my impressions of F19A, from Radeon testing day

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2013-04-25 at 23:29 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
> 
> Not sure how many of these are specific to the Radeon driver, but I
> kept notes as I went through the whole install/test process, and I'm
> including them here in case they help anyone.  I'm available for more
> detailed testing if needed.
> 
> hardware:
> 
> Intel six-core i7-EE, 24GB RAM, Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R motherboard
> ATI Radeon HD 6870 with four monitors (one 30", two rotated 20", one 23")
> 
> My monitor setup is: one 30" 2560x1600 in the middle, one 20"
> 1200x1600 (rotated) on each side, and the 1080p way off on the right.
> 
> Basic install went OK.
> 
> "Welcome" dialog is on rightmost monitor, not main monitor (the black
> Gnome menu is on main monitor).

We don't really have any way of knowing what the main monitor is, in a
multiple monitor setup. I think X just goes with enumeration order until
you specify it somehow...

> After the screen saver kicked in, it wasn't obvious how to leave the
> giant clock screen (none of the usual key presses or mouse clicks did
> anything).  Only later was I shown the up-arrow thing but clicking on
> it did nothing.  Eventually I tried swiping it which worked after a
> few tries.  Swiping a clock up a 30" monitor isn't the most natural
> way to disable a screensaver.

That's a GNOME design, I remember finding it a bit confusing at first
but now I just hit Esc. The idea is that it's a 'shield' in front of
your desktop, which you swipe away.

> No options in keyboard layout window - it brought up a blank list and
> made me "pick"  one.

Sorry, not quite sure what you mean here? Which 'keyboard layout window'
is this?

> It then asks to create local account despite already doing so in
> anaconda.  Could not skip or re-enter same data.  Anaconda should tell
> you that the account you create *there* is *not* an admin, and that
> you will be *required* to create yet another account later, which *is*
> an admin.

No, that's not the idea. The integration between anaconda, initial-setup
and gnome-initial-setup just isn't entirely done yet. I think if you
create a user in anaconda it's an admin user by default, but I'm not
100% sure. It should probably give you the option.

> After "start gnome", main screen went solid white until ESC pressed.
> Only later did I realize it was supposed to play a movie (sound wasn't
> configured yet).  The movie tells me to press a key that doesn't exist
> on my keyboard.

Clearly, your keyboard is broken. I'd return it. ;)

I've never quite got the 'being proud of having a keyboard with no Super
key' thing. It's a handy key. But anyway, this is a general introductory
video to GNOME aimed at very new users; if you're geeky enough to have
gone out and carefully sourced a keyboard with no Super key, you are not
the target audience of the video, so that doesn't really seem to be a
problem.

> Resizing firefox is VERY slow - about 2-3 FPS.

Try booting with slub_debug=- . Pre-Beta builds of Fedora use debug
kernels, which are much slower than release kernels.

> analog 5.1 "test speakers" emits no output to subwoofer (the other 5
> speakers worked fine)
> 
> Digital spdif output does not have options for surround sound *at all*
> (the hardware is known-good under F17).

Where did you look?

> Xrandr settings should be site-wide, not personal (esp, they're
> ignored for the greeter screen).  The greeter is hard to use because
> you can't keep track of where the cursor is due to the misconfigured
> screens.

What do you mean by 'xrandr' settings exactly?

xrandr is a command line utility that configures RandR on the fly, with
no kind of persistence. There are various other ways to configure RandR.
You can do it with an X config snippet, you can do it from various
desktops. If you're talking about the GNOME control center's "Displays"
tool, I think it's planned to have an 'apply systemwide' option in
future, but it's not done yet. Such settings shouldn't be made
systemwide by default, as multiple users on a multi-user setting don't
necessarily all want the same settings...

> Xrandr changes turn the screen to random garbage for a few seconds
> before reconfiguring.

That sounds like it might be a driver issue (none of the things above
are). The driver devs would probably need more details or a video or
something, though.

> Xrandr display setup app doesn't work right for four monitors - it
> requires pairs of monitors to be touching, making it difficult to set
> up.  Example: if you change the rotation for the #3 monitor, you can't
> place it next to the #1 monitor - just next to the #4 monitor (or very
> far away from it).  In my case, #3 was the one to the left of the main
> monitor, which took a few minutes to do.  I've played puzzle games on
> my phone which were less tricky than using this app.

I don't know if there's been much testing with that many monitors. Two
is a much more common case. This is not likely driver or
Fedora-specific, you're probably best off filing an upstream GNOME bug
on it, with more details and maybe a video.

> Also, the monitor icons are very tiny - like, 5mm tall on my 30"
> monitor.

I believe the app tries to render things so you have enough space to put
all the displays in a vertical stack - i.e. it's just giving you enough
space for every possible arrangement. It's just that in your case - when
you have four monitors, several of which are vertically oriented - this
gives kind of a bad result, since the 'vertical stack' configuration
would be so tall. Again, I suspect the devs/designers haven't
necessarily seen a case like yours, which is kind of an edge case; it
may be worth filing this upstream also.

> At some points, gnome brought up a light-grey-on-lighter-grey themed
> dialog, which looks like a disabled dialog and is hard to read.

Not quite sure what you're referring to here. Did you take a screenshot?

> I could not find out how to update the system software with gnome3.
> No notifications popped up, and there were no apps to "check for
> software updates".  The software install tool didn't have such an
> option.  I ended up running "yum update" from a terminal (which did
> update software).

There are notifications, if you wait long enough. You will also see an
'Install updates and restart' option in the user menu when updates are
available; this is the 'offline updates' feature from F18.

> totem segfaults running NET_MAN.ogg  (known bug)

Yeah, I think we have about 50 reports of that one now :P

> pymol starts on the wrong monitor - it starts on the far right
> monitor, not the main monitor.
> 
> pymol transparency demo doesn't work
> - and coredumps on exit
> 
> tuxkart - native screen resolution (2560x1600) is not offered,
> "fullscreen" core dumps.
> 
> hmmm... right side monitor is now a clone of left side monitor after
> this test.  (fixed by switch-user)
> 
> xonitic corrupts xrandr settings - switches everything to "mirrored"
> mode, which means every screen has the same game on it, two of them
> sideways and all of them distorted.  *Not* fixed by switch-user.
> 
> 0ad isn't playable - the "ok" button to start the game is drawn on a
> spot on my desktop that doesn't map to a monitor, so I can't click it.

You should probably file bugs for these.

> Minecraft won't run.  I assume this is due to an interaction between
> an old gaming library on their part and the use of our java instead of
> oracle's (i.e. it's a standard setup, not my usual custom one), but
> the traceback was in the xrandr setup routines.
> 
> --
> 
> All in all, I found F19A's Gnome to be just as hard to use as I
> recalled in F17 and F18, and support for my four-monitor setup to be
> just as poor as in the past.  Perhaps F19 would run fine on a tablet
> but it's a non-starter for me without heavy customization.

Well, be fair here: it's not like the only two possible cases are 'four
large monitors in a pretty unusual setup' or 'tablet'. You are an edge
case. Edge cases get to have all the fun. =) I think you're the only
person I've ever heard of using four monitors on a fairly 'regular'
desktop (i.e. not some sort of special case - video wall, camera
monitoring or whatever). I use GNOME on a more 'typical' two-monitor
setup and it's fine. Though I don't play games on it.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net