Second Life Forums Archive - What do we want before SL Linux goes Beta?

Dale Glass

Evil Scripter

Join date: 12 Feb 2006

Posts: 252

09-05-2006 01:44

From: Merrick Moose

SL client does have four visible threads, but sadly doesn't use fork() which allows the use of multiple cores. So, those with dual core or multiprocessor of any type end up with one core at 100% and the other running the rest of the system if the system attempts to load balance. Maybe sometime there will be forking!

Modern Linux threading (NPTL) uses a process per thread (1x1), implemented with a variation of fork(), clone(), IIRC. The difference is that threads share address space, while normal processes don't.

The other alternative to that was MxN threading, where you had a number of kernel threads, which further subdivided themselves in several more in userspace, but this approach was problematic.

ninjafoo Ng

Just me :)

Join date: 11 Feb 2006

Posts: 713

09-05-2006 02:08

From: Merrick Moose

SL client does have four visible threads, but sadly doesn't use fork() which allows the use of multiple cores

Shhhh, noooo - I can't afford a dually!

_____________________

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Sukesada Suisei

Registered User

Join date: 11 Sep 2006

Posts: 2

Jack?

09-12-2006 04:01

From: Zi Ree

All the other things have already been said, so I just add my list:

ALSA sound support and the ability to select the output device either in the client or settings.xml would be great.

I'd like to see jack audio support - that way other apps can access the sound device too.

Seg Baphomet

Fedora Developer

Join date: 1 Oct 2005

Posts: 46

09-12-2006 11:12

Not sure why you'd want jack. Jack is built for a rather specific purpose, and its not video games. Besides, ALSA will allow sharing the audio device just fine with dmix if your card doesn't support it natively. Fedora has been shipping with dmix enabled out of the box for cards that need it for a while now.

And of course, using OSS causes SL to lock out all ALSA applications due to the way the OSS backwards compatibility works. Why isn't it just using the SDL sound API, which will happily support OSS and ALSA and even Jack for you?

Adam Kaupas

Registered User

Join date: 20 Aug 2006

Posts: 24

09-12-2006 14:13

From: Jacek Antonelli

File uploads and downloads are my absolute number one top priority! Currently, no "select file path" dialog appears, and I know of no way to manually specify a path. (Other than that, uploading seems to work fine, e.g. I can upload snapshots without any trouble.) This affects:

Upload Image
Upload Animation
Upload Sound
Bulk Upload
Save Texture as...
Snapshot to Disk [in File menu]
Save snapshot to hard drive [in the snapshot window]
Start/Stop Movie to Disk

Without these abilities, I am crippled as a designer, animator, texture painter, photographer, and machinematographer.

I would also mention the lack of Copy & Paste (which cripples me as a scripter and resident in general), but it has already been added in the preview client!

I'll second this - file upload! That'd be the next big thing to fix, now that we have sound and copy&paste

Merrick Moose

Registered User

Join date: 20 Oct 2005

Posts: 191

09-12-2006 15:17

Has anyone come across a crash when editing and linking objects?

shift + click to link while in a certain edit state seems to cause a crash, though getting into that state seems to be a rare situation. Will post more when I figure it out. Anyone else finding a crash while editing?

Fibonacci Columbino

Registered User

Join date: 25 Jul 2006

Posts: 6

10-15-2006 16:40

GStreamer. Or at least drop OSS altogether - I heard support for it in the kernel will be dropped Real Soon Now.

Dead keys support. Crucial for writing in any language that uses accented letters (Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, and many others come to mind).

From: Dale Glass

Not critical, but desirable: Make it behave like a proper Linux application. Move the config files and cache to $HOME/.secondlife, so that upgrades would be easier to do, and one copy could be used by multiple users.

Echo that. Perhaps make it so that the binaries can be put in /usr/lib or something like that.

Torrid Luna

Stylecrasher

Join date: 16 Aug 2006

Posts: 20

If I'd call it beta I would like to have...

10-15-2006 22:57

...
Copy & Paste, real, unix style c&p.
I cannot copy something out in the xterm by marking it with a mouse and klicking the middle button in the SL client or vice versa. (If there's an hack to do that, I would be happy to hear about that.)

