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Linaro 11.06 Release Brings Unity 3D Port To ARM

Posted by timothy on from the arm-yourself-with-eye-candy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "For a long time what x86 users took for granted was just 'the future' for ARM devices. Now that time is over. Linaro — a non-profit engineering organization funded by ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments — released a first port of Ubuntu Unity 3D experience and Compiz. If you have a pandaboard, go ahead, download, install the Linaro 11.06 LEB/Ubuntu images and try it out! It's just a few minutes away."

54 comments

  1. So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Does anybody care?

    (I don't)

    1. Re:So... by DaVince21 · · Score: 1

      You are not everybody.

      --
      I am not devoid of humor.
  2. Different than Debian how? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been running Debian on my SheevaPlug and DockStars since they showed up at my door step. I haven't run into many (if any) applications that weren't compiled for ARM but were for i386 or amd_64.

    Sure enough, there's Compbiz.

    It's bare bones, it's not always pretty, but apt has never failed me. It just works. Sid is almost always more up to date than the latest 'stable' release. They don't hard lock any packages to any release (unlike Ubuntu where if you don't want to go past 10.04, you're either stuck with back ports, adding in additional PPAs or dealing with bugs).
    -
    Debian / Ubuntu reminds me of a joke an old Rugby player told me. A young bull and an old bull are sitting up on a hill over looking a valley of sweet cows. The young bull gets excited and says, "Lets run down there and fuck one of those cows!". The old bull quiets him down and says, "Lets walk down there and fuck all of those cows."

    1. Re:Different than Debian how? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What are you talking about? Seriously, you make no sense. First og all, what does apt have to do with this? Apt works the same way on Debian and Ubuntu, on ARM and Intel. So why would you want to mention that?

      Then you go on to say that you can always install any package on Debian without considering dependencies. That's obviously bullshit. You can use apt pinning in Debian, just as you can in Ubuntu. But since Ubuntu is supported for much longer periods of time, it makes sense that they don't introduce new packages unless it's absolutely necessary.

      Debian is very nice. It isn't nearly as good on ARM, but that's another issue. Why are you mentioning it at all? And I really didn't get your joke. You mean Debian is stupid because Ubuntu gets all the cows? I don't agree. Debian is nice. Ubuntu is _really_ nice on ARM. Let's just hope Debian can catch up in that field.

    2. Re:Different than Debian how? by PCM2 · · Score: 1

      Debian / Ubuntu reminds me of a joke an old Rugby player told me.

      I think that rugby player was Robert Duvall and the movie was Colors.

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    3. Re:Different than Debian how? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      Hey, not all of us can have watched every second of TV/Movies ever. Nice to know what it's from. Although I feel like the joke is older than that.

    4. Re:Different than Debian how? by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What are you talking about? Seriously, you make no sense. First og all, what does apt have to do with this? Apt works the same way on Debian and Ubuntu, on ARM and Intel. So why would you want to mention that?

      He probably meant Debian's package QA/

      Then you go on to say that you can always install any package on Debian without considering dependencies.

      I don't see where he says anything like that.

      That's obviously bullshit. You can use apt pinning in Debian, just as you can in Ubuntu.

      He's talking about the releases themselves. Ubuntu picks a major release number of Gnome/KDE/Firefox/LibreOffice/etc, and sticks with it through the entire run of that release. Natty has LibreOffice 3.3.x, and won't ever get LibreOffice 3.4.x in the official channels. Debian, if I'm understanding him right, doesn't force itself to stick with an old branch simply because "that's the version it was released with"

      But since Ubuntu is supported for much longer periods of time.

      Debian 5.0 (Lenny) was released in February of '09, and will be supported for a little over three years (April '12). Ubuntu supports its regular releases for about a year and a half, desktop LTS for three years, and server LTS for 5 years.

      And I really didn't get your joke. You mean Debian is stupid because Ubuntu gets all the cows? I don't agree. Debian is nice. Ubuntu is _really_ nice on ARM. Let's just hope Debian can catch up in that field.

      The young bull would reach the cows first, but he'll be too worn out for anything but one quickie. The old bull paces himself, and so has a better experience when he gets there.

      Ubuntu is the young bull: it tries so hard to keep pace with the new shiny, but the pressure to release quickly doesn't leave much time for working out the bugs. For days (or even weeks) after every Ubuntu release, it seems like every other Ubuntu-related comment is about how $NEW_VERSION broke something that worked just fine in $OLD_VERSION.
      Debian isn't in a rush; it'll upgrade when it is ready, and will be more stable when it does. I was getting pretty antsy about how long sid stayed on KDE 4.4, but it finally moved to 4.6 a few weeks ago. My DE got entirely overhauled, and when it was over...it Just Worked(tm). There were no unresolved dependencies. Nothing was crashing. Compare with Unity. ;-)

    5. Re:Different than Debian how? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Although I feel like the joke is older than that.

