Life Begins at Thirty

X61 --- Vista & Fedora 7

2007-09-05T00:29:00.000-04:00

Last Friday, My x61 finally arrived after a long waiting--two weeks. the pre-loaded OS is VISTA HOME BASIC with some other software. I think it is NIS 2007 that makes the whole system pretty slow or maybe some other software, as you know Lenovo like to pre-install some many useless garbage in the system. Can't put up with waiting for these software uninstall, I decided to recovery the whole system from scratch and customize software which I like to install. The recovery went pretty smoothly. After about 1 hour and 20 min, automatically reboot and configure system during the whole process, a clean system comes out.

The main thing I want to try is Fedora 7.

The first step I need to do is to partition Hard drive, recommended software is AcronicDirector suit 10.

Secondly, using usb disk to install fedora 7, pretty easy.
---remember to install grub on / not MBR

and then install BCDEDIT GUI interface, recommended software is EasyBCD free. Copy grub loader i.e the first sector of / partition to a file name fedora.sec. Using EasyBCD to edit Vista boot menu to make dual boot available.

---Doesn't work
wifi Intel 4965
audio AD1984
beryl (freeze system)

Solution:
1.update system to latest kernel and wifi-firmware

2. download alsa latest driver 15rc2
./configure --with-cards=hda-intel
make & make install

3. download latest Graphic driver i965 and compile DRM,DRI,2-D and 3-D driver, recompile kernel with agppart enable . Details see intelgraphic.org

Finally, Fedora 7 with Beryl works great on X61.

(oh hotkey doesn't work)

My six years old Laptop -- still works fine.

2007-08-30T18:56:00.000-04:00

The first week back to NY

2007-08-27T13:03:00.000-04:00

On Aug. 18, I came back to New York with the desire of finding a job around the Apple area. The first week was gone, I did not do any action on it, still in relaxation.

For the first 3 days, I thought it was only two days, I tried to cancel our homeline and dsl service and switched to cable. It turned out the technicians from RCN company could not get the installation job done with their poor ladders. We are in a three stories condo house. Actually, it's only two families house, but the basement is more than half on the ground. The fact is there is no any access to the roof. the only way to the roof is using pretty big ladder. All of technicians or maybe their company are only equipped with small ladder. Probably, they have to write some kind of application if they want to settle down my business. Finally I gave it up and kept my current service. Every once in a while I thought maybe I could go with "naked dsl", after searching little bit online, I was disappointed to find that Verizon does provide dry loop dsl, but not in Queens.

Thursday,Friday, went over some basic concepts of analog circuit design. Saturday, Sunday manageed to go crabbing on Jones Beach.

Now, it goes back to Monday. Kind of hurry, it's almost the end of Aug. Things I should to this week: Sending out resumes to the few companies in new york area, replying back to several huntters and to see if they can arrange some interviews next few weeks.

JT

Aug.27 2007

OS X 10.4.8 on T60

2007-08-19T20:41:00.000-04:00

Finally, I got Tiger run on my T60. (Intel Core 2 duo 2.0G 1G, 100G HD, ATI x1400, SoundMax card. IPW3945 INTERL PRO 1000 )

so far, only need to find driver for IPW3945, everything works fine.

here is little work for Graphic Card and Sound card.

Graphic X1400

Edit /System/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist , add two lines

Graphics Mode
1400x1050@60
below
Boot Graphics
Yes

and edit System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000.kext/Contents/Info.plist, adding Dev ID of your card (7145 for X1400)
IOPCIMatch
0x71451002
to enable CI/QE support

SoundMax card

Delete AppleHDA.ket
install azaliz.audio.pkg
edit /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAzaliaAudio.kext/Contents/Info.plist
change IOHDAudioCodecVendorID value to 0x11d41986
edit /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAzaliaAudio.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleAzaliaController.kext/Contents/Info.plist
change IOPCIPrimaryMatch value to 0x27d88086.

and then fix permissions, clear kext cache
sudo diskutil repairpermissions /
sudo rm /System/Library/Extensions.*
sudo kextload AppleAzaliaAudio.kext
sudo kextcache -k /System/Library/Extensions/

reboot you should got 1400*1050 resolution and sound card work.

Back to Gainesville and stay for another month or two.

2007-07-16T10:59:00.000-04:00

On July 15, 2007, I came back to Gainesville and continued my summer course study again. The original purpose of going up to New York is trying to look for some job opportunities around New York area while visiting my lovely wife, but it turned out most of time we were thinking about where to go to have fun with friends. The job hunting trip of New York ended up with sending out several resumes which could be done anywhere and anytime.

Since this week, the new project of DSP course will be assigned on Monday and also there is already an optional project waiting for me to do. Job hunting, two projects, finals in the next twenty-seven days. Is that mission impossible? We will see.

Good lunck for me, for everyone who is gonna make any change in the next month!

Jingtao Jul.16 2007

jUNe Day --- Westport

2007-07-01T09:46:00.000-04:00

On Saturday,June 30,2007, we were invited by friends to join their jUNe Day activity-- hosted by the International Hospitality Committee of Westport. One small Connecticut town has warmly welcomed UN staff and their families for a day of fun and festivities every June since the mid-1960s. For the 42ND consecutive year, the celebration was held on Jun. 30.

Thanks to my friends Hongtao and Jun

We arrivaled at Westport by Metro-North train around 9:15am.

After a quick breakfast, there was a Small ceremony and exchanging gift with guests in Saugatuck Elementary School.

Visited Earthplace and had little fun there

After played an hour tennis, we went to beach.

Talking about self discipline

2007-06-26T18:28:00.000-04:00

After staying US over two years, I found that the bad thing happened to me. I can't concentrate on doing what I need to do. Got up in early morning, went on internet looking around and spent over six hours doing nothing. The horrible thing is that it happens everyday somhow. :(((. It's time to review myself. I am still young and should find somthing more interesting to fill up my life. Here is an article. Should I buckle down and read it?

"
One of the most important skills we can develop as human beings is self discipline. No matter what our goals are, we will achieve them sooner with highly developed self discipline.

So what exactly do I mean by self discipline?

It is the ability to follow a schedule. It is also the ability to do things we need to do, when we do not want to.

The hard part is sticking to being self disciplined.

I always found that it works very well once you established a habit. When you establish a pattern of accomplishing one thing after another, it creates a sort of a flow. This momentum makes it extremely easy to be self disciplined. In my experience it is very important not to break that momentum. If we do, it becomes extremely hard getting back into the groove.

So how do we establish that habit of being self disciplined?

There are several ways of achieving great self discipline. Sports in general and martial arts specifically are a great way to develop this ability. I have done various forms of martial arts for many years and can tell you, from personal experience, how effective this method is. Self discipline within martial arts is achieved through following traditions that emphasize the reverence the disciple feels towards his master. That kind of relationship forces the disciple to follow his master without question, based solely on the respect for the teacher. This kind of relationship puts immediate personal desires of the student in the background, while the master guides him to achieve his goal. Essentially what that does is distract us from the inherit laziness we all have, and provides us with motivation to achieve our goals. When it develops into a habit, it carries over to other areas of our life, and can greatly enhance other experiences.

It is probably not healthy to be too strict when it comes to discipline. Some discipline is a must, but in all aspects of our personality we require a balance. If we are too strict it could eventually result in abandoning of the self discipline all together, as we would develop a negative association with whatever we are trying to be disciplined about. Let's take jogging in the mornings as an example. Most people do not enjoy this activity. They have to force them selves to do it, because they know that it is good for them. They have to do it until they develop a habit of jogging, and then it becomes easy. Just think about it. What would be easier to get used to? Jogging in the morning in a snow storm or jogging while enjoying a beautiful sunrise. Our mind develops habits by repetition. So the more negativity it associates with an activity, the harder it will be to develop the self discipline to perform it.

