Sorry for the kinda long post, about 1/2 of it lists what I have attempted, so I outlined that so you can skim it if need be. But I tried to keep that as short as possible also.
Hello,
Linux nerds & my fellow computer techs/nerds!
If I could pick your brains here...
I have been trying to get Adobe Flash 11.2.x/Chrome Pepper Flash to perform hardware acceleration in various Ubuntu distros. As of late I have really been liking Mint Olevia + Cinnamon quite a bit, but not really set on any one DE/GUI at this point.
I have tried to get this working on a new this year, Core i7 LGA1155 system running a GeForce 550GTX GPU, as well as various not so old, but not so super new laptops.
In particular I have been messing with a family member's AMD RS880 (Nile Platform) based notebook /w a Radeon HD4250 Mobility RV620 core based (HD3xxx desktop core) IGP GPU.
The GUIs run quite well, they're plenty fast too, but I just can't get YouTube videos to play /w "Hardware Video Decoding", only SW. Rendering will do HW, but that barely makes a dent. So playing 720p/1080p video on a 3-4yr old laptop is quite jumpy and un-fluid @ well under full CPU usage. They play perfectly in Windows 8.... yeah, I know.
Here's what I have tried....
I have tried both Adobe native flash & Chrome Pepper flash.
I have tried overriding GPU HW acceleration in Chrome /w a noticeable improvement, but still not good enough. I have used both stable & unstable versions of Chrome, no change. I have tried turning on Adobe's HW acceleration override for the native 11.2.x flash by adding: "EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1" to /etc/adobe/mms.cfg /w no GO!
I get the feeling this flag isn't supported anymore.
Obviously this system is using the open source Gallium 0.4 drivers /w MesaGL, as the AMD Legacy FGLRX Driver, for Radeon HD5xxx and older GPUs, doesn't work past Kernel v3.2.x/X-Server 1.12.4, so no newer than Pangolin LTS 12.0.1 /w original hardware enablement + kernel stack.
So I tried this package: https://launchpad.net/~makson96/+archive/fglrx in Ringtail, both Ubuntu Unity/KDE3 & Mint Olevia /w Cinnamon... FAIL!! Black screen at login, no shell access, backlight on. So none of the backlight fixes worked. The FGLRX AMD Kernel module fails to compile on Ubuntu Ringtail /w latest kernel updates for 3.8.0-XX, so I stuck /w the original kernel, that way it was happy and compiled properly. Still no go. I can tap the power button and it'll do a blind, safe shutdown, but just a black screen /w backlight, no video signal on the LCD and nothing on external.
I found a few other threads with users reporting the same issue, but no actual fixes and there's no support from the developer of the package.
Decided to give up on that and instead, learn how to upgrade to the mainline kernel 3.11, hoping for a performance boost from its AMD optimizations. That was pretty cool to learn that!! Enabled the newer Radeon DPM kernel switch in GRUB, verified it works with debugfs and still not much better.
Followed this guide: How To Setup Radeon DPM On Ubuntu Linux Kernel 3.11
And this: Linux Kernel 3.11 Released! Install It In Ubuntu
Although I see there is a newer update to the final 3.11 kernel, I'll do that later.
Also had to fix some missing firmware modules that were found when I did the upgrade, fun adventure, but rewarding and learned a lot!!
So then I tried upgrading MESA & the Open Source drivers /w no noticeable improvement and still no HW accel.
I used this guide, as recommended in the above phoronix tutorial, along with it's associated package: Oibaf - Updated & Optimized Graphics Drivers
I even followed the instructions in the package notes to enable VDPAU support /w no go for flash. I haven't yet tested it /w MPLAYER to see if it's using the newly added VDPAU or not.
End stuff I have tried...
All of this was done on the AMD system, even on the nVidia GPU Core i7 system it didn't enable Flash Video HW acceleration /w the proprietary nVidia GPU driver installed. I didn't try all that other stuff on that one though, as I tried it later once I had the AMD system handy.
I'm really at a loss here as to what to do. I have spent weeks on this, nearly every day /w no progress, other than what I'm learning in other areas of Linux from all of this "beating my head against the wall".
I can't imagine I'm so much of a Linux newb that I'm just not able to get this going, something tells me it's not me, it's Adobe and their STUPID FLASH!!
As the Apple HTML5 test video trailer for Tron works beautifully!!! And has pretty low CPU usage, even on the 4yr. old AMD system. But that works out of the box, LOL.
I thought about trying Kernel 3.12, as it's supposed to have tremendous performance improvements for AMD GPUs as a result of its smarter and more aggressive processor speed switching/power saving state management as reported @ the Phoronix site. But it's still under development, so I really don't want friends and family using an unstable kernel.
I really want this to work... as it's pretty much a basic requirement for the majority of computer users that watch YouTube videos and I'm quite annoyed, dismayed and frustrated that it doesn't work, even on brand new kit. It's really making me question my desire to work toward moving to Linux, or at least mastering it as an alternative OS for my arsenal of expertise.
