntu 12.04 was only using compiz. Later versions of unity have the
adaptability to use metacity but compiz is its default. Since these
Greek schools (and so many others) had already adapted to gnome2,
gnome-fallback provides a no-brainer ease of use since it so closely
resembles gnome2 on the surface. Also, they said that while lxde is even
lighter (it uses openbox, not compiz or metacity) the main performance
drag with ltsp is the use of heavy apps like firefox and libreoffice.
Richard
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I am also very keen to have more information on this topic. I think it
worthwhile to mention a few things. On the site
http://www.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/Performance/ the topic
of acceleration is discussed and there is mentioned an older form of
acceleration named XAA and a newer form named EXA. The relevance for our
discussion is that some graphic card chipsets in older pcs won't work
with EXA unless we abandon the usual xorg driver and use the basic one
called vesa. This results in slower performance and without some
features provided by the non-vesa drivers.
Versions of xorg.core from 1.13 onwards no longer have XAA which did
work with these chipsets. This issue is present in all Linux distros.
Two are Ubuntu and Debian which I am following. In Ubuntu 12.04
xorg.core is at version 1.11 and so has XAA and these older graphic
cards still work without resorting to downgrading the driver used to
vesa. Debian Wheezy (stable) uses xorg.core 1.12 and also has XAA.
Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian Jessie (testing) use newer versions of xorg.core
and don't have XAA so these older chipsets only work with vesa.
Completely separate is the choice of desktop. My preference is lxde and
others much more knowledgeable than myself here in Greece prefer
gnome-fallback (gnome-flashback in some distros.) A site mentioning this
is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_GNOME_3 where mate is
also mentioned. My two cents on this is that because mate is using
gnome2 code which is no longer actively developed while gnome-fallback
is using gnome3 code which is may be an important difference.
Last point (sorry for length) is that Alkis Georgopoulos and the others
in the technical support team here in Greece who have been developing
and improving the use of ltsp for about 8? years now and have more than
400 state run schools using ltsp have said that the choice of
gnome-fallback was more about it using metacity while unity introduced
in Ubuntu 12.04 was only using compiz. Later versions of unity have the
adaptability to use metacity but compiz is its default. Since these
Greek schools (and so many others) had already adapted to gnome2,
gnome-fallback provides a no-brainer ease of use since it so closely
resembles gnome2 on the surface. Also, they said that while lxde is even
lighter (it uses openbox, not compiz or metacity) the main performance
drag with ltsp is the use of heavy apps like firefox and libreoffice.
Richard
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server
from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards
with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more
Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157005751&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
_____________________________________________________________________
Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto:
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss
For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net