Another very important area where it is imperative to be self disciplined is financial management. This part of our life can become devastating to us if we do not bring it under control.

The best part of any form of discipline training is that it is fairly easy to accomplish if you put your mind to it. It can be compared to training a muscle. When you exercise it on a regular basis, it becomes strong and healthy. Inversely if it is left unused, it will atrophy.

To sum up, self discipline is a must in our lives. We must practice it on a regular basis, but we shouldn't forget that balance in everything we do is very important, so being over disciplined can be as bad as not having any discipline at all.
"

---Article Source: http://www.article-outlet.com/

Jun.26 2007

What a wonderful world -- Cell

2007-06-05T18:35:00.000-04:00

Start Job hunting

2007-06-05T10:41:00.000-04:00

Finally, I start my job hunting.
First Step: write resume ( done, need someone to go over),
cover letter ...

In future reference

Jun. 5th 2007

How to assemble an engine

2007-06-03T10:10:00.000-04:00

Get to know componets of a car

2007-05-30T00:45:00.000-04:00

Great Internet Radio

2007-05-17T21:04:00.000-04:00

After using streamtuner for a while, I began to like this net radio. The music is great and you can totaly enjoy, relax and might be lost in the beatiful rhythm.

Recommended

http://bluefm.net

05/17/07

Dual-monitor on laptop

2007-05-13T18:03:00.000-04:00

Just found one example of Xorg.conf for dual monitor using on laptop. Post it here and check it in future.
For dual-monitor, we need two device, monitor and screen section. And there are two ways to set up dual monitor. "Clone or merging"

Section "Device"
Identifier "intel"
Driver "i810"
Screen 0
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
Option "VBERestore" "true"
VideoRam 131072
Option "BackingStore" "true"
Option "BusType" "PCIE"
Option "NoAccel" "false"
Option "DRI" "true"
Option "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device1"
Driver "i810"
Screen 1
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
# Option "VBERestore" "true"
VideoRam 131072
Option "BackingStore" "true"
Option "BusType" "PCIE"
Option "NoAccel" "false"
Option "DRI" "true"
Option "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 28-64
VertRefresh 43-60
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "AL1914"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 31-81
VertRefresh 56-75
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "intel"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "1280x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1280x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Secondary Screen"
Device "Device1"
Monitor "AL1914"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Dual-monitor Layout"
Screen 0 "Default Screen"
Screen 1 "Secondary Screen" RightOf "Default Screen"
# Option "Xinerama" "on"
Option "Clone" "On"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

about Tar and sort

2007-05-12T03:34:00.000-04:00

problem with installation of USR4.

solution :

replace tar 1.5 with tar 1.13 and sort 5.97 with sort 5.92. (fc4).
everything is fine.

Vsftp -- Ftp server for linux.

2007-05-08T20:37:00.000-04:00

an easy way to setup a ftp server is to use vsftpd.
yum install vsftpd
and then setup /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf.

/etc/init.d/vsftpd start

oh, don't forget to config your Selinux to enable ftp service. otherwise you will get 500 OOPS can not change directory something like that.

FLIPFLOP AND CARRY BY PASS ADDER LAYOUT

2007-05-03T23:17:00.000-04:00

Michael Bolton

2007-05-02T20:08:00.000-04:00

When a man loves a woman

Said I loved You but I Lied

I wanna love you forever

2007-05-02T19:41:00.001-04:00

What an amazing software engineering

2007-05-02T19:27:00.000-04:00

How to setup external Monitor for Intel video card

2007-04-30T16:53:00.000-04:00

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HowtoSetupExternalMonitorForIntel915

Hi all, I would like to describe how you can make your external monitor to work in Ubuntu Dapper Drake, if you have an intel 915 graphic card (which is mostly used in laptops). My desired Resolution is 1280x800 with 60Hz for my LCD of laptop and 1024x768 with 85Hz for my CRT external monitor.

There are two solutions for working with external monitors:

1.

The external monitor become exactly mirror of LCD (I use "Clone Heads" for this)
2.

The external monitor has another screen so that we can switch between screen of LCD and screen of external monitor(I use "Separate Heads" for this)

It will be great, If there is a choice for the user to select witch solution he wants in run time. Fortunately, having multiple "ServerLayout" section in xorg.conf file and defining multiple "server" in gdm.conf file provides this flexibility.

The only trick is if you want to stay in 85Hz in Clone mode, you should downgrade resolution of LCD to 1024x768. The reason is: for refresh rates upper than 60Hz, the resolutions of two heads must be the same.

With respect to the discussion above, the /etc/X11/xorg.conf shoule looks like this:

Section "Files"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi"
# path to defoma fonts
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "bitmap"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "type1"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller"
Driver "i810"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller for LCD of Separate"
Driver "i810"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
Option "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
Screen 0
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller for CRT of Separate"
Driver "i810"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
Screen 1
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller for Clone"
Driver "i810"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
Option "Clone" "true"
Option "CloneRefresh" "85"
Option "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 28-64
VertRefresh 43-60
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "External Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 30-90
VertRefresh 50-160
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1280x800"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1280x800"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x800"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1280x800"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x800"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x800"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "LCD Screen Of Separate"
Device "Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller for LCD of Separate"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x800"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "CRT Screen Of Separate"
Device "Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller for CRT of Separate"
Monitor "External Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "LCD Screen Of Clone"
Device "Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller for Clone"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "CRT Screen Of Clone"
Device "Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller for Clone"
Monitor "External Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "DefaultLayout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "SeparateHeads"
Screen 0 "LCD Screen Of Separate" 0 0
Screen 1 "CRT Screen Of Separate" RightOf "LCD Screen Of Separate"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "CloneHeads"
Screen "LCD Screen Of Clone"
Screen "CRT Screen Of Clone"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

After editing xorg.conf, it turns off gdm.conf. by default, there is one section named [server-Standard] in /etc/gdm/gdm.conf which must be changed to:

[server-Standard]
name=Standard server
command=/usr/bin/X -br -audit 0 -layout DefaultLayout
flexible=true

After doing that, you should add some other server sections:

[server-Separate]
name=Separate Heads
command=/usr/bin/X -br -audit 0 -layout SeparateHeads
flexible=true

[server-Clone]
name=Clone Heads
command=/usr/bin/X -br -audit 0 -layout CloneHeads
flexible=true

Ok, that's it. You must restart your computer and for changing mode, in gnome-terminal, type: gdmflexiserver and see what's happen!

Intel Graphic card Linux Driver

2007-04-29T13:27:00.000-04:00

Finally, find a nice place of how to install intel graphic card driver. check this out:

http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org/install.html

Intel Linux Graphics Driver Installation Guide
1. Introduction

In general, Intel graphics driver is well integrated in Linux distributions so users won't worry about the driver setup.

This guide is for those users who would like to build the latest driver from scratch. This will be useful when trying the upstream stuff and customize the graphics driver.
2. Getting source

To make the Intel graphics chipset work, below components are needed:

1, kernel module agpgart and drm;

The source of kernel modules is included in Linux kernel. If they have been built into kernel or built as kernel modules, you need not recompile them. Agpgart is only available from kernel source, but drm can be downloaded standalone.

2, libdrm;

Libdrm is included in drm source.

3, Xorg 2D driver: xf86-video-intel;

4, Mesa and 3D driver;

To get the detailed download address for above components, please refer http://intellinuxgraphics.org/download.html.
3. Building

We suppose you have downloaded all components under directory $DOWN_ROOT except kernel source.
3.1 Agpgart

To compile agpgart, you must recompile kernel.

