AMD Catalyst 14.4 (fglrx 14.10.1006) wurde veröffentlicht und unterstützt Grafikkarten ab Radeon HD 5000 und höher. Das Skript makerpm-amd-14.4.sh steht ab sofort zum Download zur Verfügung und unterstützt openSUSE 11.4, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 13.1 sowie bis Kernel 3.13. Zum Packaging Skript wurde ein Patch hinzugefügt und unterstützt bis Kernel 3.14

[UPDATE 27.05.2014]
Das Skript wurde für die 2. Version von AMD Catalyst 14.4 (fglrx 14.10.1006.1001) aktualisiert. Leider hat AMD die Release Notes über die Änderung im Treiber nicht auf den neuesten Stand gebracht.
[/UPDATE 27.05.2014]

Nachfolgende Release Notes von AMD zum AMD Catalyst 14.4:

Neue Features:

• Support for the AMD Radeon R9 295X
• Ubuntu 12.04.4 support
• Full support for OpenGL 4.4
• OpenGL 4.4 supports the following extensions:
  • ARB_buffer_storage
  • ARB_enhanced_layouts
  • ARB_query_buffer_object
  • ARB_clear_texture
  • ARB_texture_mirror_clamp_to_edge
  • ARB_texture_stencil8
  • ARB_vertex_type_10f_11f_11f_rev
  • ARB_multi_bind
  • ARB_bindless_texture
  • ARB_spare_texture
  • ARB_seamless_cubemap_per_texture
  • ARB_indirect_parameters
  • ARB_shader_group_vote

Folgende Probleme sind im Treiber behoben worden:

• Corruption and system hang observed while running Sanctuary BM with Tear Free Desktop enabled
• Memory leak about hardware context
• EGL create context error for glesx
• GPU hand in CrossFire Mode
• [Piglit] Test „spec/arb_vertex_array_object“ failed
• [Piglit] Test „glx/GLX_EXT_import_context/free context“ failed
• [Piglit] Test „spec/ARB_seamless_cube_map“ failed
• Piglit] Test „texture swizzle with border color“ failed
• Glxtest failures observed in log file
• Blank screen observed while running steam games with Big picture
• 4ms delay observed in the glxSwapBuffers when vsync is enabled
• RBDoom3BFG the game auto quit when use the security camera terminal
• ETQW segmentation fault

Offene Probleme:

• Performance on some Steam OS games is lower on 1GB graphics memory cards, compared with 2GB graphics memory cards
• Some Piglit tests cause a system hang under Ubuntu

Link: AMD Catalyst 14.4 LINUX Release Notes

Folgende Steam-Spiele habe ich getestet und laufen mit diesem Treiber:

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent
• Cities in Motion 2
• Creeper World III: Arc Eternal
• Crusader Kings II
• Darwinia
• Defcon
• Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition
• Euro Trucker Simulator
• Europa Universalis IV
• Game Dev Tycoon
• Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
• Hotel Miami
• Kerbal Space Program
• Prison Architect
• Project Zomboid
• Shadow Warrior Classic Redux
• Strike Suit Zero
• Survivor Squad
• Wargame: AirLand Battle
• Wargame: European Escalation

Eine kleine Bitte habe ich: Wenn irgendwelche Probleme mit dem Treiber auftauchen, scheut euch nicht mir zu berichten (Ich nehme deutsche und englische Bugreports gerne entgegen). Ich werde versuchen, soweit es mir möglich ist, den gemeldeten Fehler zu reproduzieren. Zusammen mit den nötigen System-Informationen werde ich mich direkt an die richtige Stelle bei AMD wenden, um den Bug in der nächsten Treiber-Version beheben zu lassen. Danke schön.

Für Benutzer älterer AMD Grafikkarten (Radeon HD Serie 2000 – 4000) wird dringend die Installation dieses Treibers abgeraten. openSUSE bringt bereits für ältere Grafikkarten den freien Radeon-Treiber mit. Um regelmäßig Verbesserungen am freien Radeon-Treiber zu erhalten, ist die Installation eines neuen Kernel unumgänglich.

