Tag Archives: Linux

FS-UAE on Ubuntu 13.04

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I upgraded to Ubuntu 13.04 a while ago, and were curious to see how well FS-UAE runs on the current version of Unity (the default desktop in Ubuntu). Unfortunately, it does not run that well by default (same as 12.10).

The problem is really only in windowed mode. FS-UAE syncs to vblank by default, and in combination with the Unity compositing / indirect rendering, the performance is bad, with laggy / choppy rendering (1). When using video_sync = off, the performance is “normal”. On the bright side, full-screen performance seems to be improved when syncing to vblank.

Let’s hope Ubuntu / Canonical manage to fix the OpenGL support with Mir (though I would rather see them joining forces with Wayland). For the time being, I’m using the MATE desktop on Ubuntu. Without any compositing / desktop effects, OpenGL performance is nice, and FS-UAE frame rates are as smooth as can be (2) 🙂

(1) With official closed-source Nvidia drivers.
(2) With monitor running @50Hz of course.

FS-UAE for Ubuntu 13.04 is available from a PPA.

Workaround for 50Hz on Linux with Recent nVIDIA Drivers

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Since upgrading to Ubuntu 12.10 (with upgraded nVIDIA drivers), I have no longer been able to use 1920×1080 @ 50 Hz. I can run xrandr -r 50 without errors -and the screen turns off/on again, but the screen is still running at 60 Hz afterwards (and xrandr itself confirms this). I could of course (probably) have downgraded the drivers, but I didn’t..

I have however just now found a workaround, I can successfully switch to my defined 50 Hz mode with the nvidia-settings program, like this:

nvidia-settings -a CurrentMetaMode=1920x1080_50_0

And to switch back to 60 Hz:

nvidia-settings -a CurrentMetaMode=1920x1080_60_0

This requires that valid modelines are defined with the names 1920x1080_50_0 and 1920x1080_60_0. See 50Hz Display Modes on Linux with nVIDIA Drivers fore more information.

My original problem is also reported by someone else:

“When trying to change refresh rate the screen goes blank for a second as it usually does but rate is not changed. Both xrandr and nvidia-settings show the old refresh rate still.”

The report got the following response:

“Thanks for reporting this. I can confirm that, at least on my system, the –rate option seems to be ineffective on a recent 304 driver. I’ve filed NVIDIA bug 1054623. Feel free to use this bug number in future inquiries about this issue.”

Repository Update 2

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Repository paths have change a bit, as i wanted to by able to have non-fs-uae-specific repositories for future projects, and better to change this now than later, before more people are affected. Development packages for Ubuntu is now located in:

ppa:fengestad/devel

And repositories managed by OpenSUSE build service is now located here:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/FrodeSolheim:/devel/

Sorry for the inconvenience. I don’t plan to change this again (except that stable packages will be published in corresponding stable repositories).

Repository Update

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The public git repository was recently updated to reflect my own development environment better. Version numbers are now not updated in all places on version number bump, only the VERSION file is updated. Run “make dist” to get a new sub-dir with clean source and version numbers correctly updated in all files, or you can use windows.mk, macosx.mk, debian.mk etc to build releases. Building the workspace with “make” works just fine, but the version number is then fixed as “9.8.7”.

This repo update is also related to the fact that the official releases are from now on automatically built from the repo on google code (branch “release-devel”) using build slaves connected to a jenkins instance.

Please note that the repository URLs on opensuse build service will change (for a proper split between stable / devel releases once 2.0 is out). New repository base for the development releases is: http://download.opensuse.org/reposit…/fs-uae-devel/. Similarly, if some of you track directory content; devel releases on fengestad.no will be put in http://fengestad.no/fs-uae/devel/

I’m also experimenting with PPA builds for Ubuntu: development version PPA is available at https://launchpad.net/~fengestad/+archive/devel (not all amd64 packages are done building yet).

All this just means that I can spent a little less time pushing out releases and more time coding. Also, occasionally forgetting to push the source code or publish update for a given platform should not be a problem any more 😉