xf86-video-fbturbo

[bmarkus]

There is an interesting project, xf86-video-fbturbo. It is the ARM optimized version of the standard Xorg framebuffer driver, which is using neon/vfp depending on SoC type and on Raspberry the DMA. While it is not using the GPU, offeres better overall video performance accoding to project page:

https://github.com/ssvb/xf86-video-fbturbo

Is someone willing to try it? I'm busy with other stuff but very interested in it. Possibly it is not enough to get video playback work, but if GUI experience in genaral improved, would be worth to use by default.

[zerophnx]

99.9% of my Pi use is via SSH (the .1 being the installation), but I should be able to test it this weekend.

I can't think of any good 2D "benchmarks" off of the top of my head (I'm open to any ideas), so I'll use each driver for a little while and see if there's a noticeable difference.

[bmarkus]

Thanks. Just use both for a while and you must feel the difference, for example moving dragged windows with the mouse.

[zerophnx]

I couldn't get it to compile on PiCore 5(rc3).  Following his directions (git clone, autoreconf), I got to configure.

Code: [Select]

./configure --prefix=/usr/local
kept saying there were syntax errors in the "configure.lineno" file on lines that appeared to be empty (at least to nano).

At the same time, there may be dependencies I didn't load. Just going by memory I had compile-essentials,Xorg-7.7-dev, and libtool loaded (it kept claiming it couldn't create executables without libtool). Git also needed to have expat2 and curl manually loaded to clone his repo.

He had a few more packages on his raspbian list that I couldn't find before I ran out of time (xutils-dev x11proto-dri2-dev). I don't have a raspbian install on hand that I can grab the source for those packages from. I also wasn't sure if any of those files ended up in the Xorg-dev file. I'll play with it a little more this weekend when I have more time.

[bmarkus]

Tried, ./confugure fails with this message:

./configure: line 17982: syntax error near unexpected token `RANDR,'
./configure: line 17982: `XORG_DRIVER_CHECK_EXT(RANDR, randrproto)'

Regarding missing headers, etc. did you install Xorg-7.7-dev.tcz? As original fb driver built in the same environment and work here, it is expected too.

[bmarkus]

Opened ticket https://github.com/ssvb/xf86-video-fbturbo/issues/28

[zerophnx]

Yes, I had the Xorg-dev loaded. At one point I rebooted to switch power adapters and forgot to load it again. You don't get very far without it

Thanks for all your work on the PiCore project!

[bmarkus]

Some progress. Got it compiled, but there is version mismatch so it is unloaded. It will work soon.

[bmarkus]

fbturbo now runs in piCore 5.1 Will make it available in repo soon.

[bmarkus]

Using it for a short time it looks really nice, provides much better user experience with a WM like LXDE than not the original, not ARM v6 optimized. It will be the default video driver, same as in the latest Raspbian.