      Trust your feelings. It is... by decades.

    6. Re:Different than Debian how? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Decades? In the original version they were aurochs.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    7. Re:Different than Debian how? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, Debian Testing on ARM has way more packages than Squeeze does, but I'm sticking with Stable - that little Sheevaplug is my primary server, and it's worth not being able to install luakit or clisp if it means that I get a rock-solid Apache, vsftpd, etc.

    8. Re:Different than Debian how? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How? Because it's useful to normal human beings, and not just basement dwelling neckbeards.

    9. Re:Different than Debian how? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not even that you have no clue what you're talking about, it's just that you're stupid enough to talk alone.

        TFA talks about 3D Unity && Compiz. You need OpenGL 2.0 support & 3d acceleration, which means you need drivers that work on most ARM SoC.

        Which is why Linaro is backed up by all the major ARM manufacturer and ARM foundation itself.

        So either get a clue or read TFA....

        PS: Please someone mod down this as troll ? And yes I mean it just look at the flame war that followed ... Ubuntu VS Debian. I've never seen something more stupid!

    10. Re:Different than Debian how? by Guspaz · · Score: 2

      Yes, Unity runs on ARM already. But it uses OpenGL. ARM-based stuff like the PandaBoard tends to only support OpenGL ES because nobody licenses the OpenGL drivers from Imagination Technologies (only OpenGL ES drivers). This Linaro announcement is of note because they've ported Unity 3D to OpenGL ES.

      I've been playing around with Ubuntu 11.04 on a PandaBoard for the past few days, and while most software works, there's a decent chunk of software that is either missing from the armel repositories, or if it's there, it just doesn't work.

      But by far the bigger limitation is the complete lack of accelerated 2D support for the PowerVR SGX. The xorg drivers (either omapfb or the pvr drivers) do everything entirely in software. Take FCEUX as an example, since it seems to be the only emulator in the repositories that works (SNES9X runs but won't actually emulate anything). It uses SDL for video output, the only SDL video driver usable is x11, and that means that all your scaling is done in software. Any scaling whatsoever results in choppy uneven framerates, and even unscaled isn't quite perfect.

      There's also near-zero hardware accelerated 3D support, because most Linux software uses OpenGL, and the only drivers Imagination Technologies seems to have licensed to anybody are for OpenGL ES.

      If only we had either proper OpenGL drivers, or a system-wide OpenGL to OpenGL ES wrapper, then a lot of software would work *MUCH* better. FCEUX, for example, does support OpenGL for hardware scaling...

  3. As usual... by Sene · · Score: 1

    The first comments need someone with many mod points...

  4. Ok, I'm old. by synthesizerpatel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Back in the day we had reasonably boring X11 interfaces - to date myself I used twm and was pretty happy with it.

    Now-a-days the 'future' of both the KDE and Gnome window managers just gives me a headache. Having shit move
    all over the screen is annoying, it does not improve my productivity - it reduces the interaction with the computer to
    a video game with the goal of 'get your work done!'.

    When you're designing UIs, less is more.

    * Less movement
    * Less jittering icons
    * Less mouse-focus auto-magnification
    * Less screen flipping and transformation effects
    * Less ribbons
    * Less blurred and translucent backgrounds

    These do look cool but they're not enhancing my 'experience' and they're certainly not helping me get any work done or make a phone call faster.

    So quit wasting time with this stuff and go make touch interfaces with some audio feedback so blind people aren't left out on this next generation of handheld technology. Thanks.

    1. Re:Ok, I'm old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Human tasks are all about boundary conditions. Using the interface to display relevant information, such as switching contexts, can be attractive as well as functional. The more distinct the visual transition, the more firm the mental transition. Maximizing screen real estate means having stuff that moves, so you can focus on your workspace and only get your tools when you want them (ribbons, toolbars, etc.) It's not perfect, but it's a helluva lot better than not having a smart phone or tablet in the first place.

      Time to change your perspective, maybe.

    2. Re:Ok, I'm old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With my 25" 1080p, do I need stuff that maximizes my screen real estate even more.

    3. Re:Ok, I'm old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Time to change your perspective, maybe.

      or just say "to hell with those know-better idiots" and install fluxbox or WM and be done with it.

      one size does not fit all. different cognitive paradigms work for different folks. imposing what you think works for you onto someone else is just stupid. imposing what you think works for someone else is even worse.
      enabling a blind person to access a previously unusable platform, on the other hand, is just brilliant.

