[Crystal-develop] Modern day minimum PC spec to run CS

[Phil Wyett]

Hi all,

Doing some docs work I ran into the old minimum spec for a PC to run CS.
I have done an initial update, but we really need to be a little more
specific.

With the various elements of CS as they are today and what in total that
is needed to run it at a minimum/comfortably. What would people say is a
good minimum system spec we should recommend?

Regards

Phil

[Matthieu Kraus]

Just wondering: what were the issues you ran into on i386? I honestly don't know of anything in CS that'd require an i586 as opposed to i386 (possibly besides third party libs not shipping i386 binaries, anymore).

For actual recommended specs I'd say something along the lines of AMD or Nvidia dedicated graphics card with OpenGL 2.0 support and an amd64 capable CPU with 2GB+ RAM running on a little endian windows (XP or later) or linux (preferably a debian or redhat derivative).

Besides that support is usually untested for rather long times I think - I tend to test FreeBSD about once a year, but mostly the non-graphics part as I've only got AMD cards which don't have drivers on FreeBSD amd64 and OS X is to some small degree tested via PS, but that's about it. There's actually still the big game stopper of clang/llvm not properly implementing friend relations for templates which breaks csHash and related functionality (read: most of CS) on those platforms. Also for ARM there's various vfs issues iirc and I guess support for ARM (and somewhat related big endian platforms) is mostly experimental imo. Maybe some sort of tier system would be a good idea for the support part? Like Tier 1 - regularly tested and should be working, Tier 2 - related tested, but should be mostly working, Tier 3 - experimental, expect serious issues.


-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Wyett [mailto:***@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 8, 2014 20:33
To: CS Dev
Subject: [Crystal-develop] Modern day minimum PC spec to run CS

Hi all,

Doing some docs work I ran into the old minimum spec for a PC to run CS.
I have done an initial update, but we really need to be a little more specific.

With the various elements of CS as they are today and what in total that is needed to run it at a minimum/comfortably. What would people say is a good minimum system spec we should recommend?

Regards

Phil

[Phil Wyett]

Post by Matthieu Kraus
Just wondering: what were the issues you ran into on i386? I honestly don't know of anything in CS that'd require an i586 as opposed to i386 (possibly besides third party libs not shipping i386 binaries, anymore).
For actual recommended specs I'd say something along the lines of AMD or Nvidia dedicated graphics card with OpenGL 2.0 support and an amd64 capable CPU with 2GB+ RAM running on a little endian windows (XP or later) or linux (preferably a debian or redhat derivative).
Besides that support is usually untested for rather long times I think - I tend to test FreeBSD about once a year, but mostly the non-graphics part as I've only got AMD cards which don't have drivers on FreeBSD amd64 and OS X is to some small degree tested via PS, but that's about it. There's actually still the big game stopper of clang/llvm not properly implementing friend relations for templates which breaks csHash and related functionality (read: most of CS) on those platforms. Also for ARM there's various vfs issues iirc and I guess support for ARM (and somewhat related big endian platforms) is mostly experimental imo. Maybe some sort of tier system would be a good idea for the support part? Like Tier 1 - regularly tested and should be working, Tier 2 - related tested, but should be mostly working, Tier 3 - experimental, expect serious issues.

I only prefer not to document i386. If people want to play with CS on a
specific architecture of any age, they can. The personnel resources of
the CS project (more lack of) leave us to document for the average and
well used only.

As well as AMD or Nvidia. It would be good to document the state of CS
on Intel and other graphics.

XP? We have dropped XP as have MS. Well, they will support you if you
have a deep wallet.

Your system specs seems correct and close to my thinking. Lets see what
others have to say.

Regards

Phil

[Кирилл Прохоров]

I'm working on Ubuntu 14.04 (it's the most popular Linux ) so my interest for now is creating some good working packages for this system, perhaps documenting the features (as u see now i'm observing Ares and CEL) and perhaps correcting some features and errors of CS, related to higher projects.  Again, from the high view (at this time) Ubuntu is not Windows but it's Linux :) so it's a good idea to fix the main testing system - Ubuntu (Stable releases)

Post by Phil Wyett

Post by Matthieu Kraus
Just wondering: what were the issues you ran into on i386? I honestly don't know of anything in CS that'd require an i586 as opposed to i386 (possibly besides third party libs not shipping i386 binaries, anymore).
For actual recommended specs I'd say something along the lines of AMD or Nvidia dedicated graphics card with OpenGL 2.0 support and an amd64 capable CPU with 2GB+ RAM running on a little endian windows (XP or later) or linux (preferably a debian or redhat derivative).
Besides that support is usually untested for rather long times I think - I tend to test FreeBSD about once a year, but mostly the non-graphics part as I've only got AMD cards which don't have drivers on FreeBSD amd64 and OS X is to some small degree tested via PS, but that's about it. There's actually still the big game stopper of clang/llvm not properly implementing friend relations for templates which breaks csHash and related functionality (read: most of CS) on those platforms. Also for ARM there's various vfs issues iirc and I guess support for ARM (and somewhat related big endian platforms) is mostly experimental imo. Maybe some sort of tier system would be a good idea for the support part? Like Tier 1 - regularly tested and should be working, Tier 2 - related tested, but should be mostly working, Tier 3 - experimental, expect serious issues.

