According to Mozilla’s blurb: “Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues.” That means little to me. All I’m interested in is performance, reliability, look and feel. And from what I’ve seen so far, Firefox 3 Beta 1 succeeds spectacularly in all areas.

Upon loading the new beta release for the first time, one thing that impressed me, aside from its blinding speed, was that Mozilla has not attempted to fiddle with the look and feel of the interface. There are changes to be sure, but if you weren’t looking for them, you could easily believe you were running the previous version.

However, the differences are there, such as the one click “bookmark this page” star icon in the location bar, the download manager in the tools menu, the site identification icon also in the location bar, the ability to save tabs (very handy when you need to quit Firefox), the ability to add tags to bookmarks for later sorting, page zooming and many more new features.

Complete Article 

From Mozilla, just to let you know:

“We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 1 milestone release,” outlined Mozilla interface designer Mike Beltzner in a note posted onto Mozilla Corp’s development centre. “It is intended for testing purposes only.”

Also check out another article: Firefox 3 Beta 1 — Packed With New Features And Rock Solid

Notice: This is an UPDATE post to the original post, though back then it was running Compiz Fusion using Xgl.

With the introduction of driver 8.42, ATI has brought AIGLX support, that is indirect rendering for running Compiz Fusion. For the mean time I am going to set aside all my experience and thoughts on this issue, i.e. how good/bad AIGLX is with 8.42 drivers (as of writing this), and rather instruct you how to setup Compiz Fusion.

IMPORTANT: Please check for any UPDATES at the end of this blog before continuing.

Before we start I hope that you understand that we need to have a properly working ATI driver. If you haven’t done so yet then head to openSUSE 10.3: AMD/ATI Drivers 8.42+ Installation before continuing.

Once the ATI drivers have been setup, we need to modify, or rather tweak, the xorg.conf file. You will find this file in /etx/X11/ folder. Open file with any editor and insert the following in the file:

1. Under Section “ServerFlags” add:

Option “RENDER” “true”
Option “Composite” “Enable”

2. At the end of the file add the following:

Section “Extensions”
Option “DAMAGE” “true”
Option “RENDER” “true”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
EndSection

These are fundamental and necessary for desktop acceleration. The only one not really needed is the RENDER, but if you want 3d hardware rendering you need to add it, as this will definitely speed up the 3D desktop.

3. Apart from these, you can also add the following in your xorg.conf file, under Section “Device”. Though I think this is not necessary, adding this should resolve few problems you might face.

Option “HWCursor” “On”
Option “CapabilitiesEx” “0×00000000″
Option “XAANoOffscreenPixmaps” “true”
Option “mtrr” “off”
Option “no_accel” “no”
Option “BlockSignalsOnLock” “on”
Option “KernelModuleParm” “locked-userpages=0″
Option “UseFastTLS” “0″
Option “RenderAccel” “true”
Option “AllowGLXWithComposite” “true”

(notice that I have Device Identifier as “aticonfig-Device[0]”, reason being that while installing driver I didn’t use sax2 command, but the aticonfig –initial –input command).

4. After we are done with xorg.conf file, we’ll need to modify compiz-manager file, which you will find in /usr/bin/ folder. Add the fglrx string under WHITELIST section:

5. Last step will be to let Compiz use ATI’s LibGL (actually not exactly sure what exact functions are here). For this just run the following command, otherwise your Compiz Fusion will not get executed when logging to your desktop. If you have 64-bit version, like myself, then run both the command:

mv /usr/lib/libIndirectGL.so.1.2 /usr/lib/libIndirectGL.so.1.2.old

mv /usr/lib64/libIndirectGL.so.1.2 /usr/lib64/libIndirectGL.so.1.2.old

6. Now to installing main packages, which 1-click will handle and do all the work for you. You will need internet connection for this as this will download and install all the required packages. Click on one of the buttons, corresponding to what you are running:

• For KDE:
• For Gnome:

That’s it. Hopefully all went smoothlly and you will be running Compiz Fusion on your next log-in/reboot. Here is a snapshot of fusion-icon showing that Compiz Fusion is running using indirect rendering. Also a small video made through phone built-in camera:

Running Benchmark plug-in I get the following (unfortunately don’t remember what I got with 8.40 + Xgl):

For tips and troubleshooting, refer to my original post. That’s it.

22.10.07: As of writing this, the combination of latest driver’s (ATI 8.42) AIGLX and Compiz Fusion is not what we expect, i.e. slow performance, bugs and unfortunately no Video !!! For the time being the combination of older 8.40.8.41 with Xgl is much better option. The good thing with AIGLX is that now with Compiz running you can run other applications that require access to OpenGL, such as Google Earth and GAMES (yey).

Notice: This is an update to my previous ATI/AMD Driver installation. Refer to that tutorial as well.

As we all know, with release of 8.42 driver ATI has introduced the AIGLX (indirect rendering) which can be used to run Compiz/Compiz Fusion. While the latest driver brings some awesome performance gain, it also brings the pain when it comes to running Compiz. More on this issue refer to my this post. In the mean time here is how I managed to install 8.42 driver. I tried using the 1-click installtion that openSUSE provides, but to no avail.You can also try it out before proceeding with these instructions.

Driver used here: 8.42 (first release featuring AIGLX support)

Before following the tutorial make sure to go through the prerequites found in the original post.
1. Download the latest available drivers from ATI Drivers and Software section. Choose your version of drivers: Linux x86 for 32 bit, Linux x86_64 for 64 bit.

2. Once downloaded, copy to a folder that you wont forget. (let’s presume /home/me/ATI)

# cd /home/me/temp

3. Generate distribution specific package:

For 32-bit users:

# sh ./ati-driver-installer-x.xx.x-yy.run –buildpkg SuSE/SUSE103-IA32

(where x.xx.x is the driver version number and yy the architecture)

For 64-bit users:

# sh ./ati-driver-installer-x.xx.x-yy.run –buildpkg SuSE/SUSE103-AMD64

(64-bit version is presumed from now onwards for the tutorial (adjust according to your platform)

4. Head to the location where installer has been created:

# cd /usr/src/packages/RPMS/x86_64

5. Once there we need to install the rpm package that we compiled:

# rpm -Uvh fglrx*.rpm

6. Hopefully the above command went well, without any error messaged and the drivers were installed. Now run the following command:

# ldconfig

7. Now we need to leave the cool graphical desktop and switch to console mode by typing (as root):

# init 3

8. Log-in as root and launch the following command:

# aticonfig –initial –input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf –force

9. Reboot(!) before you enter your DE (Destop Environenment).

Once rebooted and back to your KDE/Gnome and logged in as user, launch few more commands to verify that all went good and OpenGL is working now at it’s max:

~> fglrxinfo

If it states ATI Technologies Inc and the make of your card – excellent. Everything is setup correctly and working flawlessly. Time to relax and have a cup of coffee.

As for OpenGL performance of this release, and hopefully the future releases, it got quite a performance boost. As an example, with 8.30 driver while running glxgears benchmark I was getting around 8500 FPS, while with 8.42 I am now getting around 10,000 FPS.

Refer to Tips and Troubleshooting section if need arises, again, which can be found in the original post. As for running Compiz Fusion via AIGLX, expect a post update to my previous Compiz Fusion tutorial, soon.