2014-07-11, 07:48
2014-07-11, 08:10
Sorry that was a bit abrupt.
But the fact is my precise XBMC systems are as stable as can be, not the opposite at all.
But the fact is my precise XBMC systems are as stable as can be, not the opposite at all.
2014-07-11, 08:21
(2014-07-11, 08:10)nickr Wrote: Sorry that was a bit abrupt.
But the fact is my precise XBMC systems are as stable as can be, not the opposite at all.
Then you are a lucky user. But this does change the fact that we don't test on Precise and don't actively work on this. You also have to distinguish between NVidia systems and Intel/AMD which use OSS drivers. Your post might motivate some AMD users to stay with Precise which is worst they can do.
2014-07-11, 08:38
@nickr: Don't talk from your nvidia hardware - which is happy with old drivers - for every hardware out there ... 5 year old hw can stay on 12.04 forever ... ever run a HSW or AMD setup on 12.04? No - you didn't .. cause then you would know better.
2014-07-11, 08:45
Yea I know some people won't have joy with 12.04, I just wouldn't want to see you abandon 12.04 as an official build.
Yes I will be upgrading, just have to find a weekend to do all the systems :-)
Yes I will be upgrading, just have to find a weekend to do all the systems :-)
2014-07-11, 08:47
Providing builds is on thing - providing support another.
See debian, gentoo, arch - they all make "xbmc builds", but leave their users in great pain as they cannot support their patched mess.
See debian, gentoo, arch - they all make "xbmc builds", but leave their users in great pain as they cannot support their patched mess.
2014-07-11, 09:01
OK we are way off topic for intel deinterlacing I guess.
One thought - if XBMC wants to use ubuntu as it's main linux platform, it should perhaps pay some heed to ubuntu support cycles? I dunno, its a hard issue as multimedia hardware support probably moves a helluva lot faster then any other support issue. It's all very well to support ssh through several kernel generations, hardware video acceleration is a whole different kettle of piranha.
One thought - if XBMC wants to use ubuntu as it's main linux platform, it should perhaps pay some heed to ubuntu support cycles? I dunno, its a hard issue as multimedia hardware support probably moves a helluva lot faster then any other support issue. It's all very well to support ssh through several kernel generations, hardware video acceleration is a whole different kettle of piranha.
2014-07-11, 09:10
An operating system is just the infrastructure and support for applications, not the other way round. Ubuntu 12.04 has stopped to support XBMC properly, at least for Intel and AMD. Nothing we can do about that fact.
2014-07-11, 09:46
(2014-07-11, 07:22)FernetMenta Wrote: I am just telling the truth. Fact is that we don't test on Precise nor recommend it. Providing a build is pretending pretending to support it. Users stay with 12.04 because they want "stable" but they get the opposite in regard to XBMC.
You're also advocating we drop support for Precise, which is what I'm responding to :)
XBMC on Precise is stable. (EDIT: and the lack of a feature, such as HW decoding for some hardware, is not really an instability) I test on Precise and I haven't had any issues. I typically recommend to users to install LTS versions of Ubuntu (in the event they want Ubuntu. Otherwise it's OpenELEC) so they don't have to update every 9 months, but thankfully 14.04 lined up fairly close with Gotham's release.
Users are typically okay with the idea that we can't test every conceivable configuration of hardware. XBMC supports four different versions of OS X, but I bet our OS X devs don't use all four all the time.
Users are also okay with the idea that new things/features and/or new hardware is not always supported by an older OS, and that issue is outside of XBMC's responsibility. Users with newer hardware that are using the older OS are likely in the minority, so we'd mostly be punishing users with a perfectly working setup.
So let's all keep calm and carry on :)
2014-07-11, 13:35
2014-07-12, 05:59
As I said before, there's no reason for me to encourage anyone to use 12.04 on new installs. My concern was only for existing users with working 12.04 setups. I'm not guiding anyone to use 12.04.
