From Fedora Project Wiki
Fedora Test Days
Gnome Shell Software Rendering
Date 2012-03-29
Time all day
Website http://www.gnome.org/
IRC #fedora-test-day (webirc)
Mailing list test


Can't make the date?
If you come to this page before or after the test day is completed, your testing is still valuable, and you can use the information on this page to test, file any bugs you find at GNOME Bugzilla, and add your results to the results section. If this page is more than a month old when you arrive here, please check the current schedule and see if a similar but more recent Test Day is planned or has already happened.

What to test?

This week brings a second instalment of Fedora Test Day targeting GNOME 3. This time we will focus on software rendering providing a full GNOME session purely by means of the CPU. Nowadays with most of personal computers capable of hardware 3D acceleration this might seem unnecessary. But let's not forget a whole lot of us who have capable but yet unsupported hardware and get stuck with the Fallback mode.

And this is not the only case. In addition to computers with obsolete graphics there are VM hypervisors like KVM or VirtualBox that don't support full 3D yet. Fedora can also run on many kinds of less usual devices like tablets or netbooks that don't have free(or even proprietary) drivers ready. Fortunately modern CPUs are in principle powerful enough to run gnome-shell and full GNOME 3 desktop without 3D support only via software rendering. Thus the purpose of software rendering is to unify desktop experience for both accelerated and non-accelerated machines.

Simply said, our goal is to make sure that no matter what hardware you are running your Fedora on, you will always get the user experience you are entitled to - a full GNOME desktop.

Do you have an older PC? Netbook? Or do you like to play with the latest of the latest in VM, where it won't "break" your computer? Even if not, please help us test the gnome-shell software rendering by following few test cases and catching a few bugs - after all, as always with Fedora, you'll be doing that for yourself :-)

Who's available

The following cast of characters will be available for testing, workarounds, bug fixes, and general discussion ...

Prerequisite for Test Day

Also helpful, if you have or can get them:

  • Additional displays (monitors, TVs...)

How to test?

Well, start Gnome and see if you get the shell. The more relevant question is "what to test".

What we're most interested in is older and obscure hardware cases. It's expected that not all of these will come up with the shell by default. The interesting thing is whether they can be coaxed into doing so; how; and how to make them perform reasonably. Some scenarios we need better coverage for are:

  • Old x86 hardware, in particular CPUs that don't support SSE2 (AMD Geode and pre-Athlon-64, Intel pre-Pentium-4, etc)
  • Non-x86 hardware. ARM, PowerPC, etc. This is obviously harder to come by.
  • Non-KVM virtualization
  • Older video cards from big-three vendors: Intel 8xx, Radeon pre-R300, NVIDIA pre-GeForce-6.
Testing older video cards may require creating and editing xorg.conf, or moving the DRI drivers for those cards out of the way to force fallback to llvmpipe, as in, mv /usr/lib*/dri/radeon_dri.so /tmp (substituting the right value for "radeon", ie, i915, nouveau, r200, etc.) You will need to restart X by logging out and back in for this to take effect.
Of lesser interest, but still worth checking, is whether GPUs already on the hardware blacklist work with their native driver instead. This can be checked by commenting out the appropriate entry from /usr/share/gnome-session/hardware-compatibility and logging out and back in to Gnome.
Check if Xorg uses software rendering, run: glxinfo and check output for string: OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x300)

Live image

Verification
Please check the SHA256SUM is correct before booting!

You may download a non-destructive pre-Fedora 17 live image for your architecture. Tips on using a live image are available at FedoraLiveCD.

Architecture SHA256SUM
x86_64 cedfb4eaff3673c23e1afb1160d94ffab452ad7e2fd3c9833953562fcd50b0fe
i386 a0d6ead83c051d179a478232bc2a31b39138908ccd9d82e186e8e6b1a2131caa

Using the live image is the easiest way to participate in testing for most people, but alternatively you can:

Update your machine to Fedora 17

If you are already running or want to try the pre-release of Fedora 17, install Fedora 17 Alpha and then update to the latest packages.

Perform testing

Please perform as many of the test cases listed as you have the time and the resources to complete, and fill out your results in the table below. You do not need a Fedora account to fill in the table.


