Tips for the SL Linux Client

agp and ripple water don't work for me. However, I have one more useful one:

RenderAvatarMode 2

This turns on "bumped map and cloth" for the avatar.

(anything to bump the thread )

I think that's the consensus, right now. No pixel shaders, no AGP support.



Cool, have to give this a try.

So what happens when the binary package has a vulnerability? If you're giving it permission to overwrite files on the system, you get rooted.

Couple of things:

- As Angel has seen the problem with blurred textures that sharpen when you hover the mouse is due to texture memory being set to minimum. Hack it in the config file and it should work.

- Wines audio is stuttering because of a mismatch between the Win32 and Linux permission models, Windows apps usually try and raise the priority of the dsound mixer thread but on Linux that needs root.

Setting thread priorities currently isn't implemented in Wine. If it's a serious issue then it could be implemented, but you'd need to run Wine as root to get the benefits. Right now there doesn't seem much point in fixing SL/Wine bugs as the official client now exists.

If it turns out that LL aren't intending to hire a full time Linux using developer then maybe it'd be worth doing.

seeing as their long term goal is for an open source client, it's in their intrest to get a linux developer onboard to identify portability problems within the code.

That helps quite a bit, but the cache algorithm also takes into account main memory, and SL Linux only sees 1 MB of that. Try "About Secondlife", under Help

If you type ctrl alt 3, you can see that the texture cache is being constantly emptied... I think this will only really get fixed, when SL Linux sees main memory too.

I live in hope of Beta Days

Yes, but for binary games, the game data should be in /opt/gamename/ with symlinks or scripts to run from /usr/games/bin... See the ebuild for doom3, quake3, ut2004, etc.


Well, with Cedega in gentoo, you *should* use the auto-updater, since it updates the Cedega engine on a per-user basis... which is pretty annoying, really.

I never really understood the purpose of /opt I've not really encountered a linux distro that uses it and the gentoo install instructions don't suggest you make a partition for it, I know some commercial unixes such as HP-UX have it.

I just synlinked the damn thing to /usr when the doom3 ebuild came along, since there wasn't room in my / partition. I just wish /opt would go away as it destroys my nice friendly image of a linux filesystem. The only thing that used /opt before then was RealPlayer, which I uninstalled ages ago anyway.

SuSE Linux uses /opt for firefox/mozilla, KDE, Gnome and Open Office. I believe they place all the big packages there to prevent pollution of the /usr tree and make it possible to have a separate mountpoint on /opt for the big players.

On gentoo at least, it's typical purpose is to store closed-source packages. Anything that's not open source installs to /opt.

Some distros do other things with it... I guess "opt" is for "optionally, you could put stuff in here"!

I think /opt is most useful, when the application comes with its own "filesystem tree", including libraries, to avoid library conficts in /usr or /usr/local.

I know some apps do install in /usr/local, and add entries there related to the app name, building up a tree including libraries, but I think this is bent

Cleaner for me, is apps that have a complete "tree", belong in /opt, and ones that use the existing libs, in /usr/local.

/opt is however falling into disuse, it seems.

edit: what is good about /opt. --------------

While I was working on solaris systems, I installed netcape in /opt on the file server, and exported /opt/netscape (a soft link to the actual netscape version we were using) to all our workstations via NFS. This made update a breeze, and killed a LOT of overheads on the client. The critical point was, all the special stuff netscape needed was in /opt/netscape. Exporting /usr/local would have been a bit less specific, and I would not have been able to do it, since it would have overwritten the /usr/local on each client.

end edit ------------------

Mark, what are you and Angel talking about here? Where is the config file (not setting.ini?) to change the texture memory? I guess there is the possibility that it isn't being reported correctly in the 'About' page.

Sorry, that is a bit confusing, the way it was stated.

The terms "config file" and "settings.ini" are being used interchangeably. They are unfortunately the same thing, so there is no hidden way (that I know of) other than editing settings.ini (or the startup script secondlife) to influence how SL Linix runs.

