Review Request 119524: Force OpenGLES if on Qt 5.4

[Mark Gaiser]

> On jul 28, 2014, 7:03 p.m., Mark Gaiser wrote:
> > If there is one hardware combination that works best on linux, it's OpenGL + Intel.
> > I find it hard to believe that GLES is better and in all cases. That must be a driver/mesa bug that should be investigated and fixed.
> > 
> > If this would've been a fix to workaround crappy AMD drivers, then this patch would be understandable. AMD is just slacking.
> > But switching to OpenGL ES on all platforms because intel supposedly performs better is a bit weird. Can't the plasma graphics stack (OpenGL or OpenGL ES) be chosen at runtime like it can with KWin? Perhaps you can even re-use KWin's GL setting in plasma?
> 
> Aleix Pol Gonzalez wrote:
>     Well, OpenGL ES is a subset of OpenGL, so less things will be available but I'd say it's better to use the small thing until we need the big one rather than the other way around. Especially if we want to think about devices, some day.

What's the current state of GLES on desktop platforms anyway?
- Intel?
- NVidia?
- AMD?

I think AMD "might" have better GL support on the desktop. There was something there with EGL, but that was a couple years ago when kwin_gles was brand new. I don't know it's current state.

Lastly, what do you think of the idea to use KWin's GL detection stuff for this?


- Mark


-----------------------------------------------------------
This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/119524/#review63366
-----------------------------------------------------------


On jul 28, 2014, 6:09 p.m., Aleix Pol Gonzalez wrote:
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/119524/
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> (Updated jul 28, 2014, 6:09 p.m.)
> 
> 
> Review request for Plasma.
> 
> 
> Repository: plasma-workspace
> 
> 
> Description
> -------
> 
> When trying to reduce memory usage in plasma shell, we realized that one of the reasons we got such big memory footprint was actually the intel driver (on intel systems, that is). After some investigation, David found out we were going through some memory-consuming path [1]. A way to workaround it is by using only OpenGLES. Everything still works here after this patch, so it seems to be a good change to get in.
> 
> This change needs Qt 5.4, to get the new API that lets us enforce a QSurfaceFormat, hence having it ifdef'd.
> I'm quite unaware of problems we might find. Knowing we probably want to work in different embedded devices, suggests that OpenGLES on all platforms sounds like a safe bet.
> 
> [1] http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.mesa3d.devel/60848
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   shell/main.cpp e34578d 
> 
> Diff: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/119524/diff/
> 
> 
> Testing
> -------
> 
> I'm using it now, without visible problems. Now we see no trace of i915 in the massif reports.
> 
> 
> File Attachments
> ----------------
> 
> before
>   https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/media/uploaded/files/2014/07/28/5a6beb4f-24c0-4cee-a7a2-038385e35119__plasma-massif-opengl.png
> after
>   https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/media/uploaded/files/2014/07/28/fc301ff5-cb1d-4654-a57f-82990220c8e3__plasma-massif-opengles.png
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Aleix Pol Gonzalez
> 
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/attachments/20140729/c075e421/attachment.html>