Fallback

If you are unable to run a full GNOME 3 session either through HW or SW rendering and fallback mode kicks in you won't be able to run gnome-shell. In this case, please, don't hesitate to ask on IRC as there might be a way we can help you start a regular session.

Regular tests

Unplanned testing

As well as running the formal test cases, you can help simply by running gnome-shell and reporting any problems you come across in the course of your typical usage, even if this does not match up with any of the test cases. If you are unsure to what any discovered problem relates, please check in #fedora-test-day before you file a bug.


Test Results

If you have problems with any of the tests, try and report a bug. Bugs clearly related to GNOME Shell and it's rendering should be reported to GNOME Bugzilla. Bugs that are clearly issues in Fedora GNOME integration should be reported to Fedora Bugzilla. If you are unsure, please report into Fedora Bugzilla or ask on #fedora-test-day or #fedora-qa. You will need an account to report bugs, but creating one is easy, and we will help you do this if you ask in IRC.

If you are not sure of the appropriate component (usually mesa for SW rendering), please check in IRC before filing, there are many possibilities. If you are unsure about exactly how to file the report or what other information to include, just ask on IRC and we will help you.

Once you have completed the tests, add your results to the Results table below, following the example results from the first line as a template. The first column should be your name with a link to your User page in the Wiki if you have one, and the second should be a link to the Smolt profile of the system you tested. If you are running Fedora in VM, please, at least state the name of VM hypervisor(kvm/VirtualBox...). However uploading Smolt profile is useful even for VMs. For each test case, use the result template to describe your result, following the examples in the Sample user row.