Note: from kernel 2.6.20, agpgart can only build into kernel rather than building as modules.

When you execute "make menuconfig", you should:

-- Go to Device Driver -> Character devices

-- Go to /dev/agpgart (AGP Support)

-- Hit SPACE to build AGP support as Module

-- Enable Intel chipsets' support for AGP as Module
3.2 Drm and libdrm

To compile drm, simply enter source directory and execute make:

$ cd $DOWN_ROOT/drm/linux-core

$ make

Two binary modules will be generated: drm.ko and i915.ko. Then copy these two binary kernel modules to kernel lib directory:

$ cp *.ko /lib/module/$(uname -r)/kernel/driver/char/drm/

Build and install libdrm:

$ cd $DOWN_ROOT/drm

$ ./autogen.sh

Note: libdrm installs to /usr/local/lib by default. To install in /usr/lib run:

$ ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --exec-prefix=/

$ make

$ make install

libdrm.so will be installed to /usr/lib.
3.3 Xorg 2D driver

If you install xorg in another directory(refered as $XORG_DIR) instead of overriding the xorg shipped in your Linux distribution, you need set two macros at first:

$ export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=${XORG_DIR}/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH

$ export ACLOCAL="aclocal -I ${XORG_DIR}/share/aclocal"

Of coz, if you install xserver to another directory, you need compile all xorg modules. As for the detailed guide about xserver and xorg module compilation, please refer to Xorg Modular Developers' Guide.

The compilation of 2D driver is simple:

$ cd $DOWN_ROOT/xf86-video-intel

$ ./autogen.sh --prefix=${XORG_DIR}

$ make && make install

At last, 2D driver library file (intel_drv.so) will be installed to $XORG_DIR/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/.
3.4 Mesa and 3D driver

The 3D drivers are built from the Mesa source. Choose the right 'make' target depending on the hardware architecture you're compiling for. linux-dri is generic configuration file for all architectures on Linux.

You can edit configs/linux-dri file to customize the building. The first line defines some compiler optimization/debugging flags. You can simply use the default settings. The last line can be used to optimize the build by compiling only the drivers you need.

DRI_DIRS =

The full set of current supported drivers is :

DRI_DIRS = i810 i915tex i915 mach64 mga r128 r200 radeon s3v savage sis tdfx trident unichrome r300

If you only need Intel driver, you can modify this line as:

DRI_DIRS = i915 i965

Note: You will need to update PKG_CONFIG_PATH if you installed libdrm in /usr/local/lib. For example, export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH.

Now you're ready to compile it:

$ make linux-dri

After compiling the Mesa tree, the 3D drivers can be found in mesa/lib/. You will need to copy the drivers to $XORG_DIR/lib/modules/dri/. In different OS distribution, the default directory may be different. You can also specify an environment variable LIBGL_DRIVES_PATH to override this default directory.

$ cp lib/*_dri.so $XORG_DIR/lib/modules/dri/

You need to install the mesa library and head files, by default they are /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/include. You can override this directory in command line when execute the installation script:

$ bin/installmesa $XORG_DIR
4. Configuration
4.1 Load kernel modules

If agpgart and drm are not compiled into kernel, when system boot up you need load these kernel modules: agpgart, intel-agp, drm and i915.

To automatically load kernel modules when system boot up, you can edit file /etc/modules to add modules' name (on Debian/Ubuntu); or edit file /etc/rc.local to add lines such as: modprobe agpgart.
4.2 Enable Intel driver

Make sure intel driver is used in Xorg configure file (usually is /etc/X11/xorg.conf):

Section "Device"

Identifier "name"

Driver "intel"

Entries...

...

EndSection

Note: The old name i810 has been deprecated now.
4.3 Enable DRI

DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure) is a framework for allowing direct access to graphics hardware under the X Window System in a safe and efficient manner. You need enable DRI in xorg.conf.

Firstly, make sure the GLX and DRI modules are being loaded:

Section "Module"

# ...

Load "glx"

Load "dri"

# ...

EndSection

Then, set the permissions for DRI appropriately. To allow anyone to use DRI, do:

Section "DRI"

Mode 0666

EndSection

After restart X server, you can check whether direct rendering is enabled by running glxinfo, the output of glxinfo should show:

direct rendering: Yes

video cards for XGL.

2007-04-29T11:13:00.000-04:00

Here should be up to date information about video card support for XGL. everyone who wants to try XGL might have to look here first to make sure teir cards are being supported. Otherwise you might have to put lots efforts on the driver to let it work with XGL.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Video_Card_Support_Under_XGL

Video cards under Linux

2007-04-29T11:10:00.000-04:00

Find a nice article online about comparing the performance of video card under linux. little bit old but quite knowledgeable.
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=1331

ntroduction

With latest round of distributions, XFree86 4.0.1 has finally become the standard X server for Linux, up the 3.3.x series that dominated for quite some time. With 4.0.1 come many substantial improvements such as a completely rewritten XAA (X Acceleration Architecture) for 2D acceleration, Xinerama (contiguous multi-monitor support) and DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure - hardware accelerated OpenGL). Finally, Linux users have an extremely fast, free X server that can compete with commercial offerings such as Xi Graphics' Accelerated-X.

Hardware manufacturers have taken note of both the recent surge in Linux popularity and the revamping of XFree86. In the not too distant past, manufacturer support was considered good if driver specifications were available with which to write drivers. Now, several vendor supported XFree86 4.0.x drivers have been released or are in development by such manufacturers as NVIDIA, Matrox, 3dfx, and ATI. There are others, but these are the manufacturers we will focus on for this article.

Judging from the response to the last article, the number one question in Linux users' minds is "How do I get my card working with XFree86 4.0.1 and take advantage of such features as 3D acceleration?" Thus, this article will not only cover performance information, but setup as well. Anyone with one of these cards should be able to have a properly setup XFree86 system after reading this article.

Page 2
General Information

DRI refers to the technologies surrounding OpenGL acceleration under Linux. It is X-Windows specific and thus requires an X server even for full screen games. Typically, drivers consist of a kernel module that provides protected access to the hardware as well as an XFree86 driver module. One nice thing about XFree86 drivers is that they are operating system agnostic. However, they are still architecture specific. The driver loader was donated by Metrolink during the development of XFree86 4.0. Being operating system-independent, they can work on FreeBSD, Solaris or any other operating system running XFree86. This does not mean that 3D acceleration will be supported, as the previously mentioned kernel module is typically required.

Another interesting technology behind our newfound 3D acceleration is that we also got SGI's GLX module, which allows for remote display of OpenGL applications, transparently, like any other X application. While remote display with hardware acceleration is not currently supported by DRI, it is on the list of future features to be added. NVIDIA's drivers (which do not use DRI, but a similar model) are said to already support it, though we did not test this ourselves.

Also, note that both XFree86 and DRI provide CVS access to development code that is often faster or more feature-rich than released drivers (currently in XFree86 4.0.1). For example, 32bpp rendering is now supported by the Matrox driver in DRI's CVS tree (though it is not supported by any of the three released drivers on Matrox's web page).

All tests were conducted in 16bpp for the simple reason that neither the Matrox released subdrivers (the Matrox drivers in DRI's CVS contains drivers that contain support) nor the Intel 815 drivers support 32bpp 3D acceleration at this time. According to DRI's web page, the 815 will never support 32bpp rendering due to hardware limitation.

