XFree86 4.0.1 Released 220
Alphix writes: "The first update to XFree86 4.0 has been released, a ton of bug fixes etc and a merge of new DRI code along with SPARC fixes should be enough to warrant an upgrade =). patches are here, source is here. Sourceforge and other mirrors should have it soon."
Re:NVIDIA on non-functional drivers (Score:1)
It must be said, while I and most other slashdotters probably disagree with nvidias decision to close source their drivers, your levels of support and quick response to problems are second to none compared with any hardware company i have ever encountered before.
Well done!
Re:Voodoo3 Support is fixable (Score:1)
What didn't work was that plug-n-play monitor detection was after it loaded tdfx-driver. It went through modelines(virtual-there were none in the config-file) deleting the ones "out-of-spec" when specifications weren't yet known(resulting in horrible refresh-rates and resolutions).. Other thing that annoyed me was that gpm's repeater didn't work properly(there was a patch for gpm to fix this).. Or maybe xfree should just add a 3 button microsoft mouse to their driver(only supports 2 button microsoft mouses..) so i could get a rid of gpm..
Information for Debian users only. (Score:4)
However, Branden in May did announce [debian.org] that he would be releasing the binary packages for XFree86 4.0.1 during this month. If you're a Debian user who's hoping for the Debian packages for XFree86 4.x, then I'd advise you to read the plans [debian.org] Branden has for XFree86 4.0 packaging.
Another Great Release (Score:1)
Re:It's all good news but, (Score:2)
Re:slashdot != freshmeat (Score:1)
Seriously, when 2.4 of the Linux kernel is released, I wanna see it on slashdot. When XFree86 4.0 was release, I wanna see it.
When 2.4.1 of the Kernel or 4.0.1 of XFree is released, I wanna see it on Freshmeat not slashdot.
until ( succeed ) try { again(); }
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:1)
Re:Question to FreeBSD users (Score:1)
Xinerama works now? (Score:2)
Or, more to the point, is there a bouncepoint for Xinerama that is worth reading? The xfree86 site doesn't have much.
HELP! :-)
Re:Stupidity alert! (Score:1)
I think you should be doing the reading here.
You could start with this [yhbt.org], this [netmeg.net], and this [natalieportman.com].
thank you,
++tlt
Re:3Dfx is supported? (Score:1)
Someone moderate this up, will you?
BTW, Daryll, thanks for all your work on GLIDE/Mesa - I've been using them for a long time, and Im glad for the opportunity to thank you.
My, aren't we the troll today? (Score:2)
I actually rather like the current status quo. Loki's selectively porting the good games, and I don't have to worry about the 90% of the games that are total crap.
As for OpenGL, it's easy to program in, reasonably fast, and extremely portable across platforms. Loki's working on the 3D sound API. In the future portability will be the key, as PC games are getting to be a niche market compared to the game consoles. Why limit your release platform to WinXX PC's when you could cover Apple and the ever-growing linux population (And the FreeBSD and Be niches) Anything to squeeze a few more dollars out of the production run.
I apologize for that moderation. (Score:1)
I'll fess up to it. It's my fault. I screwed up.
Remember, moderators, check those links before you moderate. I'm a perfect example of why you should. I actually clicked, but moderated before the page loaded in my enthusiasm.
*sigh* Why, oh WHY can't their be an option to revoke moderation, whether or not you get the post back. At least let us use another point to moderate the post in the OPPOSITE direction.
You can all hurt me now.
J. T. MacLeod
Re:Question to FreeBSD users (Score:1)
No, 4.0.1 is not yet in ports. There aren't even offical tarballs yet, remember? You can always track http://freshports.org/ to see when it arrives.
Re:slashdot != freshmeat (Score:1)
But what would we call this section? Maybe something as simple as "X"?
In all fairness, I do actually agree with you to a point. On the one side, minor software releases aren't really "news", even for major packages like X or the kernel. What is interesting, however, is the resulting discussion. I've learned more about X and other software from the resulting discussions here than I have from reading the announcements or installing them. While Freshmeat does have the ability to post comments, discussion there seems to be pretty much nonexistant.
