Raspbian issues

[ozbahceliler]

Hello,

I have recieved my PI today. Installed the Raspbian to sandisk sdhc 4gb card. After that system started with no problem however after i startx;

1) everything extremely slow and no graphic rendering. When I click somethings it takes 30-40 seconds to show up and when I try to move a window it moves too slowly and jumpy (its like when you dont install any graphic drivers). Also I cant change the resolution.

2) no sound.


Thank you.

[kadamski]

Indeed, there is no hardware accelerated graphics driver for X yet. What exactly do you mean by "no sound"? You have to be more specific.

[ozbahceliler]

Hello,

Thank you for your answer. So being that slow is normal? this is totally unusable. It took 10 minutes to get back to this page and write this message. I'm extremely disappointed about PI. So how this thing run 1080p videos at 30fps while even my desktop is 3fps? Is there a solution you can suggest, like install debian anything?

No sound, my sound system is plugged but I dont get any sound. It's not a big issue since I cant even use this device for simple browsing.

[kadamski]

First of all, using proper video player, you get hardware accelerated decoding. This is why it is possible to get 1080p video. While there is no graphics acceleration in X server, you should not get so bad results. Of course everybody has different expectations but the system should be at least usable. What Internet browser are you using? For good results, you should use something light, like Midori. Also, if your SD card is slow, everything will go slow. You can go to the raspberrypi main site and scrolling few post down, you should be able to see youtube video (you won't be able to see youtube videos from Raspberrypi so you have to do this on your PC) recorded by Dom showing how it looks on his Pi. He has his Pi overclocked so it's faster than the stock one, but out of the box it should be like 70% of the speed shown on his video. That being said, remember that Raspberrypi is lowend device that can't be compared to todays PCs. Or even 5 years old.
As for the sound issue, what software are you trying to use to play your music and what is the format of this music?

[mahjongg]

To change graphics resolution, you are still required to edit a text file (config.txt in the \boot directory on the SD-card) this will probably be made easier in the future, as Raspbian is still in full development. Your comment "its like when you dont install any graphic drivers" is actually right on the money, at the moment the graphics display driver (called x-windows) indeed uses, (just like windows if there isn't a driver for the hardware) a "framebuffer", without any hardware acceleration. This makes it very slow, as you have experienced. The fact is the hardware accelerated version (using the GPU) isn't done yet, so you will see dramatic improvements the moment its ready.
Only just now the developers have created a version of the software (Raspbian) that uses floating point hardware in the ARM processor, its like gong from a 8086 without to a 80286 with built in FPU. Actually the PI can be compared with a PII running at 233 MHz

If you really have dramatically bad results there might be two reasons still:
1) Your data storage medium (SD-card) is very slow, speed differences of a factor ten are possible here.
2) Your PSU is not able to keep a constant voltage, and "dips" 50 times a second below the minimum acceptable voltage, and this means that keyboard and mouse (which are the first to be affected) give up heaps of "I'm disconnected" messages, which slow down the system dramatically.

Yes, the PI is hardly a speed demon, but under normal circumstances it should be bearable, and it will still improve a lot in the future.

[portets]

Which operating system did you install?

[ozbahceliler]

Hello,

Thank you all for the time you spent to reply my questions.

It's only because I wasn't expecting it to be "that" slow I felt pretty sad; after waiting for months you can understand that Sorry for overreacting.

I'm using my samsung galaxy s2's charger as power supply, it says 5v 0.7a but since I cant measure it, don't really know if it provides exactly what it says. Also my G9x mouse might leech some extra power. I'm using a sandisk sdhc 4gb card; while I was writing the raspbian image write speed was around 5mb/s.

I managed to get a proper resolution after disabling scan and all looks ok now. Without x-window I think I can still practice perl and ssh to the servers I work on. From now I will keep reading more documents and do as much as I can on PI.

Thank you all again for your kind support.

Ozy.

[fraz0815]

Hi there,

just thought to give my 2 cents here as first post
About your concerns with video playback i would suggest to give xmbc a try (which has hw accelerated playback through omx).
There a several different ways to get it running, naming just a few images/methods I used so far
http://www.raspbmc.com/
http://openelec.thestateofme.com/
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 58#p128758
[guys, really thank you for all your hard work on the different xbmc builds and ofcourse the whole Pi foundation, Raspbian team and original xbmc creators]

Last one by silas is the one I am using right now, Raspbian image with xbmc and some other stuff pre-installed.
And it is doing VERY well with an decent sdcard and some overclocking*. I agree that x feels not very usuable right now, but video playback works nearly perfect for me, ready for daily use

*overclocking i use currently that seems stable:
over_voltage=4 (this harms warranty, be warned)
over_voltage_sdram=2 (this also)
arm_freq=900
core_freq=500
sdram_freq=500

be sure to read the thread about overclocking, or some of the blogs which compare the speed with increased frequencies and figure out what your Pi can do stable with or without increased voltages, every Pi is different

Have fun and good luck

[ozbahceliler]

Hello fraz0815,

Thank you for your suggestions I will try all today *carefully*. I think I will try installing debian first.

[fredjam]

No there is something wrong with your system. Things are not slow in xwindows. In fact
for such a low powered machine they are surprisingly fast.

Before you do a startx command type 'sudo tail -f /var/log/messages' and try unplugging
your mouse and plugging it in again. Then do the same with your keyboard. Then do a
startx command. Open a terminal and run the tail command again.. Do you get any error
messages.

[PiLS]

I am used to working with 386-class computers. I found the Pi surprisingly fast. It is however very dependant on power; plug a power-hugry peripheral without proper power supply and it will hang and / or crash. The quality of the USB cables used also plays a big role. Get good power supplies (prefer the ones rated for 5.25V over 5V to compensate for cable loss). Get good USB cables (the cheapest ones generate errors and slow things down -A LOT). Take good care of your cables. Do not bend them, do not step on them etc. Cables are fragile. With the Pi you are pushing the limits of what is feasible at extremely low power, so every little thing helps. With my primary "multimedia" Pi I use a wireless keyboard with trackpad connected to a bog-standard 5V powered USB hub; if I connect a power-hungry external drive to the same hub I just lose the keyboard. With pendrives or externally-powered hard drives it works fine. I also replaced my shitty $2 USB cables with sturdier $5 ones. That made a hell of a difference.
You can get a 5.25V power supply for 6 bucks from ADAfruit. Do get a couple.

Keep in mind that the Pi works on extremely low power. In my experience most (actually, all) niggles were down to power issues or bad USB cables.