I don't understand the hostility here. I trust your and fritsch's opinions on these matters (and I personally like you guys, too. I can't wait to see everyone in person again later this year), but all you've said is that hardware acceleration doesn't work on newer hardware because Ubuntu isn't updating hardware drivers for 12.04 anymore. Hardware acceleration not working for some hardware has always been a factor for every platform that XBMC has been ported to, but no one has made an issue about that before. Didn't vanilla XBMC/Ubuntu not work with AMD hardware acceleration for years, but we still considered those builds supported? There will always be situations we can't accommodate, but the vast majority of people using 12.04 are people who already had 12.04 set up and working on their existing hardware.
We have a huge community, and we'll help out with those 12.04 users who need to be pointed towards upgrading. The alternative, dropping support for 12.04, will only result in a bunch of users asking why they can't upgrade like we see now with the short term Ubuntu releases. Dropping 12.04 will just make the support burden worse because we'll have to deal with all 12.04 users instead of just those who have newer hardware, right?
I'm not talking about these things to be difficult, I'm only trying to understand the situation. I would really like to understand the situation. If explaining it to me is too frustrating (I can be very dense sometimes) then I'm sorry and I'll drop it, as I value the friendships over the knowledge.
Cheers, I guess :\
I don't understand the hostility here. I trust your and fritsch's opinions on these matters (and I personally like you guys, too. I can't wait to see everyone in person again later this year), but all you've said is that hardware acceleration doesn't work on newer hardware because Ubuntu isn't updating hardware drivers for 12.04 anymore. Hardware acceleration not working for some hardware has always been a factor for every platform that XBMC has been ported to, but no one has made an issue about that before. Didn't vanilla XBMC/Ubuntu not work with AMD hardware acceleration for years, but we still considered those builds supported? There will always be situations we can't accommodate, but the vast majority of people using 12.04 are people who already had 12.04 set up and working on their existing hardware.
We have a huge community, and we'll help out with those 12.04 users who need to be pointed towards upgrading. The alternative, dropping support for 12.04, will only result in a bunch of users asking why they can't upgrade like we see now with the short term Ubuntu releases. Dropping 12.04 will just make the support burden worse because we'll have to deal with all 12.04 users instead of just those who have newer hardware, right?
I'm not talking about these things to be difficult, I'm only trying to understand the situation. I would really like to understand the situation. If explaining it to me is too frustrating (I can be very dense sometimes) then I'm sorry and I'll drop it, as I value the friendships over the knowledge.
Cheers, I guess :\
2014-07-12, 14:13
Quote:I'm only trying to understand the situation. I would really like to understand the situation.
We would like users to enjoy best possible XBMC experience and this won't work without hw acceleration because the average XBMC system has not i7/i5 desktop power. In general users don't read through the wiki or forum if there is a build provided. If the is no build, they will start asking and looking around.
Quote:Hardware acceleration not working for some hardware has always been a factor for every platform that XBMC has been ported to, but no one has made an issue about that before. Didn't vanilla XBMC/Ubuntu not work with AMD hardware acceleration for years, but we still considered those builds supported?
Absolutely not. wsnipex, fritsch, and myself supported an XvBA build (OE included this as well). Before we discontinued XvBA the thread had about half a million views. The follow-up thread http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174854 has already > 400k. There is a how-to and lots of additional information on how to get the most out of an AMD system.
There is also a sticky thread for deinterlacing for Intel systems which is essential if you want to watch tv with XBMC.
Check out this thread: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=199662
The user was on 14.04 and fritsch could help because he was aware of kernel patches. This is what I consider support. I want users to know how they can get this experience.
What is so hard in typing "do-release-upgrade" ?
2014-07-12, 17:33
That's an extreme exaggeration to say that an i5 is required without HW acceleration. My 2009 laptop with it's 2Ghz core2duo handles anything you can throw at it in 1080 just fine, even interlaced, maybe except for HEVC. My Celeron (G1812) computer is as powerful or more powerful than that.
