Linux viewer going beta anytime soon?

Is there a specific target date to achieve at least beta quality with the Linux viewer?

Currently, with all the new features being implemented, it seems like having a stable Linux viewer is of little priority... It would be understandable, if that's the case, but what can Linux-only users look forward to in terms of their SL user experience?

Right now the only major feature unimplemented in the Linux client is quicktime movies, but Tofu Linden has stated he's whipping up a GStreamer-based implementation. Once that's done, the Linux client could be officially called beta(Voice however is a different issue; Tofu's just waiting for the voice vendor to release a Linux binary blob for us).

To get movies externally in the meantime, do this:

Probably the actual branding of the client has nothing to do with the quality.

I hate to say it, but Google, with its shower of ooh-shiny network apps, pervasively "in beta" for years on end, pushed onto everyone's perception that "beta" means "ready for general use, but we don't guarantee anything". Newsflash - that's true for MOST software.

Calling such software beta perverts the nature itself of the term beta, as least wrt how it was originally conceived. As it stands, however, software houses resent using "beta" unless they feel the product is, actually, ready for general use!

That defeats the term itself. Thus, all the bizarre branding convolutions ("release candidate", "pre-beta", "alpha" but not with real alpha status, and combinations of these terms!) to describe software that is "almost ready for general use, but we don't guarantee anything".

Bottom line is that calling something "beta" nowadays vows a different promise of usability than it was in the past, at least in the perception of users.

And, as we know, perception of reality is much more important than reality itself.

Well, I started this thread because my experience is indeed very alpha, in terms of stability. Crashes are way too common (several times a minute sometimes) to be reproduced properly, or reach any conclusion. But with all the alpha talk when it comes to the Linux viewer, I figured that might be "normal" for alot of different hardware/driver combinations.

I'm not ruling out hardware problems of my own at all, tho.

I see your point.

I had the same problem. Just out of curiosity: what's your nominal network speed? How is your max bandwidth slider configured?

Here's an hint: lower the max bandwidth. Don't know how much. 3/4, 2/3, even half the actual value. Lower it, try to connect, see if it improves, and if not, lower it again a bit.

Who knows this trick will solve for you as it did for me...

As far as quality goes, the Linux viewer is at least as good as the Windows and Mac viewers. I would classify it as release quality, no guarantees, with video not implemented. I find that very often my viewer is more reliable than all the mostly Windows users around me. When the grid gets funky, often I find that everybody but me is crashing. When the grid is good, I can go a long time between crashes.

As for Linux voice, I've been hearing that "we're waiting for that binary blob" for far too long. It doesn't take months to compile a blob for Linux, it takes minutes. Now they are talking about releasing voice to the main grid, and there's still no Linux support. I think they don't care. If they did, they would start kicking some backsides down at Vivox, and they wouldn't release voice to the main grid until Linux voice was working and tested.

I didn't have the chance to try you hint, but I did try something else. I installed the viewer on a laptop, a Toshiba Tecra M3 with a GeForce Go 6600 running Ubuntu 6.04 and version 8776 of the nvidia drivers, and... it worked perfectly! Did have one crash, but nothing very serious. It worked flawlessly for almost 2 hours.

On the desktop I run Ubuntu 7.04 with the latest drivers, and have an old GeForce 5200... I'm gonna try another graphics card there and see what happens.

I can strip out the binary blob? I don't want to run more than I need to and I am not going to use the voice chat.
the freer the client the happier I am.

My own experience is that the last few versions of the Linux client have had more memory leaks and therefore require more available memory (at least 1 GB) for peak rendering tasks. Not enough, and at some point the client just freezes or crashes.

Also, some client - distro version - driver version combinations continue to give persistent rendering issues, jerkiness and even greater memory requirements.

It is clear that system requirements for the client will continue to go up with future versions, even if one does set the detail sliders lower.

Right, this is in a good enough state for Beta now - I'm just in the final stages of testing and tidy-up for the first pass of this feature and then I expect we'll start calling the Linux client Beta (for those who care!).

I care!

Good is GREAT (as it is now) but Beta is well, Better

For me, Alpha and Beta are more about who is testing the software, than the quality level.

Alpha testing is inside the organization that write the software.
Beta is testing to testers outside, and only for allowing them to report problems.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_stage.

In my head, these terms should be used to a specific version number, not to the overall product.

I am more subjective on this: Beta is "Finished, but there are bugs" - in other words, in the normal release cycle with normal support, plus extra bug tracing and fixing. And Alpha is - "some of the stuff is there, but we are still working on getting it into our normal product tree". The Test Grid of SL is a Beta for me - "This is what you will get - but look for Bugs".

To me the REAL "Beta" point of the client would be when Video works in world... But I guess I am strict on this. "Beta" has everything, plus bugs Alpha does NOT have everything - plus Bugs

Reading this Thread, i tried to remember when i crashed the last time.

It is at least 2 weeks ago. Im online at least 3 or 4 hours a day.
In certain places, windows users are crashing like crazy around me.
I stay.

So big compliment to Tofu and his team.