Maemo 5 Clutter performance

This page has been created so that all working solutions to get the clutter performace better in the SDK can be consolidated.

Since the SDK uses Clutter and 3d effects, the speed of the UI depends greatly on the 3D acceleration speed on the host system. For many popular display adapters (nVidia, ATI) this means that the vendor provided closed source driver is needed for fully utilizing the 3D acceleration provided by the hardware. Using Intel cards, the hardware acceleration should basically work with the available open source drivers, but unfortunately some versions of the driver have been buggy in a way that causes problems for the 3d accelerated applications and thus also the SDK.

Here are some scenarios that have worked during the internal testing activity. Please add in any related information that you feel may help the users of the Maemo 5 SDK.

Debian Lenny with ATI drivers
Graphics card on the test machine: Dell Latitude d610 ATI Mobility Radeon X300

Following the instruction in http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=17776 helped. Shortly, $> m-a prepare $> m-a a-i fglrx $> modprobe -v fglrx
 * Add the "Non-DFSG-compatible Software (non-free) into software sources
 * Install module-assistant build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) fglrx-amdcccle fglrx-control fglrx-driver fglrx-kernel-src
 * Reboot into Single User Mode. Enter the root password
 * Give commands:


 * Add the Driver line and DefaultDepth line to xorg.conf files.

Section "Device" Driver         "fglrx" EndSection Section "Screen" DefaultDepth	24 EndSection

Ubuntu with nVidia/ATI drivers
Installing restricted drivers by Ubuntu gets the UI framework in usable speed. This does bring along some desktop effects that one may not like. (We just turned such effects off.)

Ubuntu with Intel drivers
Graphics card on the test machine: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02) In the recent update of Ubuntu Jaunty, there are improvements. A default installation of Ubuntu Jaunty works OK with the desktop effects enabled.

Fedora 10 with Intel drivers
SDK has worked alright here without additional installations.

Useful links

 * http://www.h-online.com/open/Ubuntu-9-04-and-Intel-graphics--/features/113196
 * https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/262164
 * http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=17776