Note that it is possible to get hardware accelerated OpenGL with XFree86 3.3.x, the previous major version via Utah-GLX. Utah-GLX is not as clean of a solution as DRI for the simple reason that without kernel modules, one must run as root to get hardware acceleration. Still, it is very fast and supports the ATI Rage Pro cards, which are not supported by XFree86. It also supports the G200/G400 cards and is somewhat faster than XFree86/DRI at this time due to the current lack of multi-texturing support in the DRI driver. NVIDIA cards are supported as well, but without hardware specs, it is impossible to support DMA or AGP transfers, thus greatly limiting their speed. Finally, the Intel 810 is supported as well.

Page 3
XFree86 Setup: General

As mentioned before, a large number of the responses to the previous article dealt with configuration issues. We listened, and here's the general setup for those of you interested in playing with DRI. Also, please read the information on DRI's web page, as it's extremely useful when setting these cards up.

Note that this setup may not be necessary, as many distributions are including XFree86 4.0.1 and associated configuration utilities. The two that come to mind are Red Hat 7.0 and SuSE 7.0, but others may as well. These tests were conducted on Red Hat 7.0, which was intelligent enough to automatically configure several cards without manual intervention. Of course, we modified some parameters and installed more recent drivers for the NVIDIA and Matrox cards. Still, in time the installation procedure will get easier and easier.

To start, you need a basic /etc/X11/XF86Config file (Red Hat 7.0 uses /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 so as to allow support for both XFree86 3.3.6 and 4.0.1). Please note that the following file is only intended as a base point. It is very likely that you will need to modify paths or monitor settings. Note that my monitor accepts a wide range of frequencies. CHANGE THESE OR YOU MAY CAUSE DAMAGE TO YOUR MONITOR. You have been warned! Here is a basic file to get started:

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "dri"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "blank time" "10" # 10 minutes
Option "standby time" "20"
Option "suspend time" "30"
Option "off time" "60"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard"
Driver "keyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor"
HorizSync 30-95
VertRefresh 50-150
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Video Card"
Driver "mga"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "Video Card"
Monitor "Monitor"
DefaultDepth 16

SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Simple"
Screen "Screen 1"
InputDevice "Mouse" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Page 4
XFree86 Setup: Card Specific Setup

First, if you're running Red Hat 7.0, the included libGL.so files are actually from Mesa 3.3. This probably shouldn't be an issue since the files that usually come with XFree86 4.0.1 are also based on Mesa, but we experienced problems with some cards and had to manually replace the files with those from XFree86's FTP site.

Actually verifying that you have 3D acceleration enabled properly can be tricky. Keep an eye on your /var/log/XFree86.0.log file and make sure you see a line that says "direct rendering enabled." The DRI page has a lot of useful information and tools for verifying 3D acceleration.

For most cards, the only thing that needs to be modified is the Driver parameter of the Device section. Here's the rundown:
NVIDIA

NVIDIA cards: use nv to use the driver that comes with XFree86 4.0.1 (support for cards through the first GeForce cards only), or nvidia to use the drivers from NVIDIA's web site (support for GeForce2 cards as well). The driver difference has led to quite a bit of confusion. Much of this is due to the following excerpt from the NVIDIA driver FAQ:

Note: currently released versions of XFree86 4.0.x DO NOT support the newer GeForce2 family of NVIDIA cards. This includes cards such as the GeForce2 GTS, the GeForce2 MX, and the GeForce2 Ultra. This has been fixed in XFree86's CVS repository, but will take a new release before binary distributions pick the support up. If you have one of these cards, you will need to skip attempting to run the "nv" driver at this point.

This does not mean that GeForce2 cards do not work with XFree86 4.0.x. It simply means that the drivers shipped with all current releases of XFree86 won't work with GeForce2 cards. The NVIDIA drivers are easy enough to set up, so don't give up yet. Download the drivers from NVIDIA and install. The tricky part is that they ship different versions of libGL.so and libglx.a (the GLX module). Make sure you remove the previous files so as to avoid accidentally running a program with the wrong library (which would result in no hardware acceleration). XFree86's reside in /usr/X11R6/lib, while libglx.a is in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions. Note that Red Hat 7.0 includes them in /usr/lib with the Mesa-3.3 package, as mentioned above.

If you're running *BSD or another non-Linux operating system supported by XFree86, you are unable to use NVIDIA's drivers. Try the latest code in XFree86's CVS repository. This code is unstable development code, but we've found that it's generally far from troublesome. It should work with even GeForce2 based cards, but will not provide the performance you see in this article. NVIDIA does not release enough information about their card to even utilize DMA transfers.
Matrox

The XF86Config file listed earlier is actually for a Matrox card, so there is no modification necessary. However, we recommend that you upgrade your driver to the one distributed on Matrox's web site. This driver provides Dual Head functionality as well as improved OpenGL acceleration. If the "beta" status of Matrox's driver strikes you as too stable, DRI's driver (in CVS) adds support for 32bpp rendering.
ATI

For Rage 128 based cards, simply change the Driver line to use "r128". Note that there are hundreds of different ATI cards based on the Rage 128 and they can sometimes identify themselves differently. We've seen reports of people unable to get the drivers to work simply because the card isn't listed as supported. If this happens, you can always try the CVS code from DRI or XFree86.

Radeon drivers are in development but have not been released yet. The development of these drivers is said to also result in higher quality drivers for Rage 128 based cards. Rage Pro cards are not supported (from a 3D acceleration standpoint) at this time, although development is in progress. Support will likely be based on work done on the Utah-GLX project for XFree86 3.3.x. In the meantime, Rage Pro users may use XFree86 3.3.6 along with Utah-GLX and achieve good (for the card) performance.

According to the DRI User Guide, Rage 128 Pro cards are not currently supported. As the driver is being reworked for Radeon and Rage128 cards, we would assume that support will be added when this new driver is available, although we have not checked this with the DRI developers.
3dfx

For all Voodoo cards, use driver "tdfx" in the Driver line. Unfortunately, Red Hat 7.0 fails to include this driver and the corresponding libraries it requires. If you already have XFree86 4.0.1 installed and have the correct libglide3x.so.3 for your card, you can skip the following two paragraphs.

Driver support can actually be very tricky for these cards as they require both drivers and specific versions of the GLIDE library. If you have a Voodoo3 or Voodoo Banshee based card, see 3dfx's driver page located here. If you have a Voodoo5 based card, see 3dfx's driver page located here.

All tests in this article were done using the driver from DRI's CVS tree and GLIDE from CVS as well. This should represent the current state of the drivers currently in development.

Support for the Voodoo5 is fairly recent and only one CPU of the two on-board CPUs is supported. Keep that in mind when reviewing these benchmarks, as scores will improve dramatically as the driver progresses. It is expected that this limitation will be resolved in the future.

Also note that by default, the 3dfx driver caps frame rate to the monitor's refresh. For the purposes of benchmarking, we disabled this by defining the FX_GLIDE_SWAPINTERVAL environment variable to 0.
Intel 815

The on-board video on the Intel 815 chipset is supported by the i810 driver. Change the Driver line of the Device section of your XF86Config file to reference this driver. You must have the agpgart.o kernel module for this to work, so check /lib/modules/ for that file. Our test machine running Red Hat 7.0 came ready to go.