As far as a separate "Software Updates" Slashdot section goes, I think this'd be more trouble than it's worth. The biggest problem I see is trying to avoid duplication of Freshmeat. If every program that's announced were posted, I think we'd effectively kill freshmeat and that section would become so watered down that discussion there would cease to exist outside of "First Post" messages. On the other hand, selectively placing annoucements in such a section wouldn't really be fair either; where do you draw the line between what's included and what isn't? The kernel? X? Apache? Gnome? Mozilla? Larger misc apps?
What's being done now by the
Rendition (Score:2)
Re:Voodoo3 Support is fixable (Score:1)
So does the 4.0.1 release fix this? I was a little disgruntled when I got xf4.0 and could not find any way to get it to work... Which I thought was my fault but I guess not.
I wonder if the xfree86 .tgz in slackware 7.1 includes this hack for voodoo3's or not.. It certainly would be convenient to just get the xf86 and 3dfx specific tgz's from ftp.slackware.com, but considering how infamous slackware is for upgrading, maybe that isn't such a good idea.
DGA support? (Score:1)
I need to reinstall XFree86 at sometime anyway, as a disk crash due to a power outage caused fsck to remove some files.
Re:FYI: ATI Rage 128 & derivatives now work. (Score:2)
Re:It's a funny troll but, (Score:2)
Re:It's all good news but, (Score:2)
Re:NVIDIA Stuff... (Score:2)
What a great debate this is. It's clear that you can't marshal any arguments to counter my position (because, really, there aren't any - you want support for a closed-source product, you have to pay for it) but are bitter about the delays. Doing business with people like that sucks, doesn't it? Hope you learned your lesson. Closed source isn't evil, but you have to know what you're getting into. And in a Free Software development effort, closed source modules always lag behind in both quality and currency. Live with it, or pick a different vendor.
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:1)
Re:Voodoo3 Support is fixable (Score:2)
Re:I have to say (Score:1)
Re:FYI: ATI Rage 128 & derivatives now work. (Score:1)
Re:I have to say (Score:1)
Re:bah (Score:1)
Re:slashdot != freshmeat (Score:1)
That way it would still be possible to get the biggies. (Which would be under "X".)
Re:Information for Debian users only. (Score:1)
> love, a sure sign of reliability in the Linux
> world is indicated when Debian decides to
> release a binary deb.
[...]
> Doesn't that tell you a lot
> about the current stability of the server?
Logically, no.
Your first statement can be translated as "if a package is in debian, it is stable."
It does not logically follow that if it is not in debian, it is not stable.
One can come to this conclusion without knowing anything about Xfree 4 or Debian.
I can say from experience that debian is _way_ behind in a lot of ways. Don't get me wrong, Debian is great for a lot of applications, but for keeping up with rapidly changing software (stable and unstable) it is not the way to go.
Re:NVIDIA Stuff... (Score:2)
Re:4.0.1 is important (Score:1)
Re:I have to say (Score:5)
>4.0. Primarily because there's a lot of support
>that was left out.
The alternative being not releasing it so that people who DO have supported chipsets can use it?
>Particularly on most 3dfx chipsets. Sure, it says
>all 3dfx chips are supported, but that's
>laughable.
The DRI drivers are being done by 3DFX, so they're the ones that you have an issue with, not the XFree86 team.
It is also worth noting that the drivers are specifically mentioned in the FAQ to be beta quality at this time.
>Perhaps 4.0 was build up quite a bit more than
>it should have been - but it comes down to the
>fact that this wasn't really a next-gen release.
Ummm, a new codebase (X11R6.4), more protocol extensions (can we say Xinerama?), a re-enginnered direct rendering interface, integration of a font server and OpenGL software renderer, a binary loader that can load drivers on any operating system under the same architechture...
This smells of major next generation release to me.
>For some people it was worth while to upgrade,
>while for others it was not.
And for almost all people it *will* be worthwhile to upgrade, once the driver base is brought up to snuff and the distributions start packaging it.
>I would have been much happier to see the folks
>at XFree86 wait a little longer to release a much
>better product.
