HOWTO: Enable Compiz under Bodhi (Enlightenment)

One of the reasons I gave for giving the Enlightenment desktop a try was its elegance. While it is true that Enlightenment has a good number of built-in effects that run on a wide range of systems, those with a more powerful system might crave something more. If you are coming to Enlightenment from a previous Linux desktop odds are you are aware of Compiz Fusion (a compositing window manager known for it's many different effects). Thanks to the Ecomorph module for Enlightenment, you can enable many of your favorite Compiz effects on the Enlightenment desktop.

First things first: installing Ecomorph. If you are using Bodhi Linux you can simply apt-get the needed packages with the command:

sudo apt-get install ecomorph*

On other Enlightenment distributions the install command and package names will vary. You can also always compile it from source. Once you have Ecomorph installed, load the module (Settings->Modules->System). It is also necessary to disable the Dropshadow (and built in compositing if it is enabled) module under Look (it conflicts with Ecomorph's built-in shadow).

Next, using your preferred text editor, as root, create a .desktop file for launching Ecomorph. For example, run the following in terminal:

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/ecomorph.desktop

For the contents of the desktop file, paste in this. Save the file. Then, if you want to always start compositing on login add our newly created menu entry to your startup applications.


Finally, log out and from your session list select E17 - Ecomorph instead of Enlightenment when you log back in. Please note: if you did not add Ecomorph to your startup applications you will have to manually launch the desktop entry for compositing to become active.

Once Ecomorph is running, you can customize your desktop effects under Settings->Ecomorph

Ecomorph also adds a list of actions you can bind to your preferred key-sets (such as toggling expo). Configure these under Settings->Settings Panel->Input->Key Bindings. Enjoy your tricked-out Enlightenment!

Have any questions or if issues arise while installing/configuring Ecomorph feel free to drop a comment below.

~Jeff Hoogland

Wayland VS X - Some Perspectives

The Linux world has been very talkative for the last few weeks with the news that Ubuntu plans on switching from the classic X server to Wayland for it's graphics environment. For those who are still unclear as to what exactly Wayland is, here is a quote from their homepage:

"Wayland is a protocol for a compositor to talk to its clients as well as a C library implementation of that protocol. The compositor can be a standalone display server running on Linux kernel modesetting and evdev input devices, an X application, or a wayland client itself. The clients can be traditional applications, X servers (rootless or fullscreen) or other display servers."

For those still unclear as to what Wayland is supposed to be doing after reading the above quote - essentially Wayland helps a compositor, such as Compiz or KWin, work with applications running on a computer. It can run on top of an existing display server, such as X, or act as the display server itself (and run X inside of itself similar to how OSX does).

My first and foremost question to the change to Wayland is why? Well according to Mark the "why" is the following:

"we don’t believe X is setup to deliver the user experience we want, with super-smooth graphics and effects

To each their own. The wonderful thing about FOSS is choice - my question this: If desktops such as Enlightenment can achieve an elegant, fluid desktop while using X, why can't Unity? My next concern about using the Wayland project is if it is ever going to actually fully get rid of X. Mark states that they plan to keep backwards compatibility with all X applications. While backwards compatibility of this sort is something that is very necessary, I some how doubt this going to be accomplished with out keeping parts (if not all) of X around. If this is the case - what is the point of adding Wayland into your graphics layer in the first place?

The last part of Wayland that is a large cause for concern is lack of closed source video driver support. As a free software advocate I know FOSS drivers are ideal (and they are advancing rapidly) but as of yet they do not offer anywhere near the performance of their closed source counter parts. In fact as of today the only open source graphics drivers that support any form of decent 3D acceleration are for Intel chip sets. While I recommend taking anything you read on Phoronix with a grain of salt - their claim that nVidia has no plans to support Wayland in their closed source driver sounds about accurate. As for ATI? Their Linux driver support has historically been worse than nVidia - so I wouldn't hold my breath here either.

As with most things only time will tell if Ubuntu's (and Fedora's) transition to Wayland will be a success (or a death sentence) for the respective distros. In the mean time want to give Wayland a try? Well, currently it is barely functional and only works on a limited amount of hardware. That means, in addition to all the concerns above, a good deal of time, funding, and man power is going to have to be invested in Wayland just to make the project functional for a desktop operating system such as Ubuntu.