Working ALSA.

External editing, Movies. But maybe that's already planned for version 0.999

Angel Sunset

Linutic

Join date: 7 Apr 2005

Posts: 636

10-15-2006 23:10

From: Fibonacci Columbino

Echo that. Perhaps make it so that the binaries can be put in /usr/lib or something like that.

I may be out of fashion, but I still prefer using /opt/Secondlife for application specific libs and binaries. /usr/lib or even /usr/local/lib ends up in a real muddle of "whose library IS this, anyway?".

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Jolt Tank

Registered User

Join date: 11 Jan 2006

Posts: 52

Chat history default, AGP issues, ALSA/OSS, and Keypad

10-16-2006 07:05

Things id like to see are
(Chat History in the upper left corner of the screen by default instead of on top of where the IM history is by default),

AGP issues resolved...
Selection of one of the three types of audio... or autodetect...
(the Alsa/OSS/and the other one thing)

Keyboard repeat resolved...
Keypad issue resolved (Might be in tuesdays release, who knows)

-Jolt Tank

Fibonacci Columbino

Registered User

Join date: 25 Jul 2006

Posts: 6

10-17-2006 01:24

From: Angel Sunset

I may be out of fashion, but I still prefer using /opt/Secondlife for application specific libs and binaries. /usr/lib or even /usr/local/lib ends up in a real muddle of "whose library IS this, anyway?".

Okay, de gustibus non est disputandum. The only thing I have on /opt is Sun Java - the other Java installation (the open source Java, I mean) is on /usr/lib.
The new app could perhaps come in a tarball that one can uncompress wherever one wants (/usr/lib, /opt, perhaps even /boot... j/k) - just as it's being done now, except that config files/cache would be written to one's home, independently of where the binaries are.

Tofu Linden

Linden Lab Employee

Join date: 29 Aug 2006

Posts: 471

10-17-2006 08:29

From: Fibonacci Columbino

The new app could perhaps come in a tarball that one can uncompress wherever one wants (/usr/lib, /opt, perhaps even /boot... j/k) - just as it's being done now, except that config files/cache would be written to one's home, independently of where the binaries are.

This will happen.

Fibonacci Columbino

Registered User

Join date: 25 Jul 2006

Posts: 6

10-17-2006 08:41

From: Tofu Linden

This will happen.

Great, thank you!

Hisemf Guynemer

Registered User

Join date: 30 Oct 2006

Posts: 1

Make Intel cards work (i945G) with i810 driver!!!

10-30-2006 17:14

************ UPDATE ****************

OK, I have it mostly working now. I edited the 'secondlife' script and uncommented the line that reads:

export LL_GL_NOEXT=x

This seems to fix the stability issues. Also, it makes the rendering of Trees, Bushes, and Help Spinning "?" thingies work correctly.

I was also finally able to "put on clothes". Though, there are some oddities with how it renders textures on my Avatar. For example, it renders the "Shirt" texture/color I select onto my hands. Also, Facial Hair causes a change to the skin tone. Shoes don't work at all; instead, it covers my feet with my "Pants" texture.

Hope this helps!

BTW: Intel Chipsets have excellent drivers that support the full gammit of OGL as far as I know. They don't have the "performance" of a higher-end chip, but, are capable nevertheless.

Anyway, It seems that everything works fairly decent at this point, though, there are a few *kinks*.

************ UPDATE ****************

Please!!! Please!!!

I'd really like to become a paying customer of Second Life, but, I won't bother if it's not going to work with my i945 card. It's OK if it's not as great or rich as on an Nvidia or ATI, but, I think it should work.

Right now, I can't get my Avatar to wear any clothes. No matter what I do, He is naked. I know I'm choosing the right options, but, it just always shows me a naked. I can see other avatars clothes though, so I know it's not an inherent limitation of the video driver.

Also, once I got beyon the "Intro" stage and teleported to the "Help Island", it freezes after about 2 to 3 minutes of walking around. This *might* be a driver problem as it completely locks my XServer. More likely though, it's a bug methinks.

I really like this concept, but, I want it to work with Ubuntu Edgy Eft and I want it to work with my chosen hardware.

Lookin' forward to the improvements.