What objections do you have to the current implementation, aside from whining that it the driver for your video card isn't finished?
Unfortunately its difficult for an unreleased product to gain a wide base of drivers, a signifigant amount of polish, and full bug testing.
>Something that everyone could upgrade to. I
>know at least 3dfx and some ATI chips got
>screwed.
Ummm, screwed? You can continue using 3.3.6 as you did before. The only people who need be affected are those that BENEFIT from the release.
And again, I must reiterate - waiting for all drivers to mature before release buys nothing. The only effect is to keep it out of the hands of the people who CAN upgrade and CAN benefit immediately.
Re:slashdot != freshmeat (Score:1)
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:1)
That's about the first time I heard anyone not from MS (hmmm... wait a minute) say that Win95 has no DOS code.
This, of course, is pretty off-topic, but it was funny.
longer necessary. There were certainly changes, but the DR lawsuit established, to my satisfaction at least, that the announcement of the "disappearance" of DOS in Windows 95 was more for marketing than technical reasons. Microsoft's arguments at the time had as much technical credibility as their infamous video demos in a more recent trial.
>>>>
That's FUD. Win95 contains no DOS code aside from the compatibility module. It contains a great deal of Win 3.x code, but as I said its up top. Think of it this way. The core foundation was totally overhauled. It got rid of DOS, supported Win32 protected mode, etc. Once they had this skelatal foundation, they stuffed a lot of Win 3.1 back on there to support graphics, printing, UI, etc. That's why Win95 has a lot of 16 bit code, even though the architecture is totally new.
Re:I have to say (Score:2)
Re:It's all good news but, (Score:1)
DirectX rul3z now, regardless of how shitty it used to be. [List-o-technical-reasons why DirectX/3D is better.]
OpenGL sux0res. Lotsa proprietary extensions and shit.
End summary.
What our good friend forgot to mention is that
a) Hungarian notation is, well, hellishly hard to understand, and that with this lovely notation, you don't need them funny characters above the numeric keys, or the languages Perl, INTERCAL, Brain**ck, or Malbolge to create write-only code.
b) DirectX/3D is under MS influence (control, as it were), and that MS doesn't have much of a rep for releasing documentation that accurately reflects the underlying API. Not to mention that NT (at least previously) had a problem of keeping updated in terms of DirectX, whereas it ran OpenGL just fine.
c) Or that while The Gamers(tm) run mostly Windows machines, that The Gamers(tm) make up a tiny fraction of the software market, especially in terms of revenue. Of the remaining population, not everyone runs Windows 9X/NT/2000/Whatever, and writing in OpenGL means that your apps can be ported to whatever platform has OGL support.
I don't see all the hoopla about DirectX. Maybe it's just me, but I've always valued things like ANSI C, ANSI C++, and Java, because of their portability. Sure, some languages may be better, or more elegant for certain things, but writing in languages that are standardized and portable gives you great flexibility, and allows 'laziness'.
Is the C family of languages the best for programming? Um
Same goes for OpenGL. Is it necessarily the best in terms of features? Well, maybe not. Do I use it? Yes. Why? See the above reasons. 'nuff said.
Re:WE NEED KILLFILES (Score:2)
Re:Information for Debian users only. (Score:1)
I am an Idiot who thinks Documentation Sucks.
Seriously. I like to go ahead and try to do things without reading docs.
Then I like to bitch about it afterwards.
Why? Becuase I love installing OS's! Even Microsoft ones! I love trying new OS's and GUIs and interfaces and YOU NAME IT becuase it is fun.
But I could not find even one thing which X4 added to my X xperience. DRI did not work on my TNT2. So it suxor. 3d is for windows.
Re:ftp.xfree86.org still empty... (Score:2)
Re:I have to say (Score:1)
NVIDIA on non-functional drivers (Score:3)
> work with our drivers. We hope to have out a
> new release for that version out shortly.
They're working so hard on the new version that they have no time for grammar!
Note: flaming nvidia won't get the drivers fixed quicker. This is just a note so that other people don't waste time trying to get the nvidia drivers to work.
