A tiny material issue in NvidiaÂ’s GPUs has cost Nvidia $200 million so
far: The problem
boils down to the solder bump material, in NvidiaÂ’s case high-lead that
was used in all of the firmÂ’s GPUs that were produced until late July,
and we still do not know how serious the issue really is. According to
our sources, Nvidia has switched to eutectic solder bumps in recent
weeks and there is now a new, apparently independent research report,
that claims that eutectic solder bumps, which are…

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AMD is completing the rollout of its first-generation 4000-series of
GPUs with two new entry-level offerings that aim at the growing group
of computer users who are upgrading their integrated graphics chip
systems to discrete graphics cards. AMDÂ’s new 4500/4300 series goes
head-to head with NvidiaÂ’s entry-level 9400-series, but promises to
undercut its rivalÂ’s price point while offering more performance.
Extra: SLIDESHOW

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A recent major class action lawsuit that was brought against both Nvidia and ATI for conspiring to fix, raise, maintain and stabilize prices of graphics processing chips and cards may soon be coming to a resolution

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Nvidia recently released a massive new WHQL driver, which may be worth
considering, even if you do not regularly download new drives. Version
178.13 delivers the usual speed improvements in certain applications,
but most notably adds PhysX acceleration for all 8-, 9- and 200-series
of graphics cards with at least 256 MB of memory.

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One long-running controversy in the open source community has to do with device drivers and whether binary modules (proprietary code provided by device manufacturers, such as Nvidia) should be allowed within the Linux kernel. Purists believe that including these closed-source driver modules violates the open source General Public License (GPL). Some kernel contributors have even called for an outright ban of these binary modules, which has met with resistance from the more practical-minded in the Linux community, notably by Linux Torvalds himself, who reportedly called it both “shortsighted” and “stupid.”

Obviously, limiting users of the Linux kernel only to the open source drivers that are available is not preferable. Linux aficionados want to use any hardware they darn well please, whether or not they have to use a closed-source driver to support it.

Riding into the breach between the purists and pragmatic, the Linux Driver Project launched in early 2007, headed up by Greg Kroah-Hartman. The LDP proposes a compromise, offering to device manufacturers:

…a group of Linux kernel developers (over 200 strong) and project managers (over 10) that develop and maintain Linux kernel drivers. We work with the manufacturers of the specific device to specify, develop, submit to the main kernel, and maintain the kernel drivers. We are willing and able to sign NDAs with companies if they wish to keep their specifications closed, as long as we are able to create a proper GPLv2 Linux kernel driver as an end result.

I read about this ongoing project in an interesting article from IT Pro in the UK, whose author Richard Hillesley makes the argument: “Open source drivers will become an imperative, rather than a choice, for device manufacturers who want to break into new markets and extend their user base.” Hillesley makes his argument for why manufacturers should drop their resistance to open source drivers (or at least, take advantage of the LDP’s offer) and reap the benefits of better maintenance, support, and the distributed costs of development.

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Some of the current naming conventions used in Nvidia cards tends to confuse some consumers.

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Jack explains how he managed to get KDE 3.5, Compiz, and Emerald up and running together to create an amazingly beautiful desktop that still retains full functionality, speed, and reliability.

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As many of you know my favorite desktop is Enlightenment. But every now and then I want to migrate over to something with a bit more oomph. This time around I wanted to give KDE 4.1 a try…but the powers that be didn’t seem to want KDE 4.1 to work out too easily. For that I will wait until it is supported in Synaptic. So I decided I would see how far I could push the combination of KDE 3.5, Compiz, and Emerald. Turns out you can actually push it pretty far without it ever pushing back. But getting to that point was rather tricky.

My system isn’t all too impressive:

• AMD Sempron 3000 processor
• NVidia Geforce 6600 Video Card
• 774568k RAM
• Ubuntu 7.10
• kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
• KDE 3.5

That’s about all that is relevant.

I already had both Compiz and Emerald installed but neither were working. I also had the nvidia-kernel-common installed. I could run KDE and get the standard KDE elements but none of the 3D elements of Compiz. And when I attempted to enable Compiz, it would start and seem to run but the Window manager (Emerald) was not able to start. It should be pretty obvious what a desktop without a window manager is — useless. You can’t manipulate windows in any way.

My first clue came when I went to find out if direct rendering was supported. Trying to run the glxinfo command came up with nothing. So I realized that glx wasn’t installed. So I installed nvidia-glx (which added a number of dependencies). Now I could run glxinfo | grep direct but still saw that direct rendering was giving me a big NO. Of course it finally came down to the fact that the real “nvidia” driver has direct rendering built in, so glx doesn’t have to handle the direct rendering. But xgl on the other hand must be used. So I had to install xgl with the command apt-get install xserver-xgl.

Once xgl was installed, I had to make sure the system initialized it. So in the file /etc/X11/Xsession.options I added the entry use-xgl to the bottom.

The next step was to add a new file to the Xsession.d directory. This file is called 91xgl and serves to actually start xgl. Here is the file content:
# This file is sourced by Xsession(5), not executed.

STARTXGL=
XGL=”/usr/bin/Xgl”
XGL_OPTIONS=”:1 -fullscreen -ac -accel xv:pbuffer -accel glx:pbuffer”

if grep -qs ^use-xgl “$OPTIONFILE”; then
if [ -x “$XGL” ]; then
STARTXGL=yes
fi
if [ -r /tmp/.X1-lock ]; then
xglpid=`cat /tmp/.X1-lock`
if [ -d /proc/$xglpid ]; then
echo “Xgl already running”
STARTXGL=
fi
fi
fi

if [ -n “$STARTXGL” ]; then
$XGL $XGL_OPTIONS &
DISPLAY=:1
fi

# vim:set ai et sts=2 sw=2 tw=80:

The final step was to tweak the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. These tweaks were simple. First make sure the following are in the section “Module”:

Load “GLcore”
Load “glx”
Load “dri”

Note: You may not need the “dri” line if you are using the latest “nvidia” driver because it handles dri on its own.