Darkside Eldrich

Registered User

Join date: 10 Feb 2006

Posts: 200

10-30-2006 19:03

Looks like a driver bug, actually.

The problem with your chipset is that the only available drivers are open source, reverse-engineered drivers that don't support the full featureset of the video card. There's probably not a lot that can be done on LL's side of things (correct me if I'm wrong, Tofu!)

Drake Bacon

Linux is Furry

Join date: 13 Jul 2005

Posts: 443

10-31-2006 16:02

Turns out Intel has graphics drivers... but they're the free drivers from http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org/ and uses Mesa. They may not have everything needed to run SL properly. Looks like Intel is making the drivers open source, but I don't know if the hardware's fully exploited or Intel's holding back.

_____________________

Drake Bacon/Drake Winger
Home: Custom AMD X2 (65nm) 5000+, 4 Gig RAM, Gentoo amd64, NVidia GeForce 8600GT PCIe
Mobile: Dell Inspiron E1505 (Core Duo 1.6GHz, 1 gig RAM, Gentoo x86, NVidia GeForce Go 7300 PCIe)
Backup: iMac (Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, 4 gig RAM, ATI Radeon HD 2400, MacOS X Leopard)
Don't Ask: Asus EeePC 900A (Atom 1.6Ghz, 1 gig RAM, Intel graphics, Gentoo x86)

Vinci Calamari

Free Software Promoter

Join date: 27 Feb 2006

Posts: 192

packages

11-01-2006 17:04

From: Tofu Linden

This will happen.

What about Autopackage (http://autopackage.org/) . I rember that the author of Autopackage is also in Secondlife (the archives might give the answer). This could just work without having to be root to install SecondLife. i would consider this the most elegant solution and maybe the maintainer of autopackage would be happy to help (he indicated this some months ago).

I have had great experiences with autopackage. I think this is a great way forward for Linux (instead of one package for each distribution).