Re:NVIDIA Stuff... (Score:2)
On the other hand, I went to XFree 4.0 and snagged the NVIDIA drivers and it worked on the first try. Can't ask for any more than that from the software. ^_^
Re:Stability? Huh? (Score:2)
Also, you might try compiling from source and installing into an alternate prefix rather than doing a binary install of XF4 over your Debian system -- if you keep doing that, you'll find you've fubared your system enough that Debian upgrades will stop working...
--
Ian Peters
Re:Stupidity alert! (Score:1)
Ipswich, UK where I was an assistant Vet Tech.
Where is the typo here? You know, I shouldn't really respond to trolls of your level of immaturity, but discrediting me for no reason is something that I just can't ignore. Learn to read, or - if this accusation was intentional - grow up.Re:NVIDIA Stuff... (Score:1)
Allocated memory is basically the reserving of specific memory addresses (real or virtual). Committing is the process of getting memory pages for use that map to the allocated addresses.
I think that X with the (nvidia drivers) allocates the AGP range twice, once for the video card and again to have room for textures in main memory, but waits for the committal.
Re:FYI: ATI Rage 128 & derivatives now work. (Score:1)
Re:I have to say (Score:2)
Yes.
Slackware (2.2.16)
Mandrake(Hacked Redhat) (2.2.??)
LRP (2.2.16)
Yggdrasil (err..)
------------
try the nvidia mini-howto (Score:1)
the thing that helped me with the crashes was the little reference to Option "NvAgp" "1" at the bottom there, i set that to 0 and good-bye, crashes..
just my $0.02
Re:Amen!!! (Score:2)
This is called a bug report.
If you can do this just one time a year, then you have done a great thing and have helped out open source a great deal.
Re:Information for Debian users only. (Score:1)
Length of test cycle IMHO does'nt mean the longer, the better/safer/more reliable. Some distributions have more resources available to them for testing and hence can spit out a reliable version faster.
If I put out a distro it would be one about every other decade, but then again I'm also lazy.
But, I could be completly wrong of course.
All i care about (Score:2)
-Swift
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:2)
B) X is too stupid to figure out mouse protocol and screen refresh rates for itself. You absolutely should not have to specify refresh rate ranges. Sure you could use the stock SVGA that can do X at X hertz, but then you're not optimally using you're monitor.
C) With multiple RPMS, you can just open up the RPM and click install. You have to go through each on and install them in the correct order. I suppose you could highlight them all and select install, but I don't know how Kpackage would respond to that.
D) I recently did an upgrade equivilant to upgrading XFree. I installed service pack 6a on Windows NT. It updated the GDI, it added DirectX support, updated the kernel and server, and it installed Internet Explorer. This is equivilant to recompiling the kernel, upgrading X, and updating the window manager. I downloaded the 30 meg file, clicked the exe, it chugged, and it rebooted without any questions asked (aside from the "do you wish to reboot" dialouge.) The system came up fine later, I did not have to reconfigure anything.
Re:It's a funny troll but, (Score:2)
The reason I said you judgement seemed tainted is because you gave a very "BeOS" slant to everything. It'd be nice if you gave more of an indication of having used other OSes (thus giving us a better view of where your opinions come from).
While I haven't used SDL, I hear it's quite good.. it is also portable across Linux, BeOS, and Windows. Given some proper code, it could be a nice performer on all OSes. SDL would make a nice portability wrapper on top of the various OS APIs, such as DRI and OpenGL on Linux, DirectX for Win32, and whatever BeOS uses (I have no idea
---
Use patch or CVS (no tar files or binaries yet) (Score:3)
Binaries and complete source tar balls comming later.
Re:ftp.xfree86.org still empty... (Score:3)
Not the -p0 -E options as specified in the patch files.
Doesn't everyone keep the 400+ MBtyes of X source around to rebuild X when a new patch comes out ?