Page 5
The Test

Red Hat Linux 7.0 Test System

Hardware
CPU(s) Intel Pentium III 750 (100MHz FSB on AX6BCPro)
Intel Pentium III 733 (133MHz FSB on CUSL2)
Motherboard(s) AOpen AX6BCPro Gold
ASUS CUSL2
Memory 128MB PC133 Corsair SDRAM (Micron -7E Chips)
Hard Drive

Western Digital Expert WD 313600 13.6 GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA 66
Video Card(s)

NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS 32MB
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 32MB
3dfx Voodoo5 5500 64MB
3dfx Voodoo3 3000 16MB PCI
Matrox Millennium G400Max
ATI Rage128 32MB
Intel 752 Graphics Controller (815 on-board video)
Ethernet

Linksys LNE100TX 100Mbit PCI Ethernet Adapter

Software

Operating System

Red Hat Linux 7.0
Video Drivers

NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS 32MB - 0.9-5
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 32MB - 0.9-5
3dfx Voodoo5 5500 64MB - DRI CVS 10/5/2000
3dfx Voodoo3 3000 16MB PCI - DRI CVS 10/5/2000
Matrox Millennium G400Max - 1.00.003 Beta (Matrox release)
ATI Rage128 32MB - XFree86 4.0.1 release
Intel 752 - XFree86 4.0.1 release

Benchmarking Applications
2D

Xmark
3D

SPECviewperf 6.1.2
Evas CVS 10/3/2000
Gears
Quake III Arena 1.11

Page 6
2D Performance: Xmark Results

We learned a thing or two about 2D benchmarks in our last article. First, we learned that Xmark is particular about using data from v1.3 of x11perf. As we were using v1.5, the 2D benchmarks we posted were incorrect. As it did not change the outcome, we decided to just put the new results in this article rather than updating the previous. This information was relayed by an XFree86 hacker, so we feel pretty confident we've got it right this time.

Xmark is a comprehensive benchmark for X-Windows systems. The process is to run an x11perf benchmark that tests a multitude of separate tests lasting for several hours. In the end, Xmark is used to parse the data into a single score, an Xmark. This is the current standard 2D performance measurement for X-Windows.

One thing of note, the 3dfx cards both caused X to hang while running this benchmark. It is a known bug in XFree86 4.0.1 and will be resolved in XFree86 4.0.2. If you're curious, here is the explanation we received:

Just FYI, what's happening is this. We create a command buffer on the card. It's just a chunk of memory where we write small chunks of data that tell the card what to do. When that buffer fills up we have to wait for the card to execute the stuff in the buffer before we can put more stuff in it.

The problem is that x11perf isn't a usual app. It executes the exact same command over and over. It fills up the buffer with them. We then have to wait for it to drain. Normally that isn't the problem because it is a mix of commands and they take reasonable amounts of time, but when x11perf wants to execute a slow command, it takes too long for the buffer to empty and the driver thinks the board is hung.

The solution is to run the test for a shorter time period (cutting the several hour test in half, roughly). The extra parameters we used were -repeat 2 -time 2.

As in the last article, the NVIDIA cards dominated. After publishing that article, we received an e-mail from the original developer of the Matrox driver. He mentioned that at the time he wrote the driver, 2D support did not utilize any features that would require kernel support, such as AGP and DMA transfers. We have yet to receive confirmation from Matrox, but it appears as if little or no work has been done in this area since the XFree86 release. We hope that Matrox can improve their 2D performance in forthcoming driver releases. Why no AGP/DMA usage in 2D? As these features require kernel support, they must be written for each platform individually. Our guess is that the module was designed to be as fast as possible while maintaining complete portability. Adding support for AGP and DMA is an operating system specific task.

Page 7
3D Performance: Quake III Arena

The de facto standard for consumer 3D benchmarking is Quake III Arena for the simple reason that it is the most widely used 3D application by the average user. In fact, drivers are often criticized for being optimized only for Quake, particularly by non-gamers. Yes, 3D is useful for other things than gaming. Regardless, Quake III makes for an excellent 3D benchmark due the fact that it still drives sales of modern 3D cards.

Unmatched, the NVIDIA cards simply dominate Quake III performance. Note the bandwidth limiting of the GeForce2s at lower resolutions, they're simply not challenged. The Voodoo5 5500 is held back by the fact that its drivers only support one CPU at this time. With the upcoming dual-CPU Voodoo5 driver release and the soon to be released Radeon drivers, maybe we'll see a card get somewhere close to the GeForce2s in performance. The G400 and Rage128 round out third place with very playable performance. Intel's 815 chipset on-board video shows its age (it's based on an updated version of the Intel i740 card from long ago) and comes in dead last.

We noticed no rendering errors or other graphic glitches with any of these cards. Once again, drivers are often engineered for Quake III, and this is likely a result of that fact.

Page 8
A note on Viewperf

We had also intended to include benchmarks from the cross platform OpenGL benchmark, SPECviewperf. Unfortunately, it seems as though the only drivers mature enough to support this test are the NVIDIA drivers. All other cards failed somewhere in the middle of any of the tests, and thus the results are unreliable. Viewperf is known for being one of the most demanding OpenGL benchmark applications out there. It is intended to give results corresponding to professional research applications where high-end cards dominate.
3D Performance: Evas_test

Once again, we've included benchmarks from Evas, the future rendering backend for Enlightenment and EFM. This version is actually newer than the one used in the previous article, hence the differences in scores. It has since been renamed to evas_test_old as it is being replaced by a new test utility. The newer tool allows easy comparison of different rendering models (OpenGL, straight Xlib, and software rendered Imlib2) while the older tool, used here, can be more easily applied as a benchmark used to test the texturing throughput of a card and its drivers. The proliferation of this library will allow even the non-gamers to utilize the 3D acceleration of their cards in every day applications.

Evas_test_old screen shot

Here's a screen shot of evas_test_old running (in software rendered mode, hence the low frame rate). Lots of floating icons, rotating gradients and alpha blending all over the place.

Evas_test_old - 16bpp

Once again, the GeForce2s come out on top. The more economical GeForce2 MX shows where its crippled memory bandwidth as the resolutions get higher and fill rate becomes an issue, at least in comparison to its big brother, the GeForce2 GTS. The G400 MAX followed in a distant third barely outperforming the Voodoo5. Once again, the Intel 815 comes in dead last, but at least it outperforms Imlib2's software rendering.

Unlike the Quake III results, visual quality was an issue here. Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to determine if it is a specific rendering option used by Evas or if it is a result of driver or hardware quality. Thus, don't let this sway you in believing it's a driver issue so much as it could possibly be a driver issue.

The worst of the bunch, the Intel 815 incorrectly rendered both a solid filled, semi-transparent rectangle and all floating text, which was rendered as if the alpha (transparency) values were being ignored. Better, the ATI Rage128 properly rendered all floating text, but also misrendered the rectangle. In both cases and with both 3dfx cards, there was significant color banding in the background. Granted, this was 16bpp, but the Matrox and both NVIDIA cards looked fine.
Voodoo3
Zoom in of evas_test_old on the Voodoo3

G400/GeForce2
Zoom in of what evas_test_old should look like

Here, we can see the difference between the Voodoo3's rendering (to the left) and what it should look like (to the right). Notice the distinct separation of color in the background. The G400 and both GeForce2 cards did not demonstrate this artifact.

Page 9
The Future: Next Generation Hardware

In the past, Linux users had to watch new hardware come out to the market with the realization that it would not be supported immediately, if ever. Oh the agony, to watch a Windows user enjoying the benefits of his new 3D card knowing you'd be stuck with your older card! Thankfully, with the amazing performance of VA Linux's and Red Hat's IPOs along with the media frenzy over the last year, we have drivers for next generation hardware much faster. Here's a quick look at what's to come:
NVIDIA

Open-source advocates caution that NVIDIA's use of closed-source drivers could leave the Linux community high and dry if NVIDIA ever grows tired of supporting us. For the moment anyway, we have the benefit of very good drivers. Further, their efforts to unify the code between their Windows and Linux drivers assures porting will be easy and drivers should be available rapidly for future products. We have also heard rumors that the current drivers may actually support several unreleased/unannounced chips. This would certainly be good news, but we are unable to confirm this at this time.