Even in this very thread, the user was just fine with using software acceleration. That's not the issue here. You seem to have this doomsday scenario in your head using where somehow there are more users with a broken 12.04 setup than who have a working 12.04 setup. That's simply not the case here. You just said that you don't use 12.04, so you don't know if it's working or not. Well I can tell you, as well as many more on the forums, that it's working just fine. You can rest easy, no need to worry. The majority of 12.04 users have perfectly working hardware, and you want to make things harder for them just so a smaller number of users don't accidentally install the wrong Ubuntu version for their specific hardware? That's what I'm trying to get you to consider here.
If XBMC v13.2 or v13.3 drops support for v12.04, that makes users far more frustrated than having to deal with random programs breaking because they simply did a release upgrade just for XBMC. Something breaks for me every time I've ever updated Ubuntu, and you can't deny it doesn't happen. Most users who use LTS versions most often have a legitimate need for an LTS version, and they don't have cutting edge hardware that needs the newest version.
What's next, we start going out of our way to prevent users from installing XBMC on computers that doesn't support HD audio or perfect 24hz playback, just because that's the only way to provide the "best" possible experience?
Even in this very thread, the user was just fine with using software acceleration. That's not the issue here. You seem to have this doomsday scenario in your head using where somehow there are more users with a broken 12.04 setup than who have a working 12.04 setup. That's simply not the case here. You just said that you don't use 12.04, so you don't know if it's working or not. Well I can tell you, as well as many more on the forums, that it's working just fine. You can rest easy, no need to worry. The majority of 12.04 users have perfectly working hardware, and you want to make things harder for them just so a smaller number of users don't accidentally install the wrong Ubuntu version for their specific hardware? That's what I'm trying to get you to consider here.
If XBMC v13.2 or v13.3 drops support for v12.04, that makes users far more frustrated than having to deal with random programs breaking because they simply did a release upgrade just for XBMC. Something breaks for me every time I've ever updated Ubuntu, and you can't deny it doesn't happen. Most users who use LTS versions most often have a legitimate need for an LTS version, and they don't have cutting edge hardware that needs the newest version.
What's next, we start going out of our way to prevent users from installing XBMC on computers that doesn't support HD audio or perfect 24hz playback, just because that's the only way to provide the "best" possible experience?
2014-07-12, 18:27
(2014-07-12, 14:13)FernetMenta Wrote: What is so hard in typing "do-release-upgrade" ?I cannot imagine that you as seasoned developer have never experienced problems with upgrades? I myself have never ( N E V E R ) had an upgrade with Ubuntu that worked flawlessly. And so I have gone to great precautions before typing those magic three words. And yet, with some unexpected side problems, last time something went horribly wrong, and as I said before I had to work many hours to recover. I surely don't want this extra workload, and avoid upgrading from one distribution to the next for as long as I can.
Case in point: my current Haswell system responds to those commands recommended by the "hwe-support-status --verbose" with a big failure (while the Celeron is ok). I reported this on Ubuntu bugs here https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1340613. And I am not the only one with that problem, as you can see. The xserver, or maybe mesa, may be the culprits.
I bet, trying the three magic words in this situation would result in bad upgrade crash, leaving me with a broken system.
This bug could well be the reason why the vaapi gives an error on the Haswell, but not on the Celeron, with seemingly identical software on both systems.
In total I am handling 4 systems with 12.04 (3x intel, 1x AMD, plus Android tablet, plus Raspi) and, except for the Raspi, none is a pure HTPC. I am ok with the xbmc performance on all of them. I am surely not typing the magic words on all of them because one of the several applications in routine use wants to have a specific version of the operating system. (Though admittedly, at the time being I wouldn't know what else besides xbmc to use).
Next time you will require even a different distribution, like developing for OpenElec only. Of cause, it is your choice to make such a move. My only hope is that then someone will fork the code and support regular distributions.
I am happy with xbmc. The quabble I had with xbmc was it pretending to be doing interlacing when it was not. Asking for better user feedback on settings seems appropriate.