Re:partikular (Score:2)
Re:Information for Debian users only. (Score:2)
1) Get source from cvs
2) Edit config/cf/site.def to your needs and set ProjectRoot to
3) make World
4) make install
5) cd nls
6) make Makefiles
7) make install
8) edit
9) edit
10) Set the PATH variable in you
11) use xf86config to create a XFree4.0 config file and save it as
12) Move
13) ln -s
Thats it. This will not overwrite you existing Debian installed packages, and whenever you want to change over, just edit
cheers
Re:I have to say (Score:2)
Re:It's all good news but, (Score:2)
>>>
You only have to learn it once. People program Win32 everyday, and frankly, not that many people consider Hungarian notationa "deal breaker."
b) DirectX/3D is under MS influence (control, as it were), and that MS doesn't have much of a rep for releasing documentation that accurately reflects the underlying API. Not to mention that NT (at least previously) had a problem of keeping updated in terms of DirectX, whereas it ran OpenGL just fine.
>>>>>>>
Yes, DX is under MS control. That's why it can progress so quickly. The ARB is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because it insures that one company cannot use OpenGL to its advantage (like MS does with DirectX.) However, the consensus method slows down the introduction of new features. That's why I think the open source development model would be so cool for something like this. One core group is in control so the API stays focused and moves quickly, but they are required to commit changes, so the API stays Open. As for NT, it really wasn't a political issue. DirectX access hardware directly, while the NT HAL is designed to prevent just that thing. As a result, concessions (ahem) had to be made in Win2K.
c) Or that while The Gamers(tm) run mostly Windows machines, that The Gamers(tm) make up a tiny fraction of the software market, especially in terms of revenue. Of the remaining population, not everyone runs Windows 9X/NT/2000/Whatever, and writing in OpenGL means that your apps can be ported to whatever platform has OGL support.
>>>>>>
Think of it this way. Gamers are just like normal consumers. Consumers use DirectX everyday. Office uses it, MSIE uses it, RealPlayer and QuickTime use it. These consumers (including business people) make up 95% of the market revenue-wise. Plus most run windows. From a business point of view, leaving out the Linux, BeOS, and Mac users means almost nothing! That said, I'm not urging people to use DirectX. (I want ports to BeOS) I'm simply saying that it is a superior API to OpenGL.
I don't see all the hoopla about DirectX. Maybe it's just me, but I've always valued things like ANSI C, ANSI C++, and Java, because of their portability. Sure, some languages may be better, or more elegant for certain things, but writing in languages that are standardized and portable gives you great flexibility, and allows 'laziness'.
>>>>>>>>>>
The hoopla is that its fast, flexible, and usefull. An API is not like a language. Where the speed, flexibility characteristics of a language are pretty set in stone, and API can change and evolve. If I was a business person, it makes much more sense for me to take advantage of something like DirectX, and leave 1% of users out in the cold, than to not use it, and get that 1%. Then, I'm not urging people to use DirectX. I'm extolling its virtues as a better API
Is the C family of languages the best for programming? Um
Same goes for OpenGL. Is it necessarily the best in terms of features? Well, maybe not. Do I use it? Yes. Why? See the above reasons. 'nuff said.
Smee
>>>>>>>>
You can use it, that's great. In fact I use it! I like it better because I can run it on BeOS. But I hate every minute of using it, thinking that if I would just use Windows, I would have access to a much better API.
Re:Learning (Score:2)
--
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:2)
>>>>
No you wouldn't. It is much more like a service pack, because it is an upgrade of the core architecture. WinNT to Win2K is something akin to retooling X to use DirectX! NT 3.51 -4.0 might work, though.
Microsoft hasn't upgraded DirectX on Windows NT with any service packs. Is it because it would take too many changes, or because it's a marketing lever to get you to buy Windows 2000? How long will it be before DirectX 8.0 (or 9) is available on a Windows based on an NT kernel? Windows NT 4.0 is still DirectX 3.0
>>>>>>>>>>
You still have no clue about Windows architecture, do you? MS hasn't upgraded DirectX on Windows NT, becuase the NT Hardware Abstraction Layer is at odds with DirectX. The HAL was designed to prevent just the kinds of things DirectX is for. As such, it would require a total retooling of the HAL. Now Windows 2000 did this (it has the NT kernel) and I'm sure it was partially market driven, but I do think it was a good upgrade because it not only took a lot of work to retool the HAL, but they added COM+, ActiveDirectory, and rewrote the TCP/IP stack.
