Comments on: openSUSE 11.1 Beta 4 Slip

By: Chuck Taylor

Chuck Taylor — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:40:58 +0000

We have the “Convenience” and the “Problem”. Mr. Gates and company went to great lengths to make things easy. Consequently they have a large following because of all these convenient installs and setups. Unfortunately, that is also the problem. Security was an after thought and now all are suffering. Linux was built from the ground up with security in mind. So it will take a little longer to get all the “Conveniences” in Linux and still maintain our good security track record. Don’t be in to big of a hurry and loose the thing we cherish the most about Linux. No Viruses.

By: diligent

diligent — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:15:44 +0000

You just need to read documentation for your X server and GMA chip. All that you need to turn off external outputs in xorg.conf like:


Section "Monitor"
  Identifier   "VGA"
  Option       "Ignore" "true"
EndSection
  
Section "Monitor"
  Identifier   "TMDS-1"
  Option       "Ignore" "true"
EndSection

By: R. J.

R. J. — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:44:06 +0000

Have any of you filed a bug report?

By: Bobby

Bobby — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:10:15 +0000

I love Linux too and it’s better than Windows in a lot of ways but graphic drivers are a real pain in the ass when using Linux. Imagine I have used XP the first time in 3 years (to view Youtube videos) just because of this nerving problem that I mentioned above. I know that these drivers are closed source or have closed source components but isn’t anyone in the Linux community who is smart enough to just let us get flawless performance from these video cards. And like you mentioned, it doesn’t make sense trying to explain this to people coming from the Windows world cause they will just end up saying that Linux is crap. Graphics/multimedia are VERY important these days. people want to play their Youtube videos, their DVDs and wath TV on their computers without hassle. Until the Linux community finds a way to make it all just work then it will not find the popularity that Windows is still enjoying.
People curse Windows all the time but keep going back because of these little things.

By: Bobby

Bobby — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:47:08 +0000

Are you also using Intel GMA? I have not experienced this problem with nVidia although it’s a headache running Linux with Nvidia drivers. How I wish that the day will come when we Linux users can enjoy the same graphic goodness that’s a matter of course in the Windows world.

By: itchy8me

itchy8me — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:13:44 +0000

i’ve had similar problems in kaffeine on opensuse 11.0 where the image gets a sort of inverted colour with tinted blue.. rather weird.

By: chris

chris — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:05:30 +0000

Xorg and video drivers in general are one of the two major weak spots that have always kept and will keep linux from broadly succeeding on the desktop. As long as it is not possible to:

- install drivers without any hassle
- 2d acceleration
- flawless video playback
- flawless composition
- flawless support of KDE4
- any of the above combined with opengl apps
- any of the above combined with multiple heads
- any of the above in conjunction with connecting/disconnecting beamers

people will rather stick to windows or move to Mac OSX. I know the technology is out there to address all these issues. In practice, however, the shortcoming remain for various reasons such as the lack of communication of projects that address these problems on different layers. To me it seems that the XServer is the most fragile part of the linux stack and it’s really hard to explain someone coming from windows, why they should add strange lines to some config file (xorg.conf) in order to get their graphics card to get composition working (especially in KDE4). Why it’s really no ones fault, the community needs someone to step up and coordinate the graphics side to make the above points go away.

I love linux, but there is still a LOT of work to do until parity with other operating systems is achieved.

By: C-o-M

C-o-M — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:04:33 +0000

I also have blue video windows. The problem is that Xorg starts with overlay set to VGA (external monitor on a laptop, even if there is no one connected), and the intel driver is not able to use video overlay on two outputs. Turning the external VGA off (xrandr –output VGA –off) works for me. If your video card has two outputs (I assume) this may be your problem

By: Bobby

Bobby — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 06:01:19 +0000

I actually moved from nVidia to Intel hoping that it would be smooth going because I have a Thinkpad with an older Intel chip and it works fine (apart from the blue background that kaffeine has and the blue video thumbnail preview instead of video) so that’s why I decided for the GMA 3100 on the desktop. The good thing is that it’s a no hassle to install – it just works but unfortunately not perfectly when using compositing. There are issues using this video card with both Kwin 4 and Compiz Fusion on Gnome. It’s a bit frustrating. Start flash and your screen is black, move Kaffeine across the screen, first the blue background and then black screen. It’s definitely a driver problem because it doesn’t happen on Win XP as much as I hate to use Windows.

By: Joban

Joban — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:50:19 +0000

Try zypper dup