[GRLUG] Block characters in gnome-termina after changing video card

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Adam Tauno WIlliams
<awilliam at whitemice.org> wrote:
> I have a workstation (P4, 1GB RAM) that had rather crappy performance,
> especially in anything related to video;  scrolling a terminal window or
> web page in firefox was simply frustrating.  So I replaced the nvidia
> Vanta 16 AGP card that was in the machine with an nvidia GeForce 8400GS
> PCI (512MB DDR2/567MHz core).  Configuring the card was a breeze and X
> came right back up.  Now, even with compiz/xgl turned on, the
> performance is really good for a box of this vintage.

That's sad; It implies we're spending more computation power on
presentation than on utility. I wonder how much energy could be saved
from reducing the computational requirements of modern GUI systems.

> In gnome-terminal the the characters I type on the command line randomly
> appear as blocks rather than characters.  Then when I hit enter, or even
> just click in the window, they suddenly appear.  As if what I'm seeing
> is an artifact of the cursor block.  Characters coming from the system
> (command output, etc...) never appear as blocked, just the ones I type
> on the command line,  Crufty old xterm doesn't have the problem and
> neither does any other application (evolution, etc...)

What happens if you disable compiz and xgl again?  If the problem goes
away, I would be inclined to think it's a video driver bug.  Are you
using the open-source drivers or NVidia's driver?


-- 
:wq