One Year Blogging

As September comes to a close so does my twelfth month of writing:
Thoughts on Technology

What started off as a small page for me to post my tech tips and tricks for myself and friends has spiraled into over 50,000 unique hits a month for the the last three months. I'd just like to say thanks to all those who read regularly, if you could please drop a comment on this post letting me know who you are and why you read.

I'd also like to say thanks to Wine Reviews - they where the first ever to re-post one of my works and really generate some traffic for my page here. Thanks also to Lxer, Raiden's Realm, /r/Linux, and all the countless other places that I have found links back to my works here.

If you ever have a suggestion for something you would like to see written or would just like to say hello, please feel free to send me an email - JeffHoogland at Linux dot com

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

LibreOffice - What it means to End Users

Open Office has been the defacto standard for open source productivity suites for some time now. It provides a high quality, free alternative to Microsoft's costly Office software and is completely cross-platform. As with many of the larger open source projects Open Office has had a corporate backer for the last ten years, up until recently that backer was Sun Micro-systems. In 2009 a software company known as Oracle bought out Sun Micro-systems (and thus all the open source projects they backed).

Yesterday the Open Office community announced they were forking the project. The results of splitting off an FOSS project means many things to many people. Most all of my friends and family, regardless of their operating system of choice, are end users of the Open Office project. As such I have been getting a few questions wondering what exactly this fork means to them:

Why should the end user care about the forking of Open Office?

Well there are a few reasons. The first and foremost thing a forking brings to the table is more choice. This means in addition to Open Office there will also be the community driven Libre Office.

Next as many in the Linux community know, forking a project sometimes creates something that is much better than the original. With Libre Office I am hoping this will also be the case. Libre Office will be software developed by the community for the community. Having a project managed by an elected panel instead of a money hungry company is favorable in the open source world.

One benefit to having a company in charge of a project is that they fund said project. While Libre Office has assembled an impressive list of supporters, it remains yet to be seen if any on this list will be contributing funds to the FOSS project. While it is true much FOSS development is done at no cost, having money to pay developers allows them to focus more of their attention on the project at hand, thus producing higher quality results (most times).

Personally I hope Libre Office takes off, but only time will tell if this fork of a major open source project will be successful.

~Jeff Hoogland

Does Windows 7 Aero Slow Down Your 3D?

Early last week I made a post that detailed some benchmarks with Linux desktop effects being on and Linux desktop effects being off. In the case of Compiz I found that slowed 3D performance of the system on average by over 10%. Several of you dropped comments wondering if a similar performance decrease was present when utilizing Window 7's Aero feature while gaming - today I am going to set that wonder to rest.

The Test:
I am going to use Unigine Benchmarks on Winodws 7 Ultimate 64bit. This was a fresh install of Windows that had only the security updates applied to it. No anti-virus was running (or even installed on) the system. I used the latest nVidia driver for Windows (260.xx). The tests where all performed using the OpenGL rendering of the benchmarks.

The Hardware:
I'm using my same gaming rig that I've used for all my other benchmarks: Processor - Intel p9700 2.8ghz Dual Core, RAM - 4gigs of DDR3 1066, Video Card: nVidia 260m with 1gig DDR3 dedicated memory.

The Results:
I was decently surprised at the results, in fact I ran each test several times to ensure their consistency.

Heaven Benchmark -

• Aero Off - 23.7fps, 598 Score
• Aerp On - 23.7fps, 598 Score

Tropics Benchmark -

• Aero Off - 31fps, 782 Score
• Aero On - 31.1fps, 782 Score

Sanctuary Benchmark -

• Aero Off - 36.8fps, 1562 Score
• Aero On - 36.7fps, 1558 Score

As you can see Aero makes virtually no difference in OpenGL performance. Perhaps this might change if the benchmarks are rendered in DirectX (A benchmark for another day methinks)?

Oh and one other note, it appears Windows still benchmarks slower than almost every Linux distro I've tried.

~Jeff Hoogland

nVidia - There is No Optimus Support for Linux

It is about the time of year when I start looking at new laptops. I am looking for something small, but powerful. I have been an nVidia faithful since I made the switch to Linux almost four years ago, as such I used to not even look at a system if it didn't have an nVidia graphics chip in it. While browsing I noticed that many of the laptops I was looking at had a new feature stamped on them called:

nVidia Optimus

What is nVidia optimus? It is a genius new method of obtaining a great battery life on a laptop with a power house graphics card. Essentially all laptops that are "optimus enabled" have two graphics chips in them - one nVidia and one Intel based. If you are familiar with hardware then you will know that Intel chips, while having worse 3D performance than nVidia, offer much lower power consumption. Optimus allows the system to switch seamlessly between the Intel chip and the nVidia chip when you go from normal desktop usage to intense 3D -

Well it does on Windows anyways.

I've been working with Linux long enough to know that just because it works on Windows does not mean it is going to work on my operating system of choice as well. Unfortunitly this is currently the case with the nVidia optimus technology. To quote an nVidia representative from their user forums:

"We have no plans to support Optimus on Linux at this time."

Guess what? That statement was seven months ago now (February of 2010) and nVidia has been quite on the situation since then. This is really a shame, nVidia has had a dominant hand in the Linux market because of their superior drivers for sometime now. I am going to be hard-pressed to continue to support a company that refuses to support their hardware on my platform of choice. Intel graphics chips might soon be the only choice for mobile Linux users if nVidia does not add optimus support to their Linux drivers soon, as more and more laptops are utilizing this new technology.