Downloads:

• Skript: makerpm-amd-14.4.sh
• SHA1: makerpm-amd-14.4.sh.sha1

Installationsanleitung:
http://de.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD/ATI-Grafiktreiber#Installation_via_makerpm-amd-Skript

Installation guide (English):
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx#Building_the_rpm_yourself

Über das makerpm-amd-Skript

Das Skript makerpm-amd-14.4.sh ist sehr mächtig, robust und läuft vollautomatisch. Der AMD-Installer wird automatisch heruntergeladen, falls er nicht schon im Verzeichnis liegt. Zudem wird geprüft, ob die Grafikkarte vom Treiber unterstützt wird. Auf Wunsch wird nach dem Bau des RPM-Packages der fglrx-Treiber installiert.

Folgende Argumente können dem Skript übergeben werden:

Hilfe, es funktioniert nicht!

Bitte haltet folgende Regel ein:

1. Bei der Eingabe der Befehle auf mögliche Tippfehler überprüfen.
2. Möglicherweise ist die Lösung für das Problem im Wiki vorhanden.
3. In Kommentaren lesen, ob eine Lösung zu einem Problem bereits existiert.

Wenn keines der o.g. Regel greift, dann könnt ihr mit eurem Anliegen an mich wenden. Damit ich euch helfen kann, müsst ihr erst vorarbeiten. Bitte ladet euch das Skript makerpm-amd-14.4.sh herunter und erstellt einen Report von eurem System in der Konsole:

su -c 'sh makerpm-amd-14.4.sh -ur'

Das Skript lädt das Report auf sprunge.us hoch und gibt anschließend einen Link aus. Diesen Link postet ihr in eurem Kommentar zusammen mit einer Beschreibung zu eurem Problem an mich. Ich werde mir euren Report anschauen und Hilfestellung geben, wo evtl. das Problem liegen könnte.

Feedbacks sind wie immer willkommen.

Another openSUSE Conference, another Country, but the same awesomeness. I attended the openSUSE Conference in the amazing city of Dubrovnik (more commonly known as King’s Landing), and it was another spell binding experience. Right from the talks, presentations, people (I cant stress on this one enough) to the location, everything was impeccable. I sit down to pen my thoughts at another experience, and memories which I will cherish. There was plenty to enjoy, learn, discuss at the conference, which lived upto its tagline – ‘The Strength to Change’. I highlight some of my experiences in this rather lengthy post.

The Location:

The location was just spectacular. I have been a ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ fan for quite some time, and had a vivid image of what King’s Landing would look like. It lived up perfectly to its name. I think Dubrovnik was ‘meant’ to play host to King’s Landing in the series. Visiting the Walls, Fort Lovrijenac (The Red Keep) felt like I had landed inside the world of Westeros.

The Conference was held in the University of Dubrovnik. It was a pretty nice location, very close to Oldtown in a nice, peaceful location.

Video Team:

This was something new to me. I helped around with the video team in mixing videos, and handling the camera for some of the talks. I had never done this before, and Christopher Hoffman gave me a great hands on. It was a pretty nice experience, working with Stephan Barth, Dubravko Jakovljević, Sarah, Jurgen, Marcel. I hope to be helping around with the video team at the next oSC as well.

The Presentations:

As always, the presentations were top notch. Mentioning some which I really liked

• Design and Branding – Kenneth Wimmer. This one cleared up some confusion there was with the openSUSE artwork. I really like the cool and funky new Geekos
• Almost every talk by Jos Poortvliet
• SLE and openSUSE by Jan Weber
• YaST Module from Scratch by Josef Reidinger (This one was cool!!!)
• oSC15 by Bruno Friedmann
• The upstream view of MySQL – Norvald H. Ryeng
• The TSP talks by Izabel and Ancor

The Townhall Meeting:

I missed a part of the townhall partly due  to the incessant rain, but I got in time for the bulk of the discussion. The burning issues in the townhall were related to the openSUSE Release Cycle, and how Factory fits in. The discussion was pretty interesting, though the outcome will probably be clear in the current weeks. As of now, openSUSE 13.2 is slated for a November release.

openSUSE Summit:

At oSC13 in Thessaloniki, I had met Yan Sun, where she had put forth the idea for an openSUSE Summit in Asia. She put forth the proposal to the board in the last conference, though due to some issues, the dates kept shifting, though the event had been approved. Now, it looks like the event would be held in October/November in Beijing. I had a good discussion with her on topics such as talks, presentations and the TSP, which would be a vital cog for the conference. I am hoping to attend the event and give a presentation. Lets see how that works out. Fingers crossed on this one

Anahuac Gil:

Yes…I had to devote a whole section to this amazing person from Brazil, and one who made the conference even more memorable. I first met him at the hotel with Izabel, and we got down to talking. The discussions were amazing on talks from our diverse, but to a certain extent, similar cultures to the evil aspects of Google (and the nexus with the NSA :D). For a whole hour, he shed light on Cuba, which was pretty amazing. Whenever the guy talks, people listen intently. I enjoyed talking to him, and his banter of ‘You are TOO SLOW man!!!’ has stayed with me. Reaffirms my belief that conferences are a great place to meet people and understand different cultures.