Any ideas as to what to try next, or something you think I might have missed in what I have tried so far, etc... Would be VEEEEERRRYYY much appreciated.
Hello,
Linux nerds & my fellow computer techs/nerds!
If I could pick your brains here...
I have been trying to get Adobe Flash 11.2.x/Chrome Pepper Flash to perform hardware acceleration in various Ubuntu distros. As of late I have really been liking Mint Olevia + Cinnamon quite a bit, but not really set on any one DE/GUI at this point.
I have tried to get this working on a new this year, Core i7 LGA1155 system running a GeForce 550GTX GPU, as well as various not so old, but not so super new laptops.
In particular I have been messing with a family member's AMD RS880 (Nile Platform) based notebook /w a Radeon HD4250 Mobility RV620 core based (HD3xxx desktop core) IGP GPU.
The GUIs run quite well, they're plenty fast too, but I just can't get YouTube videos to play /w "Hardware Video Decoding", only SW. Rendering will do HW, but that barely makes a dent. So playing 720p/1080p video on a 3-4yr old laptop is quite jumpy and un-fluid @ well under full CPU usage. They play perfectly in Windows 8.... yeah, I know.
Here's what I have tried....
I have tried both Adobe native flash & Chrome Pepper flash.
I have tried overriding GPU HW acceleration in Chrome /w a noticeable improvement, but still not good enough. I have used both stable & unstable versions of Chrome, no change. I have tried turning on Adobe's HW acceleration override for the native 11.2.x flash by adding: "EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1" to /etc/adobe/mms.cfg /w no GO!
I get the feeling this flag isn't supported anymore.
Obviously this system is using the open source Gallium 0.4 drivers /w MesaGL, as the AMD Legacy FGLRX Driver, for Radeon HD5xxx and older GPUs, doesn't work past Kernel v3.2.x/X-Server 1.12.4, so no newer than Pangolin LTS 12.0.1 /w original hardware enablement + kernel stack.
So I tried this package: https://launchpad.net/~makson96/+archive/fglrx in Ringtail, both Ubuntu Unity/KDE3 & Mint Olevia /w Cinnamon... FAIL!! Black screen at login, no shell access, backlight on. So none of the backlight fixes worked. The FGLRX AMD Kernel module fails to compile on Ubuntu Ringtail /w latest kernel updates for 3.8.0-XX, so I stuck /w the original kernel, that way it was happy and compiled properly. Still no go. I can tap the power button and it'll do a blind, safe shutdown, but just a black screen /w backlight, no video signal on the LCD and nothing on external.
I found a few other threads with users reporting the same issue, but no actual fixes and there's no support from the developer of the package.
Decided to give up on that and instead, learn how to upgrade to the mainline kernel 3.11, hoping for a performance boost from its AMD optimizations. That was pretty cool to learn that!! Enabled the newer Radeon DPM kernel switch in GRUB, verified it works with debugfs and still not much better.
Followed this guide: How To Setup Radeon DPM On Ubuntu Linux Kernel 3.11
And this: Linux Kernel 3.11 Released! Install It In Ubuntu
Although I see there is a newer update to the final 3.11 kernel, I'll do that later.
Also had to fix some missing firmware modules that were found when I did the upgrade, fun adventure, but rewarding and learned a lot!!
So then I tried upgrading MESA & the Open Source drivers /w no noticeable improvement and still no HW accel.
I used this guide, as recommended in the above phoronix tutorial, along with it's associated package: Oibaf - Updated & Optimized Graphics Drivers
I even followed the instructions in the package notes to enable VDPAU support /w no go for flash. I haven't yet tested it /w MPLAYER to see if it's using the newly added VDPAU or not.
End stuff I have tried...
All of this was done on the AMD system, even on the nVidia GPU Core i7 system it didn't enable Flash Video HW acceleration /w the proprietary nVidia GPU driver installed. I didn't try all that other stuff on that one though, as I tried it later once I had the AMD system handy.
I'm really at a loss here as to what to do. I have spent weeks on this, nearly every day /w no progress, other than what I'm learning in other areas of Linux from all of this "beating my head against the wall".
I can't imagine I'm so much of a Linux newb that I'm just not able to get this going, something tells me it's not me, it's Adobe and their STUPID FLASH!!
As the Apple HTML5 test video trailer for Tron works beautifully!!! And has pretty low CPU usage, even on the 4yr. old AMD system. But that works out of the box, LOL.
I thought about trying Kernel 3.12, as it's supposed to have tremendous performance improvements for AMD GPUs as a result of its smarter and more aggressive processor speed switching/power saving state management as reported @ the Phoronix site. But it's still under development, so I really don't want friends and family using an unstable kernel.
I really want this to work... as it's pretty much a basic requirement for the majority of computer users that watch YouTube videos and I'm quite annoyed, dismayed and frustrated that it doesn't work, even on brand new kit. It's really making me question my desire to work toward moving to Linux, or at least mastering it as an alternative OS for my arsenal of expertise.
Any ideas as to what to try next, or something you think I might have missed in what I have tried so far, etc... Would be VEEEEERRRYYY much appreciated.
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