The closed-source vs. open-source driver development debate is fierce in the Linux community, which shuns any code distributed in a binary-only form. To Windows users, this seems silly, but there are several reasons that open source driver development is a very good thing. It all boils down to the ability to modify or enhance drivers in the event that the supporting company is not providing important features. For example, NVIDIA must add support for new X extensions and other enhancements themselves. While XFree86's drivers (in CVS) are starting to support the new Render extension (support for alpha-blending between windows and anti-aliased fonts), NVIDIA will have to implement this themselves. As it's one of many cool new X extensions, we hope that they are following its development and plan to include it in a future release of their drivers. Open sourced drivers allow for other developers to add support for such features themselves. In this case, it would likely be implemented by an XFree86 developer. Further, by keeping the drivers closed source, NVIDIA restricts the ability of the community to port to other operating systems such as FreeBSD. Typically, companies are blacklisted by Linux users for restricting open source development. However, NVIDIA's drivers are currently very good and their hardware is excellent, so many users swallow their pride and live with it.
Matrox

We asked DRI's development team about possible driver development for the G800 card. Here's their response:

We can't talk about unreleased products at all. When we do work on a card, we have an agreement with the vendor that defines when we can talk about the work. We always try to announce the work as early as possible, (to avoid redundant work) but it is always up to the vendor to decide exactly when to announce it.

So, basically, we didn't find out anything. Given Matrox's track record, drivers are more or less guaranteed, but it would have been nice to know that they're already in development.
3dfx

As the Voodoo5 5500 worked, we would assume that the 6000 should not have any serious issues preventing it from working out of the box, though full support will likely come at a later date since the Voodoo5's dual CPU setup is currently restricted to using a single CPU. Historically, 3dfx has been a good supporter of open-source development work and releasing Linux drivers. We see no reason to expect otherwise.
ATI

The recently released Radeon is not currently supported by XFree86 4.0.x. Like other manufacturers, ATI has contracted Precision Insight (developers of DRI for XFree86) to develop Radeon drivers for XFree86 4.0.x. We have not received any word on their progress or estimated time frame of release, although we would expect that it is not far off.

Note that the new Radeon drivers involve a major update to the current Rage 128 driver architecture as well. Thus, not only will Radeons be supported in the near future, but the Rage 128 cards will receive a nice performance boost by the new driver.

Page 10
Conclusions

Again, we see the NVIDIA cards dominating in both 2D and 3D performance under Linux. NVIDIA has worked hard on their drivers and they are proud of their results, as they should be. Their performance edge makes it difficult to justify another card on the basis of open-source drivers alone. Many users still feel burned by their schizophrenic attitude towards TNT drivers under Linux, which keeps them away from NVIDIA's latest offerings. For those interested, after announcing open source drivers, they obfuscated the code before releasing. Then the drivers sat, unmodified, unimproved and unsupported. Finally, they released their revolutionary new driver architecture (as used here with the GeForce2 cards), which supports the TNT/TNT2 as well as their GeForce and GeForce2 cards.

Still, there are other features on the other cards that may interest other users. Matrox supports both TV and flat panel out on their G400/G450 cards as well as dual head output in their drivers. It should be noted that even this support (Dualhead and TV/DVI output) is closed-source, as opening it would violate an NDA between Matrox and Macrovision.

Further, the ATI All-In-Wonder cards with TV input are also supported under Linux, though unofficially, by the GATOS project.

Finally, Linux Games has just released a very in-depth review of several video cards and their corresponding gaming performance under Linux and Windows. They cover gaming performance for specific games and discuss differences in driver support between Windows and Linux.
Related Links

· Matrox - Manufacturers of the Millennium G400Max and G450
· NVIDIA - Manufacturers of the GeForce2 MX
· Red Hat - Linux distribution used in these tests
· XFree86 - The X11R6.4 implementation used for these tests
· DRI - The direct rendering implementation used by XFree86
· Linux3D - Web site with general Linux 3D information
· GLX - The X extension that allows for OpenGL acceleration even remotely
· Precision Insight - Initial designers of DRI, site includes a lot of DRI information
· GATOS - The GATOS project, support for TV input on ATI cards
· Render - The X extension in development allowing for anti-aliased fonts and alpha blending between windows
· SPEC - Creators of SPECviewperf, which was supposed to be used for 3D benchmarking in this article
· Enlightenment - Window manager and home of Evas, used for 3D benchmarking in this article

Mathematica in Fedora 6

2007-04-20T22:18:00.000-04:00

The main problem for runing mathematica in Fedora is Selinux.
"Cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied?"

more details see
http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/linux/general/selinux.html

Solution:
$ su root
# cd
# chcon -c -v -R -u system_u -r object_r -t lib_t $InstallationDirectory/SystemFiles/Libraries/
# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t $InstallationDirectory/SystemFiles/Libraries/$SystemID/*

If it doesn't work, disable Selinux. but fortunately, this approach works in fc6.

Audacious Xmms working with ape. (contiune)

2007-04-19T23:44:00.000-04:00

Fogot to mention the plugin for XMMS. it seems the plug did not work well with Xmms. it can not be drag around to ff and bf on play panel. anyway here is the plugin code

download xmms-mac-0.3.1.tar.gz and similar do
./configure --enable-local
make && make install

it will generate four files .a .la .so etc.

Audacious Xmms working with ape.

2007-04-19T23:32:00.000-04:00

It's quite for a while, I can not play .ape format music under linux with either Xmms or Audacious. The main reason I think it's because Monkey' Audio codec is kind of Mac. somehow against GPL. it's available for windows. Some guy did the work ported it to linux. so Finally, I can let my Audacious play .ape file. very nice. Here is the procedure to make this codec to work:

first of all you should have audacious, :).
don't forget to install audacious-devel, otherwise you can not compile libmac code. it will say missing audacious pkg.

1. download mac-3.99-u4-b5.tar.gz which includes most of mac lib and head file that we need for mac-codec compile.

2. download audacious-mac-0.2.1 codec file

3 install audacious-devel . provide audacious.pc which has pkg information for compiling codec.

and then go to audacious-mac-0.2.1 to do
./configure --enable-local // make plugin to install local directory instead of system directory.
make
make install

now enjoy it.

Seems nobody care about project

2007-04-08T22:32:00.000-04:00

The due date is tomorrow. the whole project is still in processing. actually,no body care about it. I worked on it several nights and the whole weekend. the circuit design is quite easy, but it is hard to get high performance. and the important things it supposed to be four people's work.

Quiz 3

2007-04-05T09:31:00.000-04:00

Finally, after being postponed for one week, Quiz 3 came yesterday. it covered lots of stuff. some of them are pretty straightforward, but for most of them, you need to think about it before you get the correct answer.

Quiz 4 is blowed off as Dr. Fox said, we most likely will have more projects to do for the rest of semester. now we are working on Gm-C filter, the next one will be SC-filter and even ADC stuff if the time is allowed to do so. I think for analog circuit, these three topic should be well known by any engineering student who is planning to find a job in CMOS IC design area.

As of Gm-c filter, the first step pretty easy. based on RLC prototype network, we can find the value for R,L and C. after that do frequency scaling and impedance scaling to meet the design requirements. Second, by using ideal voltage control current source to replace any passive component in the circuit:R=1/gm, C should be keep there :). and for L, L=C/gm^2 converting L to C. we finish the the conversion from prototype circuit to gm-c circuit. Now, using simulation do check it out if the circuit still keep the same transfer function between any two steps. Probably, you will find some gain of inter nodes have peak wave. So it's necessary to do dynamic scaling to make sure all the node have the gain=1 which gives an optimal result for SNR.

the critical characteristic of gm-c filter is the linearity of transconductor. Most efforts are put here to improve the linearity of whole circuit. cause we should have a wide tunable gm-c filter instead of a fixed gm. For 1 V Vdm input, if we could keep the change of gm in 1% range, that will be a cool circuit.

well, time for my breakfast.