The architecture of XFree86 changed significantly with 4.0, and if you can't see the difference it's because, for the most part, it was done quite well and hidden behind unchanged API's. This is a Good Thing.
>>>>>>>>>>>
That's great. The architecture of DirectX was almost rewritten from 1.0 -> 5.0. I still don't consider an upgrade of a component like this akin to upgrading from NT4 to Win2K or from 95 to Win2K.
NT 3.51-> 4.0 was mainly a GUI shell upgrade, moving the video drivers into the kernel, and a few other tweaks (Direct 3D, DNS). Many people claimed NT 4.0 should really have been called 3.70 or something similar.
>>>>>>
Many did, as people are wont to. However, NT not only moved stuff into to kernel, retooled the GUI, but it also added stuff like fibers, DirectX, and improved networking and administration. Those kinds of changes take place between kernel revisions. If Slack justified a version upgrade between 4.0 and 7.0 (not taking into account the 3 digit leap) I think 4.0 was warranted.
As for the difference between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, they were substantial. But the groundwork for Windows 95 was definitely visible in Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with its support for 32-bit hard disk I/O, win32s API, and so on.
>>>
Win32S is just that, a subset (and rather limited I might add) of the Win32 API. The ground work was there, but the actual foundation was totally overhauled. Most of the code remaining from Win 3.x was not in the core architecture, but in components in user-space (which has a slightly different definition in Win9x architecture) like the GDI, user services etc.
A good part of the "major differences" between W4WG 3.11 and Windows 95 were so that Microsoft could convince users that those pesky alternative DOS's like DR-DOS and PC-DOS were no longer necessary. There were certainly changes, but the DR lawsuit established, to my satisfaction at least, that the announcement of the "disappearance" of DOS in Windows 95 was more for marketing than technical reasons. Microsoft's arguments at the time had as much technical credibility as their infamous video demos in a more recent trial.
>>>>
That's FUD. Win95 contains no DOS code aside from the compatibility module. It contains a great deal of Win 3.x code, but as I said its up top. Think of it this way. The core foundation was totally overhauled. It got rid of DOS, supported Win32 protected mode, etc. Once they had this skelatal foundation, they stuffed a lot of Win 3.1 back on there to support graphics, printing, UI, etc. That's why Win95 has a lot of 16 bit code, even though the architecture is totally new.
Re:It's all good news but, (Score:2)
Bzzzzt. Wrong. Have you used any recent builds? Mozilla's rendering speed is spectacularly good now. It's rendering everything I throw at it, even broken Frontpage stuff. (I've heard there *are* pages out there that don't render properly but I haven't personally run across one yet.) O'Rei lly [oreillynet.com] waxes poetic about Mozilla's extensibility. (the idea of extending Mozilla's wsiwyg xml/html editor is particularly intriguing.) Mozilla skins are hot. Mozilla still does crash - though not as much - and there are still a few features missing. But to say Mozilla isn't looking good... just shows you missed the cluetrain. Try not to be late for the next one please.
--
They gave fair warning (Score:2)
No notes. (Score:2)
Re:Information for Debian users only. (Score:2)
Re:Information for Debian users only. (Score:2)
Re:It's all good news but, (Score:2)
If only it were that simple. Due to the very nature of OpenGL (open standard etc) it is moving much slower than hardware is. DirectX on the other hand gets an almost complete rewrite every year and only has to support one platform. For this reason GL won't be able to quickly take advantage of new card features (vertex/pixel shaders etc). Games publishers require DirectX support -- OpenGL is an optional extra that is mostly put in the schedule because the programmers would like to do an OpenGL version.
However, the DirectX people do seem to be interested in getting the best graphics API possible. When the time comes that it is necessary to support other OSs in order to make DirectX the best then it will probably happen. Look forward to huge licensing fees though. Unfortunately, Linux is not an OS that you're average gamer will have installed so publishers aren't pushing for Linux support. If that ever happens then developers will either move to a cross-platform API or start writing multiple versions of their renderers for different platforms. Which do you think is more likely?
