Richard A. Johnson

Are you rocking an Intel 945GM chipset with the integrated Intel 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)? If so, this little tweak has helped 3 of us thus far in #kubuntu-devel with KDE 4 and compositing effects.

Step 1: xorg.conf editing

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics Controller"
        Driver          "i810"
        BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
        Option          "AccelMethod"   "xaa"
EndSection

This is what our device section for the graphics card looks like. We added the “AccelMethod” “xaa” option.

Step 2: ~/.bashrc

export INTEL_BATCH=1

Added that line to our ~/.bashrc file.

We then restarted X with a swift Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and then tested this setup with glxgears and we all received an average FPS of well over 1000. Prior to this, my highest FPS was a low 900. After these little tweaks, composite never worked so smoothly in KDE 4 in the past.

Does this tweak work for others using say Compiz? Are there some more Intel tweaks that you know of that help out as well? If so, add them to the comment and attempt to explain exactly what they do. Thanks!

Thanks to tlayton_at_work in the Ubuntu Forums, there is a handy little work around for the Sun Java 6 issues in Hardy.

$ echo "export LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK=true" >> ~/.bash_profile

Works like a champ, and now I am back to creating GUIs with Netbeans, and running my code in Eclipse. Thanks tlayton_at_work, you rock!

I am currently working on a DB API for a Java application, and one of the requests was to be able to query Microsoft Access Databases. OK, no problem I thought. I could easily open up these databases with OpenOffice.org Database or even Kexi. WRONG! Neither of them would open or even import the database. I personally am not a fan of OO.o, so I went over with Kexi. After some fiddling around, I did apt-cache search mdb just to see what there was. Low and behold there were two applications of interest. kexi-mdb-driver and kexi-mdb-plugin. I first tried the plugin and all that did was make Kexi crash. So I removed the plugin and then tried to use the driver instead. Booyah! It worked like a champ. It imported not only the structure 100% correctly, but also all of the data.

/me gets back to hacking now that he knows what is in the database itself. </query_hell>

Edit: This is for Gutsy only
I just spent a few hours combing the community documentation and the Ubuntu Forums looking for the best resource for installing Flash on 64-bit systems. Wow, I was mesmarized by all of the information to do such an easy task.

If you are using a 64-bit system, you do not have to:

1. install a 32-bit edition of Firefox
2. download the Adobe Flash Player from their website
3. don’t have to mess with Pango
4. and a whole slew of others…

I was successful using the following commands in order to get not only get Flash to work with Firefox on a 64-bit system, but also Konqueror. Granted, Konqueror and Flash aren’t best of friends right now with Gutsy, and either is OpenOffice.org with Kubuntu Gutsy. Anyways, here is exactly how I did it, and I would like you all to give it a shot and let me know if it works for you. I am doing this all command line, so bear with me.

First, install flashplugin-nonfree from the repos:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Second, wrap the flashplugin-nonfree with nspluginwrapper:

nspluginwrapper -i /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so

Third, create a link from the new file located in your home directory to the Firefox plugins directory:

sudo ln -s ~/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so

If you are using Firefox, you are good to go. Those of you using Konqueror just have to go into the plugin settings in the Konqueror configuration and scan for new plugins. It should be there and working. If you have issues with this, could you please let me know. Thanks. And if you are using Kubuntu Gutsy, I know that Konqueror locks up when going to websites with flash animation or movies embedded. Thanks everyone.

Would you like to have the middle mouse button, the scroll wheel, close your tabs in Konqueror the way it does in every other browser? Well want no more! Simply copy and paste the following into your terminal (Konsole) and press enter. Restart Konqueror if it is already opened, or close Konqueror before running this command.

kwriteconfig --file konquerorrc --group "FMSettings" --key MouseMiddleClickClosesTab --type bool true

Well, don’t get to excited first off. I have finally gotten my Radeon 9700 (which reports as a 9550, something tells me I got ripped off) to work with AIGLX using the Radeon drivers (the open source drivers, not the FGLRX binary drivers). I have pieced together howtos from any place imaginable. However…Compiz starts, but doesn’t draw any frames or borders on windows, and I haven’t messed with any effects because this has annoyed me. It has something to do with an outdated CCP plugin. I have tried all of the -replace this and that, and it still doesn’t work.

But anyways, here are the settings you want to add to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Make sure you have the following options under your Section “Module”:

Load "dri"
Load "dbe"
Load "glx"

Make sure you have the following options under your Section “Device”:

driver "radeon"
option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
option "AGPMode" "4"  #if you have 8, you can try it
option "AGPFastWrite" "true" #enable in bios as well
option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "true"
option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
option "EnablePageFlip" "true"

Make sure you have the following options under your Section “ServerLayout”:

option "AIGLX" "true"

If you don’t have a Section “DRI”, add it and make sure it looks like this:

Section "DRI"
     Mode 0666
EndSection

Add the following if you don’t have a Section “Extensions”:

Section "Extensions"
     option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

If you have an idea on how to fix the CCP plugin issue with Compiz, I would greatly appreciate it. As for installing Compiz, I followed https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CompositeManager/CompizFusion.