Vinci

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What do we want before SL Linux goes Beta?
Dale Glass Evil Scripter Join date: 12 Feb 2006 Posts: 252	09-05-2006 01:44 From: Merrick Moose SL client does have four visible threads, but sadly doesn't use fork() which allows the use of multiple cores. So, those with dual core or multiprocessor of any type end up with one core at 100% and the other running the rest of the system if the system attempts to load balance. Maybe sometime there will be forking! Modern Linux threading (NPTL) uses a process per thread (1x1), implemented with a variation of fork(), clone(), IIRC. The difference is that threads share address space, while normal processes don't. The other alternative to that was MxN threading, where you had a number of kernel threads, which further subdivided themselves in several more in userspace, but this approach was problematic.
ninjafoo Ng Just me :) Join date: 11 Feb 2006 Posts: 713	09-05-2006 02:08 From: Merrick Moose SL client does have four visible threads, but sadly doesn't use fork() which allows the use of multiple cores Shhhh, noooo - I can't afford a dually! _____________________ FooRoo : clothes,bdsm,cages,houses & scripts QAvimator (Linux, MacOS X & Windows) : http://qavimator.org/
Sukesada Suisei Registered User Join date: 11 Sep 2006 Posts: 2	Jack? 09-12-2006 04:01 From: Zi Ree All the other things have already been said, so I just add my list: ALSA sound support and the ability to select the output device either in the client or settings.xml would be great. I'd like to see jack audio support - that way other apps can access the sound device too.
Seg Baphomet Fedora Developer Join date: 1 Oct 2005 Posts: 46	09-12-2006 11:12 Not sure why you'd want jack. Jack is built for a rather specific purpose, and its not video games. Besides, ALSA will allow sharing the audio device just fine with dmix if your card doesn't support it natively. Fedora has been shipping with dmix enabled out of the box for cards that need it for a while now. And of course, using OSS causes SL to lock out all ALSA applications due to the way the OSS backwards compatibility works. Why isn't it just using the SDL sound API, which will happily support OSS and ALSA and even Jack for you?
Adam Kaupas Registered User Join date: 20 Aug 2006 Posts: 24	09-12-2006 14:13 From: Jacek Antonelli File uploads and downloads are my absolute number one top priority! Currently, no "select file path" dialog appears, and I know of no way to manually specify a path. (Other than that, uploading seems to work fine, e.g. I can upload snapshots without any trouble.) This affects: Upload Image Upload Animation Upload Sound Bulk Upload Save Texture as... Snapshot to Disk [in File menu] Save snapshot to hard drive [in the snapshot window] Start/Stop Movie to Disk Without these abilities, I am crippled as a designer, animator, texture painter, photographer, and machinematographer. I would also mention the lack of Copy & Paste (which cripples me as a scripter and resident in general), but it has already been added in the preview client! I'll second this - file upload! That'd be the next big thing to fix, now that we have sound and copy&paste
Merrick Moose Registered User Join date: 20 Oct 2005 Posts: 191	09-12-2006 15:17 Has anyone come across a crash when editing and linking objects? shift + click to link while in a certain edit state seems to cause a crash, though getting into that state seems to be a rare situation. Will post more when I figure it out. Anyone else finding a crash while editing?
Fibonacci Columbino Registered User Join date: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 6	10-15-2006 16:40 GStreamer. Or at least drop OSS altogether - I heard support for it in the kernel will be dropped Real Soon Now. Dead keys support. Crucial for writing in any language that uses accented letters (Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, and many others come to mind). From: Dale Glass Not critical, but desirable: Make it behave like a proper Linux application. Move the config files and cache to $HOME/.secondlife, so that upgrades would be easier to do, and one copy could be used by multiple users. Echo that. Perhaps make it so that the binaries can be put in /usr/lib or something like that.
Torrid Luna Stylecrasher Join date: 16 Aug 2006 Posts: 20	If I'd call it beta I would like to have... 10-15-2006 22:57 ... Copy & Paste, real, unix style c&p. I cannot copy something out in the xterm by marking it with a mouse and klicking the middle button in the SL client or vice versa. (If there's an hack to do that, I would be happy to hear about that.) Working ALSA. External editing, Movies. But maybe that's already planned for version 0.999
Angel Sunset Linutic Join date: 7 Apr 2005 Posts: 636	10-15-2006 23:10 From: Fibonacci Columbino Echo that. Perhaps make it so that the binaries can be put in /usr/lib or something like that. I may be out of fashion, but I still prefer using /opt/Secondlife for application specific libs and binaries. /usr/lib or even /usr/local/lib ends up in a real muddle of "whose library IS this, anyway?". _____________________ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Kubuntu Intrepid 8.10, KDE, linux 2.6.27-11, X.Org 11.0, server glx vendor: NVIDIA Corporation, server glx version: 1.5.2, OpenGL vendor: NVIDIA Corporation, OpenGL renderer: GeForce 9800 GTX+/PCI/SSE2, OpenGL version: 3.0.0 NVIDIA 180.29, glu version: 1.3, NVidia GEForce 9800 GTX+ 512 MB, Intel Core 2 Duo, Mem: 3371368k , Swap: 2570360k