Personally, I think this announcement is premature and we won't have a functional "Wayland only" display server on a main stream distro for several years at least. What is your take in the situation? Do you think the change was necessary and how soon will it come?

~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

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!).

Best Linux Distro for 3D Performance

There is one question all new Linux users ask themselves at one point or another:

Which Linux distro do I want to use?

The answer to the question is different for everyone and varies depending on what you are doing with your Linux box. One thing I think many users fail to consider (or perhaps don't care about) is the level of 3D performance their distro gets. You may think that your choice of distribution does not matter in this area, but you will soon see it very much does.

The Hardware: While my hardware is not fastest in the world it is decently quick. Processor - Intel p9700 2.8ghz Dual Core, RAM - 4gigs of DDR3 1066, Video Card: nVidia 260m with 1gig DDR3 dedicated memory (Running the latest stable nVidia driver 256.53).

The Software: I used my favorite OpenGL benchmarks made by Unigine Company. The distros I am going to compare are:

• Ubuntu 10.04 (Pinguy) - Gnome
  
• Ubuntu 10.10 Beta - Gnome
  
• Linux Mint Rolling Release (Debian Based) - Gnome
  
• Chakra 0.2.1 (Arch Linux Based) - KDE
  
• Fedora 13 - Gnome
  
• Mandriva 2010.1 - KDE
  
• OpenSUSE 11.3 - KDE
  
• PCLinuxOS 2010.07 - KDE
  
• Sabayon 5.3 (Gentoo Based) - KDE
  

All of the tests where run on clean, fully updated install of each distribution. They use the stock kernel each of the distributions provides. Desktop effects where turned off in all cases.

The Results:
Well, being a math guy, I firmly believe the numbers speak for themselves. So here are the results of the three benchmarks (higher is better - click on image to enlarge):








As you can see the scores of most of the Linux distros are fairly close (within 3% of the number one), with one exception: Ubuntu. It appears that of all the wonderful improvements Canonical has been making to Ubuntu, 3D performance is not one of them (10.10 scored higher than 10.04, but only by a small amount). It is hard to get the exact numbers by reading a histogram so here are the scores in numerical form:


Across all three tests Chakra scored the highest (With PCLinuxOS and Sabayon in close second and third). Ubuntu 10.04 was at the very bottom (over 10% behind Chakra). While I think Ubuntu is a great distro it appears that if you are a Linux Gamer, you are better off using a non-Ubuntu distro.

~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!).

Thousands Play Starcraft 2 on Linux

I play Starcraft 2 on Linux and apparently I'm not the only one. At the end of last month I wrote a brief guide for getting Starcraft 2 working under Linux using Wine. In the last ten days that guide has gotten nearly nine thousand views and currently has ninety comments.

Now I've talked before about why I think there is a market for creating games for Linux and I think my above statistics only reinforce this idea. Don't believe me? Think about it this way - lets assume half of the people (4,500) who have checked out my guide have purchased the game and would prefer to play it on Linux. The game currently retails for 60$ USD.

4,500*60$ = 270,000$

That would be over a quarter of a million dollars from Linux gamers (in just over a week of the game's release). Are you telling me it would cost more than a quarter of a million dollars to bring a game, that can already run 100% using OpenGL, to the Linux operating system?

I doubt it.

I know more than a few Windows users who would drop the OS in a heart beat if they could play their Blizzard games under Linux and I know there are plenty of Linux users who would start buying Blizzard games if and only if they started creating native Linux installers.

So what do you say Blizzard? Comon - give us a native version of Starcraft 2 on Linux! It is 2010, people are using more than just Windows and OSX on their personal computers!

~Jeff Hoogland

Wine vs Native - 3D Performance Benchmarks

In the past I've done Wine on Linux versus native Windows 7 benchmarks for 3D applications. Source engine games are some of my favorite benchmarking applications. Since Valve ported Steam to OSX earlier this year and I recently acquired an OSX PC I figured this would be an opportune time to see how Wine performance measures up to a native client, not only on the same hardware - but on the same operating system.