So what is the name of the parameter that can be changed to modify the texture memory? Or are you talking hypothetically? As such I've been having a far more problems with changing clothing items in the linux client than with the windows client, with the likes being reported this afternoon:

2006-03-25T14:12:14Z WARNING: Asset download request timed out for 8420e046-6100-575f-a28c-b92e29818ce4.clothing
2006-03-25T14:12:14Z WARNING: Wearable download failed: File transfer timeout 8420e046-6100-575f-a28c-b92e29818ce4
2006-03-25T14:12:14Z INFO: Adding additional non-duplicate request for UUID 8420e046-6100-575f-a28c-b92e29818ce4

Hi! If you look at the very first post in this thread, it describes just that: the entry in settings.ini you need to set, and to which value - depending on how much graphic memory your card has. This seems to help a lot.

Have a look there. Aside from telling SL how much graphics memory you have, there is no other way to influence the texture cache. And even this is not perfect, since SL (maybe for laptop compatibility), uses both graphic card memory and main memory in managing texture cache. SL Linux only detects 1 MB main memory, so Texture Caching is not that effective

--- edit regarding clothing ---

This could be the bad packets issue. SL Linux allows a HUGE bandwidth to SL servers (I have seen, today, 1800 kbps !!!, though my max is set to 1000 kbps), especially just after you start SL or TP somewhere, and then you can get much more bad packets than with windows, which does not allow anywhere NEAR this speed. That means some stuff has a problem getting to you during this time. It seems to be quite OK once the bad packets indicator has settled down to zero, which happens after a short while.

--- end edit ---

Debian's policy is to not use /opt, period. /opt is for external packages. Means, some third-party software house doing their own .deb, they could/should install in /opt. No idea how many do (if they produce debs at all).

At least that's Debian's reading of FHS chapter 3, with which I agree (packages included in/by the distribution are, IMHO, not "add-on".

One thing I did try recently was setting the cache to 500MB and replacing the cache folder with a link to /dev/shm - Essentially putting the cache on a ram drive. If you don't have a ram drive - its a kernel thing, see your distro.

Now as the cache is cleared every time the linux client is started anyway, you can probably get away with a 50mb - 200mb cache depending on how long your play sessions are. (You can use df -h to see how much ram the cache is actually using)

Made quite a difference when returning to an area that has been loaded previously, the world geometry reloads noticeably faster. You still have to r.click everywhere to get the textures back, but as they're coming from ram it is much quicker.

YMMV

To make it short:
You can opt not to use /opt, however, I opt to use /opt, and others might opt to use /opt, too.

Different choices, I guess.
(And sorry for the bad joke

I got a DUH trick concerning the Right Click: go into EDIT (ctrl3), and select everything on your screen by left click & dragging the mouse: Wait a few seconds, and go out of edit again. This seems to force a load as far as the eye can see

When I was told this, I had to say Duh! But then, I am not the geekiest of geeks

OMG!!

/me Duh!!

i dont know if anyone's done this already. but wouldnt it be nice if someone (dont look at me, im lazy) compiled this thread's tips into a wiki page or two, and grouped them up. so tips for the settings.ini file were together etc.

bump!

Can we make this a sticky, please?

I cannot make this a sticky, but it has been added to the first post of the "download" sticky.

I hope that helps

Need a forum mod to come work magic

I downloaded the latest version of the Alpha client (1.11.0.11), and after struggling for a bit with my distro (SimplyMEPIS 6.0), I got SL running (I had to change my colour depth from 16 to 24 bits).

I know it was there on earlier versions, but this latest version of the client doesn't seem to have the "settings.ini" file. Has it been renamed to something else? I've found that the video memory tweak (GraphicsCardMemorySetting 4 for 256Mb) for my nVidia video card does my SL experience a world of good.