Jolt Tank Registered User Join date: 11 Jan 2006 Posts: 52	Chat history default, AGP issues, ALSA/OSS, and Keypad 10-16-2006 07:05 Things id like to see are (Chat History in the upper left corner of the screen by default instead of on top of where the IM history is by default), AGP issues resolved... Selection of one of the three types of audio... or autodetect... (the Alsa/OSS/and the other one thing) Keyboard repeat resolved... Keypad issue resolved (Might be in tuesdays release, who knows) -Jolt Tank
Fibonacci Columbino Registered User Join date: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 6	10-17-2006 01:24 From: Angel Sunset I may be out of fashion, but I still prefer using /opt/Secondlife for application specific libs and binaries. /usr/lib or even /usr/local/lib ends up in a real muddle of "whose library IS this, anyway?". Okay, de gustibus non est disputandum. The only thing I have on /opt is Sun Java - the other Java installation (the open source Java, I mean) is on /usr/lib. The new app could perhaps come in a tarball that one can uncompress wherever one wants (/usr/lib, /opt, perhaps even /boot... j/k) - just as it's being done now, except that config files/cache would be written to one's home, independently of where the binaries are.
Tofu Linden Linden Lab Employee Join date: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 471	10-17-2006 08:29 From: Fibonacci Columbino The new app could perhaps come in a tarball that one can uncompress wherever one wants (/usr/lib, /opt, perhaps even /boot... j/k) - just as it's being done now, except that config files/cache would be written to one's home, independently of where the binaries are. This will happen.
Fibonacci Columbino Registered User Join date: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 6	10-17-2006 08:41 From: Tofu Linden This will happen. Great, thank you!
Hisemf Guynemer Registered User Join date: 30 Oct 2006 Posts: 1	Make Intel cards work (i945G) with i810 driver!!! 10-30-2006 17:14 ********** UPDATE ************** OK, I have it mostly working now. I edited the 'secondlife' script and uncommented the line that reads: export LL_GL_NOEXT=x This seems to fix the stability issues. Also, it makes the rendering of Trees, Bushes, and Help Spinning "?" thingies work correctly. I was also finally able to "put on clothes". Though, there are some oddities with how it renders textures on my Avatar. For example, it renders the "Shirt" texture/color I select onto my hands. Also, Facial Hair causes a change to the skin tone. Shoes don't work at all; instead, it covers my feet with my "Pants" texture. Hope this helps! BTW: Intel Chipsets have excellent drivers that support the full gammit of OGL as far as I know. They don't have the "performance" of a higher-end chip, but, are capable nevertheless. Anyway, It seems that everything works fairly decent at this point, though, there are a few kinks. ********** UPDATE ************** Please!!! Please!!! I'd really like to become a paying customer of Second Life, but, I won't bother if it's not going to work with my i945 card. It's OK if it's not as great or rich as on an Nvidia or ATI, but, I think it should work. Right now, I can't get my Avatar to wear any clothes. No matter what I do, He is naked. I know I'm choosing the right options, but, it just always shows me a naked. I can see other avatars clothes though, so I know it's not an inherent limitation of the video driver. Also, once I got beyon the "Intro" stage and teleported to the "Help Island", it freezes after about 2 to 3 minutes of walking around. This might be a driver problem as it completely locks my XServer. More likely though, it's a bug methinks. I really like this concept, but, I want it to work with Ubuntu Edgy Eft and I want it to work with my chosen hardware. Lookin' forward to the improvements.
Darkside Eldrich Registered User Join date: 10 Feb 2006 Posts: 200	10-30-2006 19:03 Looks like a driver bug, actually. The problem with your chipset is that the only available drivers are open source, reverse-engineered drivers that don't support the full featureset of the video card. There's probably not a lot that can be done on LL's side of things (correct me if I'm wrong, Tofu!)
Drake Bacon Linux is Furry Join date: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 443	10-31-2006 16:02 Turns out Intel has graphics drivers... but they're the free drivers from http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org/ and uses Mesa. They may not have everything needed to run SL properly. Looks like Intel is making the drivers open source, but I don't know if the hardware's fully exploited or Intel's holding back. _____________________ Drake Bacon/Drake Winger Home: Custom AMD X2 (65nm) 5000+, 4 Gig RAM, Gentoo amd64, NVidia GeForce 8600GT PCIe Mobile: Dell Inspiron E1505 (Core Duo 1.6GHz, 1 gig RAM, Gentoo x86, NVidia GeForce Go 7300 PCIe) Backup: iMac (Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, 4 gig RAM, ATI Radeon HD 2400, MacOS X Leopard) Don't Ask: Asus EeePC 900A (Atom 1.6Ghz, 1 gig RAM, Intel graphics, Gentoo x86)
Vinci Calamari Free Software Promoter Join date: 27 Feb 2006 Posts: 192	packages 11-01-2006 17:04 From: Tofu Linden This will happen. What about Autopackage (http://autopackage.org/) . I rember that the author of Autopackage is also in Secondlife (the archives might give the answer). This could just work without having to be root to install SecondLife. i would consider this the most elegant solution and maybe the maintainer of autopackage would be happy to help (he indicated this some months ago). I have had great experiences with autopackage. I think this is a great way forward for Linux (instead of one package for each distribution). Vinci _____________________ The SecondTux Linux User Wiki: http://stux.wikiinfo.org

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What do we want before SL Linux goes Beta?