I only prefer not to document i386. If people want to play with CS on a
specific architecture of any age, they can. The personnel resources of
the CS project (more lack of) leave us to document for the average and
well used only.
As well as AMD or Nvidia. It would be good to document the state of CS
on Intel and other graphics.
XP? We have dropped XP as have MS. Well, they will support you if you
have a deep wallet.
Your system specs seems correct and close to my thinking. Lets see what
others have to say.
Regards
Phil
--
Phil Wyett
{
    GNU Linux User and Developer
    IRC: philwyett
    Twitter: philwyett
}
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[Phil Wyett]

Post by Кирилл Прохоров
I'm working on Ubuntu 14.04 (it's the most popular Linux ) so my
interest for now is creating some good working packages for this
system, perhaps documenting the features (as u see now i'm observing
Ares and CEL) and perhaps correcting some features and errors of CS,
related to higher projects. Again, from the high view (at this time)
Ubuntu is not Windows but it's Linux :) so it's a good idea to fix the
main testing system - Ubuntu (Stable releases)

The Crystal Space project does not set itself on one distro and
specifically not one version. We aim to support the Long Term Support
releases of distros that do them:

* Ubuntu
* Debian
* RedHat/CentOS

and for those with much shorter release and support cycles. Be working
wherever possible with the help of that distros users/devs on as many as
possible.

Regards

Phil

[Soumitra Saxena]

Hello all,

I'm probably not the most experienced person to contribute to this
discussion ( I'm participating in GSoC 2014 under Crystal Space). I just
felt that I should post my experience compiling Crystal Space for the first
time in Ubuntu 13.04 with a *AMD Graphics Card.*

I feel that CS is targeted a lot toward nvidia chips. The prerequisite
libraries even include apt-get commands to nvidia-settings and drivers. The
first time I compiled CS, it ran perfectly, but a reboot later, my Unity
(the desktop) broke, and the entire system had to be restored by removing
the selected nvidia settings and reconfiguring my X-Org drivers.

I agree that CS requires the Cg library, thus maybe those nvidia settings
and drivers were important in some way, but even after removing them, I am
yet to face any errors.

I just feel that support for *AMD Chipsets *must also be included
explicitly, and a possible turnaround should be found for the nvidia
installations, because they will break every system with AMD cards, in my
opinion.

Cheers.

Post by Phil Wyett

Post by Кирилл Прохоров
I'm working on Ubuntu 14.04 (it's the most popular Linux ) so my
interest for now is creating some good working packages for this
system, perhaps documenting the features (as u see now i'm observing
Ares and CEL) and perhaps correcting some features and errors of CS,
related to higher projects. Again, from the high view (at this time)
Ubuntu is not Windows but it's Linux :) so it's a good idea to fix the
main testing system - Ubuntu (Stable releases)

The Crystal Space project does not set itself on one distro and
specifically not one version. We aim to support the Long Term Support
* Ubuntu
* Debian
* RedHat/CentOS
and for those with much shorter release and support cycles. Be working
wherever possible with the help of that distros users/devs on as many as
possible.
Regards
Phil
--
Phil Wyett
{
GNU Linux User and Developer
IRC: philwyett
Twitter: philwyett
}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• 3 signs your SCM is hindering your productivity
• Requirements for releasing software faster
• Expert tips and advice for migrating your SCM now
http://p.sf.net/sfu/perforce
_______________________________________________
Crystal-develop mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crystal-develop

[Phil Wyett]

Post by Soumitra Saxena
Hello all,
I'm probably not the most experienced person to contribute to this
discussion ( I'm participating in GSoC 2014 under Crystal Space). I
just felt that I should post my experience compiling Crystal Space for
the first time in Ubuntu 13.04 with a AMD Graphics Card.
I feel that CS is targeted a lot toward nvidia chips. The prerequisite
libraries even include apt-get commands to nvidia-settings and
drivers. The first time I compiled CS, it ran perfectly, but a reboot
later, my Unity (the desktop) broke, and the entire system had to be
restored by removing the selected nvidia settings and reconfiguring my
X-Org drivers.
I agree that CS requires the Cg library, thus maybe those nvidia
settings and drivers were important in some way, but even after
removing them, I am yet to face any errors.
I just feel that support for AMD Chipsets must also be included
explicitly, and a possible turnaround should be found for the nvidia
installations, because they will break every system with AMD cards, in
my opinion.
Cheers.