Finally, in your “Device” section (where you define your graphics card), make sure the following exists:

Option “RenderAccel” “true”
Option “AllowGLXWithComposite” “true”

Now once I logged out and logged back in the first thing I noticed was the KDE started up in half the time. And going into the Compiz settings, every time I checked a feature it automatically appeared.

The next step was to select an Emerald theme. Once I fired up the emerald-theme-manager, I selected one of them but nothing happened. It wasn’t until I logged out and logged back in that I was able to see the new theme applied in all of it’s 3D beauty.

 Loading …

Now the Cube and the Skydome work. The Emerald themes are beautiful and the animated effects work perfectly. And all of this without taking any noticeable hit on the system.

Naturally I wouldn’t apply this to a server system. This is purely a desktop feature. But it is fun. How long will I use it? Who knows — probably a week or so before I go back to Enlightenment. But I have to say the Compiz/Emerald combo is one heck of a pretty desktop.

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Should you apply the latest Windows patches — that is a decision you can make only if you have the proper information.

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First off, I would like to welcome you to a new TechRepublic feature, Windows Patch Tuesday. Each month, we will be going through the latest batch of Windows patches as soon as the information is finalized and summarize it for you. We wade through the pages and pages of Knowledge Base articles and other resources and bring you the information that you need to make decisions on these patches. Please let us know in the forum what you think!

Here is the Patch Tuesday roundup for September 9, 2008.

Security patches

MS08-052/KB954593 - Critical: This patch addresses an issue in GDI+ (the graphics subsystem) where malformed images could be used to create a stack overflow, which in turn would let an attacker get control of the system. It is aimed at all versions of Windows and should definitely be installed. There are also a number of patches not just for Windows, but for non-Windows products such as the .Net Framework (1.0 - 2.0) and Visual Studio to correct the same vulnerability. These additional patches are listed in the KB article.

MS08-053/KB954156 - Critical: This patch fixes a security problem in Windows Media Encoder 9, for all versions of Windows. The bug allows attackers to use a Web page to gain full control of the system. The rays of sunshine here are that the bug was not reported yet, and that the user would need to be running as an administrator for the exploit to work. You will want to get this patch installed immediately to protect your users before exploits hit the Web.

MS08-054/KB954154 - Critical: This patch addresses another Windows Media problem, this time with Windows Media Player 11. Like the previous patch, users running with administrator rights can be victimized by a specially targeted media file (in this case, audio files), which can hijack the system. Install this one ASAP too.

Other patches

KB947821: This is an update to the Vista and Windows Server 2008 System Readiness Tool. The System Readiness Tool checks a system out to make sure that there are no inconsistencies in the registry, file system, etc. that would cause updates to fail. Ironically, this patch fixes some issues that it was having, where on occasion it would hang or not work right and prevent updates from installing. It’s not critical, and you probably won’t need it unless you have been having problems.

KB954366: An unfortunate aspect of running Vista is compatibility problems. Microsoft periodically releases Application Security Updates, and this is the August 2008 edition. If you have been having software, hardware, driver, etc. compatibility problems, you will want to install this update. It is a cumulative update, too, so don’t worry if you have missed previous versions. This one includes updates for SQL Server 2005 and .Net Framework 3.5, and more.

KB955302: This is one of those generic “reliability and performance updates” that Microsoft likes to release; it is aimed at Vista and Windows 2008. Big items?

• Improvements to reliability on systems using ReadyBoost
• Fixes to WiFi NICs having performance problems after switching networks after coming out of hibernation (that’s a pretty specific problem!)
• Some data loss issues caused by Disk Cleanup (losing data is one way to do a “disk cleanup” I suppose)
• Stability improvements for systems using Nvidia video cards (I can stop blaming Nvidia for those now)

You’ll probably want to install this one.

KB956697: Apparently, Hyper-V has been having problems with its Volume Shadow Copy hooks, which are keeping it from backing up VMs properly on systems running Windows Server 2008 x64. This patch fixes that. If you are using x64 Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V, install this one pronto! Otherwise, don’t sweat it.

KB900325: This is a big rollup patch for Media Center 2005. It also adds a number of additional fixes, all of which are minor. If you are running Media Center 2005 and haven’t patched it in a while, you will want to install this; otherwise it is not a “right now” item.

KB951618: This addresses a problem with Onekey Recovery 5.0 causing black screens on XP SP2 and Vista after installing SP1. If you aren’t using Onekey Recovery, you don’t need this patch.

“The Usual Suspects”: Of course, there is the usual set of Windows Defender updates, Outlook and Exchange Junk Mail signature updates, and so on.

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Sylvie Barak , Friday 12 September 2008. 22:24:00

Sony, Fujitsu Siemens and Benq flip chips

SONY, FUJITSU Siemens and Benq have announced notebooks using hybrid graphics that allow users to “dynamically switch” between Intel’s Centrino 2 integrated graphics and a discrete Nvidia Geforce GPU. The switch can be made without the need to reboot, giving the user the choice of whether to burn up the battery in 3D mode, or idly noodle about in 2D on the Interweb. According to Nvidia, all its Geforce 9M Series GPUs support the hybrid graphics feature, but notebooks have to be specifically designed. Four firms have joined the bandwagon, after guinea pig Acer tested the water. Sony’s new Vaio Z series, Fujitsu Siemens’ Amilo XI 3650 and Benq Joybook’s S42’s all have the feature….

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Some of you might remember way back in the day when you could get the 3D VR glasses.

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