JT

My FC6

2007-03-30T20:43:00.000-04:00

Analog CMOS project GM-C FILTER design

2007-03-28T00:04:00.000-04:00

Far behind the schedule

2007-03-27T23:34:00.000-04:00

Now, it's already lecture 28 for Analog CMOS IC design,but I haven't review the note since 19. wow, where is time going.???? Just finished the middle term exam for Microwave. Before I noticed that I made a mistake, time is up. :((. what a shame. seems that it's hard to get a good grade for this course except I could get a full credit for the final. :-( 555555.

Mar.27/07

Matlab7 in FC6

2007-03-24T14:14:00.000-04:00

Matlab 7 runs well in fedora cor 4, you can say perfect. but I haven't notice that matlab 7 has some problems with fc6 before I want to use symble to solve a formula of (X,Y). like solve('x^2+2*x+2=0'). so I got
Unable to load mex file: /opt/matlab7/toolbox/symbolic/maplemex.mexglx.
/opt/matlab7/bin/glnx86/libmaple.so: symbol errno, version GLIBC_2.0 not defined in file libc.so.6 with link time reference
??? Invalid MEX-file '/opt/matlab7/toolbox/symbolic/maplemex.mexglx': .

and also when I do ldd /opt/matlab7/bin/glnx86/glren.so, I got:
/usr/local/matlab/bin/glnx86/glren.so:
/usr/local/matlab/bin/glnx86/../../sys/os/glnx86/libgcc_s.so.1:
version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6)
/usr/local/matlab/bin/glnx86/glren.so:
/usr/local/matlab/bin/glnx86/../../sys/os/glnx86/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.3' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6)
[...]

[solution]

step 1:
yum install compat-gcc*
cd /opt/matlab7/sys/os/glnx86
mv libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc_s.so.1_back
ln -s /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc_s.so.1

Step 2:

download libmaple.so file from
http://www.mathworks.com/support/solutions/attachment.html?resid=1-32V31N&solution=1-1BDU5
and then do
cp libmaple.so /opt/matlab7/bin/glnx86

all done

Fedora core 6

2007-03-22T23:19:00.000-04:00

Finally, I found a new version eda software which can work in Fedora core 6. Before that I have to work in fc4 which only has xorg 6.82. less fun.

Reunion with friends: Nadine and Tom.

2007-03-13T17:10:00.000-04:00

Continue....

Spring Break

2007-03-13T16:40:00.000-04:00

Finally, Spring break is coming. Even though we still have lots of work havn't done which will be due after break, I am gonna take two days off at the beginning of break. You see, now I am updating my blog, little bit long time since last time. :((.

On sunday, we went to UN, take a real look at inside of the mysterious building.

schoolfellow ( I find this word in dictionary) and I in front of the "OUR EARTH"

Distorted GUN stands for "PEACE"

"DING" "鼎" the present China government gave to UN. Someone said that it was used to do cooking in old time. I am not sure about that. It might wast lost of gas and wood to do so. It was made of "Copper"

Conference room. We often see it on TV.

Nice view from the office. "east river and queens borough of New York". I like the office with beautiful view.

Feel boring on study ........

2006-10-29T22:35:00.000-05:00

It always came to me that the current study is quite boring. I don't know where this feeling comes from, but it is so real and hanging around me. I know that I am so luncky to have this opportunity in school to review and improve my knowledge and skills Even in my early thirtys not like others who are stangling for living and finding a decent job.

sigh! What a day.

Jacky

Unbelievable

2006-10-24T11:53:00.000-04:00

It's totally unbelievable! It turns out that I am allergic to Winter Melon--another name Wax Gourd. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_gourd

This is the second food that I am allergic to so far in United States. The first one is shrimp. I used to eat these food in China and like them so much, but not now :(.

It was terrrible yesterday. I can not keep scratching. it was too itching and too many red spots came out and were swollen. Fortunately, My roomate brough so many medicines from China include allergy. I am fine now.

Homecoming Parade -- Gainesville

2006-10-06T16:31:00.000-04:00

Monday again, American Idioms coming....

2006-10-02T23:15:00.000-04:00

It's been long time since last time I upated the American Idioms here. Missed several classes and Now here it comes:

1. Let's take that red sports car for a spin . (for a short drive)

2. I'm sorry to pour cold water on your enthusiasm, but sports car are a dime a dozen.
(to discourage, delay, or prevent something ) (common; of little value)

3. I 'd like a car with the works--something that is really cutting-edge. (advanced;high-tech;modern)

4.Thanks for your two cents, but don't forget the pecking order. I'm pulling rank-I'll choose the car.
(your opinion ) (a sequence of authority) (to assert your higher status)

5. Dr. Wright strikes me as being really full of himself. He completely ignored my questions.
(to seem to be) (conceited;self-centered;self-important)

6 He'll change his tune once someone teaches him a lesson.
(to adjust your attitude or behavior) ( to show someone the consequences of his actions)

7. Maybe,but you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
(it is difficult to change someone's habits or ways)

8.Then go see Dr. Hines. He'll keep you up to speed on what he's doing, and before you know it, you 'll be on the mend.
( informed of the most recent information) ( almost immediately;very soon) ( recovering your health)

Lake Party ---- Santa Fe Lake

2006-10-01T16:24:00.000-04:00

As I said in previous post, we had a lake party in Santa Fe lake on Sept 30. Santa Fe sounds like a spanish name. Most likely because Spanish are the first settler in Florida. Lake Santa Fe is a private lake of one property which is owned by group of retired teachers from high school and college. They built their own house there. And this time they invited International Friendship and all new comers to their place. At first time I thought the International Friendship was the host.

It is a great place.

Lake Santa Fe

Kayaks

canoe

All midterm exams are done

2006-09-29T19:45:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, after finishing the third course midterm exam, I took all exam for the courses I registered this semester. There are still some regret in the last quiz even though I learned it pretty well. Made some mistakes on the test or somehow I felt that I was in the way like I did not care too much about the test, just wrote down whatever I think, did not do it like a student??? The only thing that never changed is that I still feel nervous before exam like ten years ago. Possibly, because I did not do well on another two exams and hope I can do better this time. Another reason is that I did not get enough sleep last night. In order to finish the homework of bipolar, I did not get to sleep till 2:30 in the morning. And the worst thing, I woke up around 7:30 am. Totally tired ........!!!

Everyone asks me why you look so tired when I say hi to them.

Keep working hard. there are no reaseon for me to drawback from studying. Go,go go.....keep going.

Fortunately, there is a lake party hosted by International Friendship tormorrow. I am gonna go and relax for a while.

JT

Sitll confused with Rcl whether we should add R1 in or not

2006-09-29T12:34:00.000-04:00

It seems that from today's note, the results are little bit opposite to previous class. I have to figure it out.

Encounter with a problem of using BT EMULE with WRT54G.

2006-09-28T10:35:00.000-04:00

Our new router WRT54G has been working normally for a month. In these days, it is suddenly shutdown or dead somehow. We can download some files from internet,but can not go anywhere by website. Maybe eventually, it can open a webpage. that will be tens of times of normal. After trying to resolve this problem several time even called the service center of Cox company, we found that there is something wrong with router when using p2p software like BT, emule etc. The weird thing is it worked with these software for a while. Why can NOT they get along now????

No time to do little bit research on this issue, I have another midterm exam tormorrow which has lots of calculation stuff, formular to remember and familar. Don't want to screw it up, back to study.