At the time of the 2.0 release CS was a little too Cg that is true and
was documented as such. Both these things will change for the next
release. Cg will be deprecated and GLSL will be the primary.

Oh... If anyone from AMD is listening. We are a free project and a few
free sample cards to better support your hardware/drivers would not be
turned down. :-)

Regards

Phil

[Matthieu Kraus]

Not sure where you got the prerequisites library, but gotta agree - 2.0 was still mostly targeted towards Cg which changed quite a lot lately - we put quite some effort into getting rid of the Cg dependency at least for all essentials (I personally tried to because there was no Cg support for non-linux unix systems, but with Cg being retired now it's even more important), so nvidia-specifics shouldn't be needed at all by now.

PS: mixing Nvidia and AMD drivers causing issues with X.org is a somewhat unrelated issue - it works to some degree if you know exactly what you're doing, but it's easy to cause major issues due to the way those drivers are usually set up on linux (most easily caused is getting the wrong libGL I guess).

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Wyett [mailto:***@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2014 20:18
To: crystal-***@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Crystal-develop] Modern day minimum PC spec to run CS

Post by Soumitra Saxena
Hello all,
I'm probably not the most experienced person to contribute to this
discussion ( I'm participating in GSoC 2014 under Crystal Space). I
just felt that I should post my experience compiling Crystal Space for
the first time in Ubuntu 13.04 with a AMD Graphics Card.
I feel that CS is targeted a lot toward nvidia chips. The prerequisite
libraries even include apt-get commands to nvidia-settings and
drivers. The first time I compiled CS, it ran perfectly, but a reboot
later, my Unity (the desktop) broke, and the entire system had to be
restored by removing the selected nvidia settings and reconfiguring my
X-Org drivers.
I agree that CS requires the Cg library, thus maybe those nvidia
settings and drivers were important in some way, but even after
removing them, I am yet to face any errors.
I just feel that support for AMD Chipsets must also be included
explicitly, and a possible turnaround should be found for the nvidia
installations, because they will break every system with AMD cards, in
my opinion.
Cheers.

At the time of the 2.0 release CS was a little too Cg that is true and was documented as such. Both these things will change for the next release. Cg will be deprecated and GLSL will be the primary.

Oh... If anyone from AMD is listening. We are a free project and a few free sample cards to better support your hardware/drivers would not be turned down. :-)

Regards

Phil

[Stefano Angeleri]

you shouldn't need nvidia-settings nor drivers. if you've the fgrlx
installed you can ignore anything regarding libgl or nvidia aside cg (which
shouldn't have as dependency anything else from nvidia)

Post by Matthieu Kraus
Not sure where you got the prerequisites library, but gotta agree - 2.0
was still mostly targeted towards Cg which changed quite a lot lately - we
put quite some effort into getting rid of the Cg dependency at least for
all essentials (I personally tried to because there was no Cg support for
non-linux unix systems, but with Cg being retired now it's even more
important), so nvidia-specifics shouldn't be needed at all by now.
PS: mixing Nvidia and AMD drivers causing issues with X.org is a somewhat
unrelated issue - it works to some degree if you know exactly what you're
doing, but it's easy to cause major issues due to the way those drivers are
usually set up on linux (most easily caused is getting the wrong libGL I
guess).
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2014 20:18
Subject: Re: [Crystal-develop] Modern day minimum PC spec to run CS

Post by Soumitra Saxena
Hello all,
I'm probably not the most experienced person to contribute to this
discussion ( I'm participating in GSoC 2014 under Crystal Space). I
just felt that I should post my experience compiling Crystal Space for
the first time in Ubuntu 13.04 with a AMD Graphics Card.
I feel that CS is targeted a lot toward nvidia chips. The prerequisite
libraries even include apt-get commands to nvidia-settings and
drivers. The first time I compiled CS, it ran perfectly, but a reboot
later, my Unity (the desktop) broke, and the entire system had to be
restored by removing the selected nvidia settings and reconfiguring my
X-Org drivers.
I agree that CS requires the Cg library, thus maybe those nvidia
settings and drivers were important in some way, but even after
removing them, I am yet to face any errors.
I just feel that support for AMD Chipsets must also be included
explicitly, and a possible turnaround should be found for the nvidia
installations, because they will break every system with AMD cards, in
my opinion.
Cheers.

At the time of the 2.0 release CS was a little too Cg that is true and was
documented as such. Both these things will change for the next release. Cg
will be deprecated and GLSL will be the primary.
Oh... If anyone from AMD is listening. We are a free project and a few
free sample cards to better support your hardware/drivers would not be
turned down. :-)
Regards
Phil
--
Phil Wyett
{
GNU Linux User and Developer
IRC: philwyett
Twitter: philwyett
}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• 3 signs your SCM is hindering your productivity
• Requirements for releasing software faster
• Expert tips and advice for migrating your SCM now
http://p.sf.net/sfu/perforce
_______________________________________________
Crystal-develop mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crystal-develop