Re:I have to say (Score:2)
out of these three. the only one that i even gotten to work without hacking the XF86Config file was the TNT2 - that's not to say the the whole setup took a dump when i tried to use the nv driver provided by nVidia.
I'm just saying that the original 4.0 release wasn't all that it was built up to be. I know a signifigant number of people still running 3.3.6 because 4.0 was more of a beta than anything.
as far as the 3dfx drivers being published by 3dfx. This is only half-true. The drivers that 3dfx is providing are 3d only, the 2d servers they provide are meant as a replacement for the current XFree86 drivers, but XFree does in fact specify standalone 2d support for these chips. What bugs me is that the support pages specifically list the Voodoo chipsets as supported, even more specifically the Voodoo3 and Banshee chips (using the 'tdfx' driver). This is just not so. I would rather see the folks at XFree86 just come out and say it's not supported yet.
I'm still going home and trying 4.0.1 when i get there
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:I have to say (Score:2)
I don't buy a new graphics card every 3 months, but at least I have something more modern than an S3 (virge, etc) card.
I'm sure that you're aware that the Savage4 and Savage2000 chipsets are produced by S3/Diamond and that they have OpenGL capability that isn't supported by XF86. This is a shame, they're relatively common and cheap. Why should we have to spend several hundred dollars on a more expensive card just because there's no software support for a cheaper card? (Actually a big part of the answer to this is that S3 have been recalcitrant about releasing specs to developers. There was a thread on the Utah-GLX lists about this in March, S3 had been contacted and nothing came of it).
Re:NVIDIA on non-functional drivers (Score:2)
Use "/ctcp iCE-DCC cdcc list" to see a list of updated drivers.
Terence Ripperda
NVIDIA
Drivers (un)supported in 4.0.1 (Score:2)
All hardware supported in 3.3.6 is also supported in 4.0.1.
All hardware supported in 3.3.6 is also supported in 4.0.1.
The AP6422 is supported in 3.3.6 but not fully in 4.0.1. The AT25 is supported in 4.0.1 but not in 3.3.6.
No ARK Logic chips are supported in 4.0.1.
All chips supported in 3.3.6 are supported in 4.0.1 except for Mach8 and some old Mach32 chips. The support in 4.0.1 is, however, unaccelerated for all chips except the Mach64, Rage and Rage 128 variants.
No Avance Logic chips are supported in 4.0.1.
All chips supported in 3.3.6 are also supported in 4.0.1.
The following chips are supported in 3.3.6 but not in 4.0.1: 6410, 6412, 6420, 6440, 5420, 5422, 5424, 5426, 5428, 5429, 6205, 6215, 6225, 6235, 7541, 7542, 7543, 7548, 7555 and 7556.
No Compaq AVGA support in 4.0.1. DEC TGA support is equivalent in both versions.
No Cyrix chips are well-supported in 4.0.1.
No Epson chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No Genoa chips are supported in 4.0.1.
The standard VGA core is supported in both versions, but there is no support for the 8514/A or XGA-2 in 4.0.1.
No IIT chips are supported in 4.0.1.
The i740 and i810 are supported in both versions, but the i810 is only supported on Linux/x86 platforms at present.
All chips supported in 3.3.6 are also supported in 4.0.1.
No MX (???) chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No NCR chips are supported in 4.0.1.
All chips supported in 3.3.6 are also supported in 4.0.1.
All chipsets supported in 3.3.6 except the NV1 are also supported in 4.0.1.
No Number Nine chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No Oak chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No Paradise/Western Digital chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No RealTek chips are supported in 4.0.1.
All chips supported in 3.3.6 are also supported in 4.0.1.
Only the ViRGE and Trio3D chipsets are supported in 4.0.1. All of the other chipsets are only supported in 3.3.6.
Support for the 86C201, 86C202, 86C215, 86C225, 5597 and 5598 is currently only available in 3.3.6.