发个帖子纪念，呵呵

2006-09-23T17:41:00.000-04:00

据说昨天为了纪念什么来着100年，甘卫的钟声将会响彻全城5分钟，可惜没有听到。

Got a bed..... :)

2006-09-21T21:08:00.000-04:00

:) finally, I got my own bed by ending one month living with airbed, filling in air all the time. :(.

Went to Wal-mart and bought some nice sheet set. Here is my bed.

untitled

2006-09-19T15:33:00.000-04:00

I don't know why somehow I like the rainning day. Maybe, it is because that should be back to my childhood. I grew up in a small village. We did not do anyting when the rain was coming. Stay home and most likely my father would like to make a special food for us " youtiao". As you know, in early 1980s, most people were still runing at the bottom line of the life, especially in county. "you tiao'' seems a luxurious food for children living in small village. And the important thing is all of the family are staying together during that day from mornig to evening. talking about the story, interesting things happened. It was really a good time for everyone of the family.

"Pirate of the Caribben 2"

2006-09-17T21:32:00.000-04:00

On Friday, as we knew that "pirate 0f the Caribben 2" would be the movie for "Gator Night". we decided to see the movie at 6:30pm and walk back home 'cause the last No.8 bus is 7:05pm.

It was only around ten miniutes after the movie started when the film was burned. The staff came to tell us that it was little problem and only take twenty minutes to fix it. Okay, no problem, we still can wait with free popcorn and soda. Half an hour passed, we were told that the 6:30pm movie was canceled and we can take the raincheck to come back at 9:00pm. It was impossible for us to catch the last bus to get back home. Fortunately, I brought my computer today, the bad thing is it almost ran out of battery.

(continue...)

The life in Gainesville will be like this........

2006-09-17T21:06:00.000-04:00

So far, I have been in Gainesville over a month. Looking for apartment, roomates, registering courses and taking classes are the beginning of my study in Florida.

Attending International Friendship party and Playing badminton once a week, going swimming once a day will compose my off-campus life here. Pretty simple, huh? Every once in a while, that's the life in my dream. Going to work when sun rise and back as sunset. Playing with children in backyard, walking on alameda enjoying the fresh air and the peaceful evening.

Hope everyone has the life s/he wants and cherishes what s/he had.

The first Quiz is coming,but I blew it.

2006-09-15T11:50:00.000-04:00

Finally, the first Quiz is coming....... Unfortunately, I spent lots of time on one calculation and did not finish yet. Half of questions were left blank, so I blew it. Damn it.!!!!! I need more hard work on it. Familiar with formulars, how to anaysis circuits quickly and the key point is find out the primary paramerter and elmiminate other paramerter simplifying the circuit as possible as it can be.

That's the goal of this courses which teaching you how to analysis circuit -- bipolar circuit--by eliminiating as many parameters as you can.

So, Now on, I really need to buckle down to read more books and do more homework.

Hopefully, I still can catch up with Dr. Fox

Jingtao 9.15 .2006

Another course Quiz will come by the end of this month,two weeks away..... :((((

Prepare for Quiz

2006-09-12T23:57:00.000-04:00

The first Quiz for Bipolar will be on Friday. Still confused with lots of stuff of this course. Common base, common emitter, common collecter single stage,multistages amplifiers. Ri, Ro ,Gm are the primary parameters I need to memorize. Learned them almost ten years ago, now I have to pick it up again, little bit ironic..... :(((((.

Idioms coming.......

2006-09-11T23:26:00.000-04:00

On the house: free; at the expense of the restaurant

out of this world excellent;superb

pay through the nose: to pay a lot of money

pinch pennies: to spend as little money as possible

That's all for 9.11.2006

Big rain tonight!

2006-09-10T21:01:00.000-04:00

This' an unexpected T-storm tonight. the first big rain I have ever seen since came here-almost one month. oh, maybe the first rain this month.

SouthWest Fitness Center

2006-09-10T00:37:00.000-04:00

In South Fitness Center,every staurday morning from 10:00 am to 1:00pm, they change the basketball place into Badminton place. So, we went there this morning by cathing the early weekend bus. The weekend service from RTS Only has one bus every hour. Fortunately, in general, they keep runing on schedule. Don't need so much time for waiting.
Here got some pics from my roomate. He likes to take pics anytime.

On the way to the SouthWest Fitness Center by taking No.20 bus from Reitz Union.

One field of playing badminton

Normally, here is full of Chinese guys.

Fitness Room

lao wai are here :)))

They like training their muscle

Another one

Lao wai are here too. like jogging

FC4+ipw3945+wpa+hidden ssid

2006-09-07T14:58:00.000-04:00

It took me a hour and half to make it work. ipw3945 wireless card and wrt54g router with FC4.
1. download wpa_supplicant and install it
2. load drivers of ipw3945
3. use iwconfig set up ssid first because we use the hidden ssid on the router. otherwise wpa can not find proper ssid to connect.
4. set up wpa psk key by using wpa_passphrase ( wpa_supplicant.conf file with ssid_scan=1 fix hidden ssid problem)
5. type wpa_supplicant -D wext -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -Bw load wpa
6. dhclient assign IP for IPW3945.

Now you can enjoy the wireless access internet with wpa

Team Work on EEL5934 --first meeting

2006-09-06T17:50:00.000-04:00

the first HW for EEL5934 is a group work on topic of GaAs.

Did not learn much,just google and then copy and past. and spent lots of time,four hours. still did not have dinner.

Fortunately, We did a great job. 99% work are done.

Feel so bad............

2006-09-06T16:57:00.000-04:00

I was totally upset when I found that the HW was wong which I spent three hours on it early morning. Be careful with using calculator on computer.......

It is always true that troubles never come singly. The vending machine ate my one dollar bill and gave me nothing no matter how I beat it. Damn it!!!

I feel little bit headache. Need a rest

Breakthrough on swimming

2006-09-05T23:38:00.000-04:00

Finally, after trying to swim in our small pool, I learned breast stoke "wa yong" in chinese. There will be three courses hw on due tomorrow. Go back study. What a day!!!

Got some new American Idioms

2006-09-05T00:54:00.000-04:00

Came back from IF, got some hard idioms tonight. Avoid to forget those of them, write them down here.

Drop names: to refer to famous people as friends in order to impress others.
-- Have you noticesd that Jill constantly drops names?

So-and-so: a person, whose name you don't know.

Talk out of both sides of your mouth: to sya what your audience wants to hear.

Take something to heart: to be deeply moved or upset by something.

wasn't born yesterday: isn't stupid or easily deceived

have a way with: to have a natural ability with

speak volumes: to indciate much without using words

Learn a little, practice alot..... you will make it permanent!!!

Labor Day, 2006

Go Gators

2006-09-02T11:15:00.000-04:00

That's the mascot of Florida.
Alligator.
(Don't be panic, just a model)

I am looking around and can not find any looks like main entrance of UF but this Gate. Just gave it a shot.

This is my new Home in Gainesville, a small town in Middle of Florida. Don't worry about Hurricane, Tropical Storm here. Just be carefull with sun shine.

One of my roomates!

So Coooooooooollllllllllllllllll!!!

a small swimming pool of the apartments.

The Freedom Trail

2006-09-02T10:33:00.000-04:00

On the National Holiday, July 4th,2006, We went to Boston, the birthplace of freedom , and had a chance to study one of important Aermican culture--freedom. Follow the red track on the ground , you can see all the evidence of the Freedom back to the 18th century.

My own blog, Welcome to share life with me

2006-09-02T10:13:00.000-04:00

Finally, I have my own blog which will record my new life in United States. Welcome to my blog and I would like to share my life with you here. :)

Jacky