My benchmarking tools this time around will be Counter Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2, as they both run native on OSX. For Wine software I used the recently released Crossover Games 9.1

Scores:
Counter Strike: Source

• 1680x1050, Wine - 44.16fps
• 800x600, Wine - 48.59fps
• 1680x1050, Native - 54.02fps
• 800x600, Native - 56.22fps

Team Fortress 2

• 1680x1050, Wine - 43.88fps
• 800x600, Wine - 49.58fps
• 1680x1050, Native - 50.56fps
• 800x600, Native - 58.47fps

As you can see - the numbers are fairly close (at least closer than they are with the Windows vs Linux Wine benchmarks). With CSS Wine scored 81% the speed of the native version and in TF2 Wine was 86% the FPS native version. It is fantastic the progress the Wine project has made over the past few years, to the point where it can almost keep up with a native version of modern games - even so I would love to see native ports of these games to my favorite operating system.

~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!).

Steam Client and Source Games Porting to OSX

So the devil called me this afternoon and said they where having a snowstorm in hell.

In other news Valve announced that their revolutionary "content delivery service" known as "Steam" is being ported to OSX and will be available as early as April 2010. No really its true, straight from the horse's mouth. In addition the actual client and "Steam-works" being brought to Apple's operating system Valve also plans to port all of the Source Engine games, these include:

• Half Life 2 Series
  
• Counter Strike: Source
• Team Fortress 2
• Left 4 Dead Series
  
• Day of Defeat: Source

All I have to say is: Microsoft has to quaking in their boots. For some time Microsoft's Windows operating system has been the standard for gaming on the PC. With Valve making the push into OSX this means more than just trouble for Microsoft's operating system. It also means their famed DirectX API that is Windows only may be in jeopardy. I say this because as stated in Valve's official announcement in order to port their engine/games to OSX they will be reimplementing them in OpenGL. After the porting of these past released source games Valve plans to treat OSX as a "first tier" operating system. Meaning that all future releases of source games will occur simultaneously for OSX, Windows, and Xbox 360.

Not a fan of Valve's flag-ship gaming engine? Not a problem, take a peak at these other titles already for sale on Steam that have a native OSX client:

• Aliens versus Predator (original)
  
• Altitude
  
• And Yet It Moves
  
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
  
• Ankh: Heart of Osiris
  
• Aquaria
  
• BioShock
  
• Braid
  
• Brainpipe
  
• Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
  
• Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror
  
• Call of Duty
  
• Call of Duty: United Offensive
  
• Call of Duty 2
  
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
  
• Championship Manager 2007
  
• Championship Manager 2008
  
• Championship Manager 2010
  
• Civilization IV
  
• Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
  
• Civilization IV: Colonization
  
• Civilization IV: Warlords
  
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
  
• Darwinia
  
• DEFCON
  
• Delta Force: Black Hawk Down
  
• Deus Ex
  
• Doom
  
• Doom 3
  
• Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
  
• Doom II: Hell on Earth
• Dragon Age: Origins
  
• Elven Legacy
  
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
  
• Eschalon: Book I
  
• Europa Universalis III
  
• Europa Universalis: Rome
  
• FlatOut 2
  
• Final Doom
  
• Football Manager 2009
  
• Football Manager 2010
  
• Football Manager Live
  
• Freedom Force
  
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
  
• Harvest: Massive Encounter
  
• Hearts of Iron II
  
• Hearts of Iron III
  
• Heretic
  
• Heroes of Might and Magic V
  
• Hexen
  
• Hexen II
  
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
  
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  
• Jade Empire
  
• LEGO Batman: The Videogame
  
• LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
  
• LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues
  
• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
  
• Loom
  
• Luxor
  
• Luxor 2
  
• Luxor 3
  
• Machinarium
  
• Multiwinia
  
• Osmos
  
• Peggle
  
• Peggle Nights
  
• Penguins Arena
  
• Penumbra: Black Plague
  
• Penumbra: Overture
  
• Penumbra: Requiem
  
• Plants vs. Zombies
  
• Prey
  
• Prince of Persia (2008)
  
• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
  
• Quake
  
• Quake II
  
• Quake III Arena
  
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
  
• Rome: Total War
  
• Samorost 2
  
• Shaun White Snowboarding
  
• Sid Meier’s Pirates
  
• SiN
  
• Spore
  
• Star Wars: Force Unleashed
  
• Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
  
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
  
• Star Wars: Dark Forces
  
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
  
• Tales of Monkey Island
  
• The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
  
• The Dig
  
• The Graveyard
  
• The Path
  
• TOCA Race Driver 3
  
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield
  
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary
  
• Torchlight
  
• Unreal
  
• Unreal Tournament
  
• Unreal Tournament 2004
  
• Uplink
  
• Virtual Families
  
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
  
• World of Goo
  
• X²: The Threat
  
• X³: Reunion
  
• X³: Terran Conflict

Phew! Who was it that said you couldn't game on a non-Windows operating system? Well truth be told thanks to wonderful software like CXGames some of us have been enjoying source games on the operating system of our choice for some time now. (Food for thought and maybe a future topic: What do you think this announcement is going to do to Codeweaver's bottom line?)