The openSUSE Party:

Geekos love to party…plain and simple. After a hard and long conference, we had the main party at Eastwest Beach Club Banje, on the Adriatic shore. It was quite a picturesque place. The food was pretty nice, though I could hardly find stuff I could eat (considering I dont eat meat). Still I had a fun time interacting with people. I met with Peter Czanik, who works with Balabit Security, an organization we are collaborating with in the Google Summer of Code. We had a lengthy discussion on topics ranging from Hungary, Balabit, GSoC to name a few.

The best part of the party was certainly the dedication to Hans de Raadt. He could not make it to the conference, and he is going to organize the next oSC at the Hague. Netherlands. The Geekos gave an awesome tribute to Hans

I got together with a group of Greekos, and talked about the Google Summer of Code. IMO, Greekos are really the most passionate community within the openSUSE Community. I am hoping they participate next year in GSoC

Craziest and most fun part – Geekos exchanging ID Tags in football style. I have no idea who ended up with mine. I now have Tomas Cech’s ID tag instead of mine

Travel Support Program (TSP):

The Travel Support program has been integral for me attending the conference. It is an awesome tool which enables contributors to attend events which help openSUSE as a project grow. Being sponsored to the openSUSE Conference is a great feeling, and urges you to contribute more towards this awesome project. The talk discussing the openSUSE Travel Support Program by Izabel laid out some clear points

• Contribute. It is not a free ride.
• We want to support as many people as possible, but you have to ask for help
• It is not just attending the event in the shadows. Get Involved. It is as much ‘during’ the event, than it is ‘before’
• If you have been sponsored to the conference, remember that it is at the cost of someone else. Make it count…

Prior to the Trip:

This one perhaps warrants a separate blog post, as a guide on how NOT to travel, but I am going with the flow. I made a hash of my reservations, which almost cost me attending the conference.

• I booked flight tickets through Germany, without realizing that I would need at least an airport transit visa. I assumed I would get a German visa, which would allow me to enter Croatia as well. The Embassy of Germany rejected my application, and I was stuck in Limbo for some time. I specially went to Delhi to apply for a Croatian visa, and got it a few days before the trip, leaving me no time to apply for the German visa
• I canceled the tickets through Germany, and in panic, booked tickets going through Austria, without realizing that there is a 20 layover in Vienna, which would have been intolerable, and that I would potentially overstay on my visa.
• I tried looking for an alternative, and was on the verge of booking tickets to Moscow, only to see the price double while I blinked.
• I ultimately ended up canceling the ticket through Austria, and booking through Istanbul, which was a ‘sensible’ route, though it involved a flight plan which went: Bangalore -> Mumbai -> Istanbul -> Zagreb -> Dubrovnik. Travel Hell!!! I am sick of flights…
• I missed the last day of the conference due to these issues, and also ended up spending some more on extending my hotel reservation, which was for a day less.

As the dust settles on the openSUSE Conference, I can only reflect on the awesomeness over the past week. It has really left a lasting impression over me. Thanks to the Geekos around the world, who make the openSUSE Project a success

• The trip is expensive since they come from the other side of the world.
• They come from countries where the cost of the trip or accommodation represent the salary of a year.
• They are students, so they have little income.
• They have family and they cannot afford the expenses derived from being a week far from home.

There comes a time in ever man's life when he says to himself, "there has got to be a better way..."

Set Next Statement

Have you ever been stepping through a method or hit a breakpoint and discovered that variables did not have the expected values? Don't you wish you could go back in time and start stepping through that method from an earlier point to see how things went so horribly wrong? Of course you do.

Last week, with the help of Zoltan Varga (who added the necessary runtime support), I implemented support in Xamarin Studio to set the next statement to execute when you resume execution of your program in the debugger. You can set the next statement to be any statement in the current method; any statement at all. This essentially allows you to jump back in time or completely step over execution of statements after the current position.

Don’t worry. As long as you hit Run To Cursor at precisely the moment the lightning strikes the tower, everything will be fine!