User Smolt Profile Login Desktop menus Workspaces Notifications Lock VT switch Suspend Multihead Gears Unplanned References
Sample User HW
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Warning warn
[1]
Fail fail
[2]
  1. ↑ Test pass, but also encountered RHBZ #54321
  2. ↑ GNOME #123456
Sagitter AcerAspire6930G
Pass pass
[1]
Warning warn
[2]
Pass pass
Warning warn
[3]
Pass pass
  1. ↑ Fedora 17 i686 virtualized on VirtualBox-OSE-4.1.10-1
  2. ↑ Swell Foop game without icon RHBZ #806693
  3. ↑ no reply from service
Sagitter Packard Bell EasyNote PB17B00106
Pass pass
[1]
Warning warn
[2]
Pass pass
Warning warn
[3]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
[4]
Pass pass
  1. ↑ Gnome starts in fallback mode.
    mv /usr/lib/dri/i915_dri.so /tmp and
    commenting in
    Intel\(R\) 8digit:{2,2}[^[:digit:]]
    in /usr/share/gnome-session/hardware-compatibility. After login, Gnome-shell works (slowly)
  2. ↑ Swell Foop game without icon RHBZ #806693
  3. ↑ no reply from service
  4. ↑ wired connection re-established manually
Adsllc Oracle VirtualBox 4.1.10 r76795
Pass pass
Warning warn
[1]
Pass pass
Pass pass
https://register.jabber.org is down, but Rhythmbox created notifications just fine.
Pass pass
Fail fail
Does not see additional displays
Pass pass
n4rC0t1C Asus EEE 701 2GB RAM
Pass pass
Warning warn
[1]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
satellit_ AcerAspireOne_N450
Pass pass
[1]
Warning warn
[2][3]
Pass pass
Fail fail
[4]
Pass pass
Fail fail
[5]
  1. ↑ Fedora-17-Beta-i686-Live-Desktop.iso Booted Live CD
  2. ↑ Live CD - Firefox is not on favorites left panel. It is when livinst installs this CD to HD
  3. ↑ Swell Foop has missing icon in applications menu RHBZ #806693
  4. ↑ Live CD - lock not available to liveuser - blanks after 1 minute screen back on mouse movement no password requested
  5. ↑ Live CD - shuts down
satellit_ Penguin Libre GNU/Linux Notebook Processor: Dual-Core Intel® Core™ i3-2350M 2.30GHz Memory: 4GB DDR3
Pass pass
[1]
Warning warn
[2][3]
Pass pass
  1. ↑ Fedora-17-Beta-i686-Live-Desktop.iso Booted Live CD
  2. ↑ Live CD - Firefox is not on favorites left panel. It is when livinst installs this CD to HD
  3. ↑ Swell Foop has missing icon in applications menu RHBZ #806693
adunsmuir Dell D810 Laptop with Radeon M24 IP (Radeon Mobility X600, 1920 x 1200) Intel P4 1.86 GHz Memory 2GB DDR
Pass pass
[1][2]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
[3]
Pass pass
  1. ↑ Fedora-17-Beta-i686-Live-Desktop.iso Booted Live CD
  2. ↑ Fallback only in F16! Yeah!
  3. ↑ Mirrored with Samsung 2443BW LCD on Belkin OmniPro 2 8x KVM
adunsmuir Dell GX270 low profile desktop with Dell 9N151 AGP R100 32MB (RV200 5157) 1920x1200 Intel P4 3.00 GHz Memory 4GB DDR
Warning warn
[1][2] [3] [4] [5]
  1. ↑ Onboard Intel 815 GPU disabled in BIOS
  2. ↑ Fedora-17-Beta-i686-Live-Desktop.iso Booted Live CD
  3. ↑ fallback mode only. Installed to HDD, updated. No change
  4. ↑ removed from blacklist - gnome session failed
  5. ↑ Will try xorg.conf and soft rendering when I have some time. Willing to work with Ajax to debug, as I have 3 of these units (good DNS/DHCP/Samba box)... no response on IRC from 22:40 to 23:10 EDT
msimon Lenovo ThinkPad T410
Pass pass
[1]
Pass pass
Pass pass
[2]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
  1. ↑ F17 i686 installed to HDD, updated (2012-03-30). edited xorg.conf (added line Option "NoAccel" to section with nouveau driver) and works fine.
  2. ↑ Right Win key has no response, the left one works fine, RHBZ 810130
Martix Lenovo Thinkpad T520 [1]
Pass pass
[2]
Pass pass
Warning warn
[3]
Warning warn
[4] [5]
Fail fail
[6]
Pass pass
Warning warn
[7] [8]
Pass pass
  1. ↑ Notebook with 2 GPUs: Intel and nVidia. nVidia was disabled in BIOS
  2. ↑ Using Fedora-17-Beta-i386-Live-Desktop-Gnome-test-day.iso on LiveUSB
  3. ↑ Right Win key has no response, the left one works fine RHBZ 810130
  4. ↑ IRC: Notifications works only for PMs, not for name highlights in room. Gnome #648899 Gnome #643595 Gnome #610589
  5. ↑ No sound for notifications
  6. ↑ Live CD - lock not available to liveuser
  7. ↑ System and gnome-control-center doesn't _always_ remember monitor mirroring. Gnome #673559
  8. ↑ DVI output doesn't work, only VGA. RHBZ #810192
Martix Lenovo Thinkpad T420s
Pass pass
[1]
Pass pass
Warning warn
[2] [3]
Warning warn
[4]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Warning warn
[5]
Pass pass
  1. ↑ Using Fedora 17 x86_64 on HDD, updated (2012-03-30).
  2. ↑ Dragging application icon to specific workspace doesn't work for Qt applications. Qt applications always start on focused workspace.
  3. ↑ Right Win key has no response, the left one works fine RHBZ 810130
  4. ↑ IRC: Notifications works only for PMs, not for name highlights in room. Gnome #648899 Gnome #643595 Gnome #610589
  5. ↑ System and gnome-control-center doesn't remember monitor mirroring.Gnome #673559
tjamrisk Lenovo ThinkPad T410
