Trying out Kernel mode setting Intel acceleration with Ubuntu Jaunty

*** Be Warned this is highly experimental and could cause you hours of wasted lifetime if you don't fully understand what you are doing. You can just wait for the next release of Ubuntu, when this will be built in. ****


I have had one or two minor graphic problems on my Dell XPS1330 with Ubuntu jaunty, which is to do with the transition of the type of graphics driver which is going to be installed with the next release of Ubuntu. One of the key features in the next release of Ubuntu will be the ability to use kernel mode setting which shifts responsibility for selecting and setting up the graphics mode from X.org to the kernel. This speeds this up, which means a better experience for the user.

Here is how I did it on my Dell.

First download these .deb files from here:

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.31-rc9/

linux-headers-2.6.31-020631rc9_2.6.31-020631rc9_all.deb
linux-headers-2.6.31-020631rc9-generic_2.6.31-020631rc9_i386.deb
linux-image-2.6.31-020631rc9-generic_2.6.31-020631rc9_i386.deb

Install them, but don't reboot just yet.

Next install the latest Intel graphics drivers using these links:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main

Then in a terminal run this:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Now create this file /etc/modprobe.d/i915-kms.conf and add this line.

options i915 modeset=1

Then finally run this command at a terminal.

sudo update-initramfs -u

Now re-boot your machine with your new kernel and test to see if you get improved graphics performance, I most definitely did. You might also want to check in /etc/X11/xorg.conf that you have a line like this:

Option "AccelMethod" "uxa" in the "Device" section.

Have fun.

What a week on the IT merry-go-round. Anyone for an IBMphone?

Being something of an old timer in the world of IT I thought I had seen pretty much all there was to see in the sometimes strange company interplays that are stuff of this industry. However, I was to be proved wrong, and I hadn't seen it all.

At the start of the week we have Oracle buying Sun for a cut down fee, and to put it mildly this opens up a can of worms with a lot of the technology that they have just acquired. Java, Solaris, ZFS, MySQL and of course all that marvellous new ZFS backed open source storage technology. I think this will take several months until anyone can have a clear picture of how all this shakes out, and just how much Larry Ellison has managed to annoy IBM.

Then we have the news today that Microsoft are really beginning to feel the full force of the Open Source revolution and the Netbook generation eating into their once great monopoly. I have posted often on all the causes for this change, which is unstoppable, and while part of their current problems are the disaster that is Vista and the economic downturn, there is way more to this story than that. Why did Redhat Linux and Apple Mac not suffer the same affects, given the exact same economic landscape? Having to bribe people with XP Home on netbooks at minimal mark-up, with zero chance of up-selling them any other products is a disastrous business strategy.

We also have the great news that Ubuntu have launched Jaunty today (version 9.04), and I'm happily upgrading from the Beta version to the full version as I type this post. Try doing that while doing an XP to Windows 7 upgrade ;) The beta has been rock solid and this is yet another fine release. All of my machines now boot/suspend quicker and once I have started to implement EXT4 everywhere, I expect to see even greater performance improvements.

We also had Ubuntu launch their updated operating system for the ARM processor, which is all part of the plan for the next generation of netbooks, which will basically completely exclude Microsoft from the market, as they can't compete on price, and they don't even have a version that will run on this processor.

After all these momentous happenings, lets hope that IBM don't start talking about buying a certain player in the MP3 and mobile phone market, anyone for the IBMphone or the IBMpod , with what has happened this week, anything is possible.

Simply no issues with the latest brew of Ubuntu

As you will have noticed I have been using the alpha releases, and the beta releases of Ubuntu 9.04 since they have become available, mainly for testing for our next release of eeebuntu which will be based on this version.

There are a few issues that will require a new kernel from Adam for the netbooks, but on the mainline desktops and laptops I have been testing it on I have found no major issues at all, which is very impressive for the array of different types of equipment I use. Everything from fussy Sony laptops and tiny netbooks to quad core HP desktop power machines.

I simply could not imagine being able to take another operating system and put it on so many different machines without having to hunt down drivers or fiddle with settings. If I had an IBM z390 mainframe, I could even stick it on their ;-)

To give the machines just that little bit of extra hassle I'm also testing the latest browsers from Mozilla - Firefix 3.5 beta4 pre - and Chromium for Linux pre Alpha, and all of these are proving to work fine in this beta environment.

The boot and suspend/resume times are truly impressive, and amongst all the great application version uplifts, I think most people will be impressed by these speed improvements.

Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 5 - netbook friendly

As you will be aware I work on the eeebuntu distro which is linked very closely to the Ubuntu distro, as that is what it is built upon.

So part of our work is to look at what is coming down the pipe in their next release to see how we can build on that and make it and even better experience for our users.

Until recently, Ubuntu has not been that friendly out of the iso towards some of the hardware we support, to such an extent we have had to replace the kernel and modify settings etc to make the whole experience more user friendly.

It has been stated that Ubuntu will be making efforts to make the next release more netbook friendly and on first impressions of this release they have certain made steps forward.

I am testing it on an Eeepc 1000, with 2GB of RAM and using a Kingston 2GB USB pen drive to run it from. The performance from the USB drive is very acceptable, and the hardware detection of the important netbook components was perfect. I'm posting this from that environment, so it is proof that the wifi card has been detected. I had problems with the previous version with 1000's mouse pad and two finger scrolling, both of these haave been fixed.

They have also disabled the CTRL-ALT backspace key combination to stop neew users reseting their X sessions by mistake, a good move in my opinion. They have also implemented the new notification system, which looks very impressive ,and hopefully this can be built upon for other uses. The new kernel 2.6.28, has obviously been compiled with many of the netbook requirements built in, so this makes testing it far easier.

I would definitely recommend installing it onto a USB drive and taking it for a spin to see what you think. The more eyes looking at the early builds, the more bugs can be found , and the better the final release will be.

Jaunty 9.04 Alpha