Now as with most things the commercial giants fail to pickup in the world of Linux, there is an FOSS project dedicated to dissecting the hybrid graphics systems and get them working with the FOS Nouveau project. The only problem is that if you want a quality level of 3D performance these projects are still a ways off from providing this.

I must say I am slightly torn, do I snatch up a single GPU nVidia system now - before I can no longer find them, do I wait and see if nVidia releases optimus technology for Linux, or should I just boycott the nVidia cooperation all together since they see Linux as a second class operating system?

~Jeff Hoogland

Are Your Desktop Effects Slowing You Down?

Whenever I perform a 3D benchmark in Linux one of the first questions I get asked about the results is:

Where your desktop effects turned off?

For those who are not aware, desktop effects are the "flash" that is enabled by default in many popular Linux distros (namely Ubuntu and it's derivatives) such as the wobbly windows, desktop cube, and sleek sliding effects. Something that has always been questioned is whether or not desktop effects slow down your 3D performance in other applications and if so, how much do they slow it down by?

The Test:
I am going to use Unigine Benchmarks on Pinguy OS (for Gnome) and Chakra (for KDE) with and without desktop effects enabled. Both systems are clean, fully up to date installs with the nVidia 260 beta driver installed. Gnome will be using Compiz for it's desktop effects and KDE will be using Kwin.

The Hardware:
I'm using my same gaming rig that I've used for all my other benchmarks: Processor - Intel p9700 2.8ghz Dual Core, RAM - 4gigs of DDR3 1066, Video Card: nVidia 260m with 1gig DDR3 dedicated memory.

The Results:
Lets dive into some graphs shall we?





Graphs can be hard to read exact numbers on, so here is the numerical breakdown of the results:

As you can see, desktop effect do indeed decrease your overall 3D performance. Compiz is far more detrimental to 3D scores than KDE's Kwin is. Across all three benchmarks having Compiz enabled on the system caused a 10.7% performance decrease, while Kwin only caused a 1% decrease.

So it appears that if you are going to be gaming on Ubuntu/Gnome it is worth taking the time to toggle Compiz off before loading up that game.

~Jeff Hoogland
Please note while these benchmark scores presented are accurate to the best of my abilities, they only represent my personal hardware and software configurations. Your results on your own system(s) may vary (and if they do, please share them!).

HOWTO: wxMaxima on Nokia N900

I mentioned in a post at the beginning of the year that I was attempting to get my favorite CAS functioning on my N900. I am happy today to say that it is indeed possible to run wxMaxima on your N900! The following is a short HOWTO on getting it running.

First - if you have not already done so, install the rootsh package from your application manager and enable the extra-devel repository.

Next, crack open a terminal and run the following in order:

sudo gainroot
apt-get update
apt-get install easy-deb-chroot

Next open your menu and locate the Deb Img Install icon (if you use categorize it is located under System). Upon launching this it will ask you if you want to install the Debian image to your MyDocs or your SD card - pick which ever you prefer just know that it will take up at least 2gig worth of space. Let the package download and extract, the download size is about 300megs and it takes awhile to extract (seriously, go play a video game or watch TV while it does this).

Once that has finished, open up terminal again and run:

debbie sudo apt-get install wxmaxima

Select Y when it asks you to install the packages and then let apt work it's magic. Once it is finished you can access wxMaxima by running

debbie xbindkeys && debbie wxmaxima

Now due to how the N900 keyboard maps it's keys you will need to go to Edit->Configure and check the box Enter Evaluates Cells. After doing this you should be able to enter an equation and have it be evaluated by pressing shift+enter on your N900 keyboard.


If you would like an icon for wxMaxima in your N900 menu (instead of launching it from terminal) run the following in terminal:

sudo gaintroot
apt-get install leafpad
leafpad /usr/share/applications/hildon/wxmaxima.desktop

The last line will open a blank text file, enter the following as it's contents:

[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8
Name=wxMaxima
GenericName=wxMaxima
Exec=debbie "xbindkeys; wxmaxima"
Icon=maxima-icon
X-Osso-Type=application/x-executable
X-HildonDesk-ShowInToolbar=true
Terminal=true
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true

Press ctrl+s to save the document and then close out leafpad (note you may need to restart your N900 for this icon to appear).


It's just that simple! Enjoy using your N900 as a pocket computer algebra system :)

~Jeff Hoogland
Note: I do not take credit for coming up with this method, I just reorganized the information in an easier to understand matter. The two articles I pulled information can be found here and here.

Linux Out Performs Windows in OpenGL

Late last year I did a posting detailing how Windows 7 crushed Ubuntu 9.10 in the area of 3D performance. Nine months later I am happy to say:

Linux out performs Windows 7 in OpenGL benchmarks!

Using the Unigine benchmarks Windows 7 on my system obtains the following average frames per second:

Tropics - 30.5 FPS
Sanctuary - 35.2 FPS

Of all the Linux distros I recently tested, Chakra Linux performs the best in these benchmarks with the following average frames per second:

Tropics - 38.0 FPS
Sanctuary - 38.3 FPS

Whew! Chakra's scores are just higher than Windows 7s' scores and they are leaps and bounds above the level Ubuntu 9.10 performed at on my same hardware. I am always pleasantly surprised at the rapid development of technology in the world of Linux and these improved scores are evidence of just how quickly this world moves.

~Jeff Hoogland

Please note while these benchmark scores presented are accurate to the best of my abilities, they only represent my personal hardware and software configurations. Your results on your own system(s) may vary (and if they do, please share them!).