Pass pass
[1]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
[2]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
  1. ↑ F17 x86_64 installed to HDD, updated (2012-03-30). NoAccel didn't work, added nomodeset parameter to kernel
  2. ↑ First used notify-send, later empathy with irc account, worked fine
Sesivany Dell Inspiron Mini 10
Fail fail
[1]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Fail fail
[2]
Fail fail
[3]
Warning warn
[4]
  1. ↑ GNOME Shell didn't really start up in a usable state. Reported as a bug 808710.
  2. ↑ Couldn't switch back to graphics
  3. ↑ Ended up with black screen. The computer stayed on, hard reboot necessary
  4. ↑ glxgears did work, but it was very slow, so were all effects in GNOME Shell
mkertt Dell Latitude D600: Pentium M / ATI FireGL 9000 (RV250)
Pass pass
[1] [2]
Pass pass
Fail fail
Pass pass
  1. ↑ Used Fedora-Test-LiveCD.iso by rstrode
  2. ↑ GNOME Shell was slow to the point of being unusable.
MartinK Asus F3jr: Core Duo (T2450)) / ATI Radeon X2300 (RV515)
Pass pass
[1] [2]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
[3]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
[4] [5]
  1. ↑ used testday image without updating, by default boots in gnome shell with hw acceleration, killed dri files as per description and the logged in and out
  2. ↑ while everything works without and I have seen no artifacts anywhere, the shell is usable but feels slow and animations visibly don't run at anything near 60 FPS
  3. ↑ pressing ctr+alt+l did nothing and I have not found any other logical way to invoke suspend - there was no such item in the menu with suspend
  4. ↑ while I was able to perform all test case, qlxgears made all shell operations much slower and dropped the FPS even lower
  5. ↑ you can see how the gears spin slower on the dashboard & how they barely spin when dragging the window thumbnail
Jaroslav Škarvada Dell Latitude D620: Core Duo (T2500)) / nVidia G72M [Quadro NVS 110M/GeForge Go 7300] (NV40)
Pass pass
[1][2][3][4]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
[5]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
  1. ↑ Used fully updated F17 with enabled updates-testing as available on 2012-04-12.
  2. ↑ GDM didn't start / periodically crashed, needed manual update to gdm-3.4.0.1-5 (it wasn't available to me in updates-testing in time of testing).
  3. ↑ Without software rendering Gnome desktop was unusable - artifacts, missing text, etc., needed manual switch to fallback mode via $ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session session-name 'gnome-fallback' then OK, RHBZ #745202.
  4. ↑ No problems with software rendering, only too slow.
  5. ↑ Graphical desktop under CTRL+ALT+F1 not CTRL+ALT+F2.
Jaroslav Škarvada Asus EeePC 1000H: Atom N270 / Intel 945GME
Pass pass
[1]
Pass pass
Pass pass
[2]
Pass pass
[3]
Pass pass
[4]
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
[5]
  1. ↑ Too slow.
  2. ↑ Sometimes I had to click several times, for click to be registered.
  3. ↑ Echo service didn't work.
  4. ↑ I used Power Management Test Day LiveUSB and I had to use: gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.lockdown disable-lock-screen 'true'
  5. ↑ Terrible performance.
Jaroslav Škarvada Lenovo T410: Core i5 (M540) / GMA HD (Arrandale)
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Jaroslav Škarvada Lenovo T500: Core 2 Duo (T9600) / GMA 4500 MHD
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
Pass pass
[1]
Pass pass
Pass pass
  1. ↑ Empathy crashed after resume, but I was unable to report it, because abrt refuses the backtrace as unusable (tried both locally and retrace server generated).
Fultongr Dell Inspiron 600m: Pentium M, Radeon Mobility FireGL 9000 (R250), 512 MB DDR[1]
Pass pass
[2][3]
Pass pass
[4][5]
Pass pass
[6]
[7]
[8]
Pass pass
Fail fail
[9]
Pass pass
[10]
  1. ↑ Fedora 17 beta RC4.1 Live desktop
  2. ↑ Initial attempt to inhibit blacklist entry resulted in unusable session - completely transparent Terminal window, translucent session control menu, noisy mouseover effects, etc.
  3. ↑ Relocation of DRI driver to /tmp resulted in successful GNOME Shell session.
  4. ↑ Initial click on Applications took 3 seconds for icons to manifest; successive clicks less time.
  5. ↑ Icon for FreeCell Solitaire was a bit pixellated.
  6. ↑ Some issues with dragging Applications icons to empty workspace, e.g., had to click on destination workspace for app to manifest.
  7. ↑ Wasn't able to get the Collabora echo service to work for me.
  8. ↑ Locking disabled, probably due to being a Live Desktop.
  9. ↑ Suspend has never worked for this machine in Fedora, so probably not GNOME-specific.
  10. ↑ glxgears appeared to be running at 3 FPS, but otherwise performed OK.
User Smolt Profile Login Desktop menus Workspaces Notifications Lock VT switch Suspend Multihead Gears Unplanned References
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