    4. Re:Ok, I'm old. by Americium · · Score: 1

      And they crash when I hit show desktop with 50 windows opens, just too many animations. I find Ubuntu to be less stable than Windows 7.

    5. Re:Ok, I'm old. by kevinmenzel · · Score: 1

      Your 25" screen only has 1080p? What a waste of a screen. You know there are screens with higher resolution, right?

    6. Re:Ok, I'm old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      spoken like a true designer.. please go out and get a real job. alt tab doesn't need to have a pixel shader fade effect to help me with my 'mental transition' from one app to another.

    7. Re:Ok, I'm old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All you had to say was get off my lawn...

    8. Re:Ok, I'm old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm probably closer to old than young, but I'm going to disagree with you regarding transformation effects. When used properly such effects do provide a useful hint about the spacial and/or temporal state of an application and the OS.

      The best demo is on a mobile device which constrains the amount of data that can be outputted (and even inputted). Use an application which has a drill down interface which typically uses a slide left/right or cover/uncover transformation between views. Now imagine the same interface without the transformations. In both cases a user will notice that there was a state change. Only the user who witnessed a transform will have an intuitive idea of how the state changed.

    9. Re:Ok, I'm old. by gl4ss · · Score: 2

      visual transitions add delay. it used to be that those were used to fooling the user that the computer was faster than it was, by it doing some shit during the transition, but nowadays even games get loading screens added just for show, not because the delay in loading would be so long as to warrant loading the loading screen. if programs become beggars for your attention for their own benefit, who the fuck has won? does it matter from annoyance standpoint at all how smooth the spamversiment built into the app is about going to their homepage so they could get some nice stats for pumping money? let me tell you what people care on their linux arm ports: DO THE FUCKING 3D ACCEL DRIVERS WORK FOR X? because if they do, of course you can get compiz to work and everything else to work - and if they don't, it's the same state of arm linux as it was a decade ago.

      and if program design is dictated by the need to have fancy transitions(it's decided the transitions are there before anything else is) then it's going to be a disaster. now few people might notice but the actual output product from peoples pc use has not changed in the past 14 years or so, text, pictures, publishing, web sites.. the actual work has not changed to anything but the tools have been under constant change, how much usability does that benefit? what's even more problematic that some things have been just right since windows 3.1/ os/2 warp/ x in 1996 - after that it's just a matter of taste and making the tech cheaper. just even calling something a ribbon is a sign of late time fail of thinking of the computer as a magical device, it's not. drag out menus are sometimes ok, sometimes shit, it all depends on how the actual long term work flow with the program would go.

      linux on arm could be the same as linux on pc and you could start pumping out arm desktops right away only if you had the fucking drivers - blame chip manufacturers who prefer to target random device manufacturers because it's easier to lie to them than when doing sales that would end up on their own on customer hands(what lies? well, doing in sw what you have in the brochure said you're doing in hw).

      and one thing about transitions. you don't need a popup popping up transition IF it's only a few ms it takes for the thing to pop up after the user does whatever causes it to come up, because if it's fast enough your brain catches that it was a direct result of your click that caused the change on the screen even if you weren't focused on that part of the screen, but if it takes too long you lose the cause and effect relationship between the two. the funny thing with this is that if you add mandatory 0.5s fade in or whatever, it makes things worse and seem un-perky(for the lack of a better word).

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    10. Re:Ok, I'm old. by realityimpaired · · Score: 1

      Using TWM doesn't date you as much as you think... yes, I've been using Slackware since 2.0 (which really does date me), but I used TWM on one of my laptops as recently as 2009.... I had a login that defaulted to TWM for use in fucking with people... every tab I had open was an instance of xterm, and was running a terminal version of some common GUI tool... emacs, links, irssi, etc..

      I used it for messing with people at Starbucks... if people asked what it was, I told them it was a beta of the next version of OS/X that I was testing for a friend of mine in Cupertino.

    11. Re:Ok, I'm old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, which means you really need to be running the old kde 3 or gnome 2, OR, a truly lightweight like icewm or xfce

      zenwalk.org has been using xfce for a while now, and it really is quite tight ;) try it

    12. Re:Ok, I'm old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FEWER, ffs...

    13. Re:Ok, I'm old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahh, Trade Wars Millenium...
      Fond memories.

  5. But ... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    ... then you would end up with Unity??

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re:But ... by TheSpoom · · Score: 1

      My thoughts exactly. Why would I want Unity?

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
  6. Naming Confusion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I mistook the article title as being about the Unity 3D game development tool, which unfortunately doesn't support Linux yet. Unity is a desktop system for Ubuntu which apparently happens to have 3D effects.