Run to Cursor

If you're like me, you've probably found yourself stepping through some code in the debugger and you get to a loop or something that you know is fine and you just don't feel like hitting Step Over the 5 bajillion times necessary to get past it, so what do you do? Hopefully you don't hit Step Over those 5 bajillion times. Hopefully you just set a breakpoint somewhere after that loop and then hit Continue.

The problem with this solution is that it's tedious.

Soon, however, you'll be able to simply right-click and select Run To Cursor (or just set/use a keybinding) and the debugger will resume execution until it reaches your cursor!

Client-Side Evaluation of Simple Properties

Assuming that you haven't disabled "Allow implicit property evaluation and method invocation" in your Xamarin Studio debugger preferences, whenever class properties are evaluated in the debugger (in the Watch pad, the Locals pad, or when you hover the mouse cursor over a property), in order to get the value, the debugger has to spin up a thread in the program being debugged in order to have it evaluate the property (or other expression) because, unlike fields, properties are really just methods that have to run arbitrary code.

For at least a year or so, now, we've mitigated this somewhat by cheating if the property has the CompilerGeneratedAttribute (signifying that it is an auto-property). When evaluating these properties, we would instead do a lookup of the backing field and get its value since we could do that locally without any need to round-trip to the program being debugged. While this helped a lot, there's a lot of properties out there that effectively just return a field and have no other logic (maybe an auto-property wasn't used because the setter does more than just set the field value?).

To improve performance of this, I started looking into what it would take to interpret the IL locally in the IDE. Obviously this could only really work if the property getter was "simple" enough and didn't have to take locks, etc. I started asking Zoltan some questions on the feasibility of this and he wrote a simple IL interpreter (included in Mono.Debugger.Soft) that I ended up using in Xamarin Studio to try and evaluate properties locally before falling back to having the debuggee's runtime spin up a thread to evaluate the property for us.

Great Scott! When Can I Start Using These Awesome Features?

To use these new features, you will need Mono 3.4.1 (or later) and an upcoming release of Xamarin Studio (5.0.1? It won't quite make it into 5.0).

Well, it's time I get back... to the future! ... And implementing more new features!

Как-то так получилось, что в последнее время часто переустанавливаю систему — то обновляю, то сбои непонятные, то эксперименты разные. И часто забываю название программы, которую использую для ограничения времени игр моего старшего сына.
Это программа timekpr, которая уже вроде давно перестала обновляться, но лучшего варианта для моих целей пока я не нашел.
Главная задача — ограничить время работы моего сына. Сейчас это 1 час в день. Возможностей программы достаточно, чтобы он не смог играть больше часа, в его возрасте и часа многовато.
Раньше и сейчас эту программу легко найти по поиску на сайте opensuse.org, легкая установка в один клик, несложные настройки. Если у кого-нибудь возникнут вопросы — пишите, помогу с настройкой

openSUSE has made it to yet another Google Summer of Code. This season, we got 14 students who would be contributing code to openSUSE, along with our sister organizations ownCloud, MATE and Zorp. Over the period of four months, students work towards completing their projects under the guidance of their mentors. Specific to openSUSE, we got a host of awesome projects with topics ranging to OSEM(Open Source Event Management), TSP(Travel Support Program application), Snapper, Live Flashing USB, Git Review, libvirt to name a few.

The projects (and their students) selected this season are:

1. Travel Support Program application – Karthik Senthil
2. Playlist Functionality for ownCloud Music App – Volkan
3. ownCloud Calendar Application in angularJS – Raghu Nayyar
4. openSUSE GSOC ideas: Cool live flash – Zsolt Peter Basak
5. Open Source Event Manager (OSEM): Refactor user management model – Stella Rouzi
6. Open Source Event Manager (OSEM): Implemention Organizer Dashboard – cbruckmayer
7. MATE: Port from deprecated GStreamer 0.10 – Michal Ratajsky
8. Integrate Snapper Snapshot browsing into openSUSE Desktop tools – Oguz Kayral
9. Implement an application-level LBaaS driver for Zorp – Péter Vörös
10. Extend Git-Review to support BitBucket – xystushi
11. Event Splash page for Visitors In Open Source Event Manager Application. – Gopesh Tulsyan
12. ePub support in Atril (MATE) – Avishkar gupta
13. Add Snapshot management API to libvirt Xenlight driver – David Kiarie
14. Improving the functionality of the extensions system in Caja – Alexandervdm

We hope to have an awesome summer of code with a lot of code being integrated into the respective codebases.
Happy Hacking!!!