What brought this seemingly sudden announcement from Valve? Well a few months back a rumor had surfaced that a lead Steam developer had posted looking for people with experience porting Windows software to OSX and Linux.

Yep, that is right and Linux.

While there is still nothing official about the latter of these two operating systems from Valve, all I have to say is that the porting of Source Engine to use OpenGL only makes the eventuality of them running without emulation on Linux much more likely (not to mention in the mean time Windows games that run under OpenGL tend to perform better under Wine).

~Jeff Hoogland

Is Cedega Hanging in There?

In one of my past articles I made a bold assessment that it appeared Transgaming might be dropping support for their Cedega Wine software. However it now appears that Cedega might be hanging in there - After more than a year of silence there was finally an update posted in Cedega's "Den" (announcements section). The post promises the certification of two games, Torchlight and Defense Grid: The Awakening, that happen to work well under their "recently" released 7.3.3 engine (The latter of the two pleases me greatly, I had purchased DG on Steam over the holidays and it does not function properly under Wine/CXGames as of yet). Also provided is a very vague "Development Update" that promises better OpenGL performance and mentions that at some point in the near future we should see a more detailed development plan - Alas two weeks later and still nothing.

In the end what does all this mean? Maybe nothing, but then only time will tell. I'm hoping that Transgaming gets around to posting development updates faster than they have been about fixing their application voting system (which has been non-functional for close to two years now). If Transgaming want's to save their Linux product they need to get on the ball - and quick. They are no longer the only big player in the world of commercial "Win-on-Lin" for gaming. Codeweavers has already posted their plans for development in 2010 and since they already support L4D2 (one of the most recently released hit PC titles) Transgaming is going to be hard-pressed to play catch-up.

As I've said in the past: I think Cedega is good software, however there is more to buying software than just the product itself. Here is to hoping Transgaming can get their customer service act together in 2010, because - while I like CXGames, competition is a wonderful driving factor in the business world.

~Jeff Hoogland

OpenGL vs DirectX - Benchmark Comparison

I've done a few benchmarks to date and today I am going to add another interesting set of numbers to the list. Unigine is a cross-platform real-time 3D engine, I stumbled across awhile back on some message boards I am a part of. Since it is cross platform it offers the benchmark rendering in both OpenGL and DirectX APIs, as such I was curious as to which of the interfaces that are commonly used for 3D development offered better performance.

The Tests: Unigine offers two free benchmarks - Tropics and Sanctuary. I ran both demos using OpenGL, DirectX 9.1, and DirectX 10.0 under the 1680x1050 resolution.

The Hardware: While my hardware is not fastest in the world it is (as of posting this) relatively new and decently quick. Processor - Intel p9700 2.8ghz Dual Core, RAM - 4gigs of DDR3, Video Card: nVidia 260m with 1gig DDR3 dedicated memory (Running the latest stable nVidia driver 195.62).

The Software: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit & Unigine Benchmarks

The Results:

Tropics -

• OpenGL - 31.8 fps
• DirectX 9.1 - 34.9 fps
• DirectX 10.0 - 35.8 fps

Sanctuary -

• OpenGL - 36.0 fps
• DirectX 9.1 - 39.7 fps
• DirectX 10.0 - 42.6 fps

Wrapping Up:
Clearly DirectX 10 appears to be the optimum choice performance wise. In the case of the tropics benchmark it scored about 12% higher and for Sanctuary it scored around 16% higher. Worth noting is that while running the benchmarks there really isn't truly much detail difference between the rendering in the three different selections (meaning most people would not be able to tell the difference between which of the three was is use). Also I'd like to mention for any who may not know that OpenGL as the name implies is free open source software and runs fully cross-platform (where is DirectX is locked to the MS Windows and XBox) - so if you want to develop for a wider range the slightly slower OpenGL may be the best choice of the three to use.

~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!).