    It'd be nice if you clarified product names when writing headlines.

  7. I can't stand Unity on a x386 by rubycodez · · Score: 1, Insightful

    why the hell would anyone thing I would like that crap on an ARM? less is more, Shuttleworth!

  8. Re:Minnesota government shutdown begins by lsolano · · Score: 1

    around 23,000 of roughly 36,000 state employees will be furloughed,

    I thought that people hated Unity because of the icons on the left, but now I realize all the evil it causes.

  9. How would that affect performance? by satuon · · Score: 1

    If Unity uses OpenGL, does that mean it will use the GPU more and the CPU less?

    1. Re:How would that affect performance? by paxcoder · · Score: 1

      Probably just the former. You are onto something though.

  10. Re:Minnesota government shutdown begins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    around 23,000 of roughly 36,000 state employees will be furloughed,

    I thought that people hated Unity because of the icons on the left, but now I realize all the evil it causes.

    No, people hate Unity because it's a poor ripoff of OS X and Windows 7 and is buggier than Windows 95.

  11. Namespace Collision: Unity3d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Unity3d.com is already a popular game engine

    1. Re:Namespace Collision: Unity3d by kwikrick · · Score: 1

      Exactly. What the hell is '3D' doing in a window manager? Are the Ubuntu devs trying to hop on the 3d movie hype bandwagon? It's just sad.
      More so that they are now steeling the name of the excellent Unity3D game engine.

       

      --
      assignment != equality != identity
    2. Re:Namespace Collision: Unity3d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought. Wow. They ported Unity to Linux?!

      Imagine my dissappointment finding out it's just another crappy desktop environment.

    3. Re:Namespace Collision: Unity3d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's to distinguish it from "Unity2d" which is Canonical's version of the "fallback" (Gnome2-like) mode from Gnome 3. Unity3d gets accelerated by the 3d rendering parts of your graphics card, while Unity2d is only accelerated by the 2d RENDER extension.

      To me it looks like Unity is just "Gnome Shell Lite" but I can't run either one at work, as they both crash when handed a two screen (3 monitor) setup with 16bpp frame buffers by X. E17 works just fine though.

  12. Damn by zer01ife · · Score: 1

    This Unity thing is causing sysCatastophe... First, you install Compiz. Second, mess around. Finally, bingo! You got bugged.

    1. Re:Damn by lolcutusofbong · · Score: 2

      That's because in the Ubuntu mindset, Compiz = Compositing. Now that several window managers have their own compositing (GNOME 3's WM, Unity, KWin) it can cause collisions. The same thing happens when you try to fullscreen a KVM or QEMU virtual machine with a compositor running.

  13. Re:Minnesota government shutdown begins by cshark · · Score: 0

    I like monkeys.

    --

    This signature has Super Cow Powers

  14. Re:I just took a dump on all slashdotters... by cshark · · Score: 0

    Wow, so you've got takers.
    That's impressive.

    --

    This signature has Super Cow Powers

  15. Re:Minnesota government shutdown begins by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

    Man nothing is cooler than the free toad sloth, nothing at all.

    As for TFA honestly how great can having Ubunru on ARM be? Don't have any ARM boards to try this out but generally when I've heard something touted as "cross platform" what I've seen is something that runs great on ONE platform, and kinda gimps along on the others. See Java, flash for examples.

    So does anybody have some benchmarks? Doesn't have to be Ubuntu, just say any Linux and the top 5 programs on X86 VS the same Linux and top 5 programs recompiled for ARM. I'd love to see some real benchmarks with the real programs folks use, LO/OO,hell even KOffice,Firefox, Gimp, Chromium, just the basic kind of stuff the average person would want use on a netbook be it x86 or ARM. Frankly I think it would be cool if the benches doesn't suck as there is always cheap WinCE ARM netbooks on CL, but I ain't holding my breath.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  16. Re:Ok, I'm Windsor Davis by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Fa fa fa fa fa fa mental transition, Sergeant Major. Is that what they teaches you at Hyooniversity, Mr. Lah-De-Dah Gunner Graham?

    SHUT UP!

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  17. Annoyingly Unity means something else to me... by oPless · · Score: 1

    http://unity3d.com/ is what I thought this article was all about, imagine my disappointment when discovering some stupid window manager reuses the name.

  18. OpenGL driver? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have worked with a BeagleBoard (ARM based single board computer - ancestor of Panda) and tried to install the OpenGL driver. It was so poorly documented and painful that finally I gave it up. I don't care Unity but out of the box OpenGL support would be nice! Better without X.

  19. unity compiz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good luck getting your desktop cube and mouse wheel desktop flip to work.