No SMI chips are supported in 4.0.1, but the fbdev driver is reported to work on Linux.
The following (older) chipsets that are supported in 3.3.6 are not supported in 4.0.1: TVGA8200LX, TVGA8800CS, TVGA8900B, TVGA8900C, TVGA8900CL, TVGA9000, TVGA9000i, TVGA9100B, TVGA9200CXr, TGUI9400CXi, TGUI9420, TGUI9430DGi.
All cards supported by 3.3.6 are also supported by 4.0.1 except for the old ET3000.
No Video 7 chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No Weitek chips are supported in 4.0.1.
Re:NVIDIA Stuff... (Score:2)
Has anyone gotten the
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:2)
--
Stability? Huh? (Score:3)
I've been running XFree4 for several months. On Debian. Hasn't crashed yet. Either there is no problem, or nVidia's drivers are just that much better than all the other ones. :)
The only real problem I've noticed is that copy/paste ops sometimes lock the system for a second or two, and sometimes KDevelop gets screwy (menus get slow and text gets messed up). The first problem is only a minor annoyance, and the second can be fixed by restarting the program. I don't have 4.0.1 yet, so maybe these problems are fixed. Anyone know?
For Debian users who want X4 NOW: Just use the binary installer provided by the XFree86 people. It is a completely painless process. It just asks a few questions ("do you want XYZ fonts?", etc.) and does its thing, and everything works. (at least, it worked for me)
Be careful, though. Recently, potato had an update for X3. dpkg though the thing was still on my computer, so it automagically downgraded me, which completely destroyed my whole setup. I had to re-run the X4 installer from a VC, but then everything worked again.
------
Re:My, aren't we the troll today? (Score:2)
Re:It's all good news but, (Score:2)
1) DirectX has an integrated programming interface. Once you learn it and can get past the hungarian notation, you'll find it is pretty easy to use. Not only that, but in the time it takes you to learn all the native media APIs on Linux, and also learn OpenGL, you could have learned DirectX a lot sooner, because there is only one mindset to learn.
2) It is a higher quality API. DirectDraw gives you direct access to graphics hardware. It is really, really fast, and gives you a lot of control over what you're doing. (Want to quadruple buffer, no problem!) DirectInput is hard to use, but hideously flexible. (Just like... UNIX!) It supports any kind of device on the market, even ones that haven't been invented yet, due to the generalized API. DirectMusic has MIDI composition unmatched by any other mainstream (hardware accelerated of course) API. DirectSound is a lot better than OSS or even ALSA in terms of compatibility and speed. The only mediocre API is DirectSound3D, but with extensions like EAX, even that is pretty good. (Especially considering that the other option is the propriotory A3D.) And now, Direct3D. It used to be a slow, hard to program, feature barren POS API. Now, it is a fast, hard to program, feature filled API. First, it has much closer access to hardware than OpenGL does, via DirectDraw, and as such, can do some really nifty things. It can render into secondary surfaces ACCELERATED. OpenGL can do that too, but only in software mode. The core API supports a LOT more features than the OpenGL core API plus standard extensions. Only when you add in propriotary extensions does OpenGL become feature competitive. Seriously, extensions suck. They aren't standardized in the beginning, so you end up with the ATI version of an extension, the NVIDIA version, and the S3 version. Also, the ARB slows progress of stanard extensions. I was looking at the meeting notes of the recent OpenGL conferance, and right now they are deciding on a standardized extension for texture compression! D3D has had that for a long time, and now has an array of new features that OpenGL can't touch such as vertex blending and per pixel lighting. Sure nVidia promised to expose all of them as propriatory extensions, but will developers use them until a standard comes out? These days, D3D is just as fast as OpenGL on the same hardware, and can do tricks that GL just can't do. Sure it is limited to one platform, but that's the price you pay for DirectX.
In short, DirectX is a great API for anybody developing for media applications. Sure it is MS only, but you have to give it credit for being great. You don't even have to use it (I don't use D3D because I like programming on BeOS) but you have to acknowledge its power. If I were SGI, I would light a fire under the asses of the ARB, write an OpenGL version 2.0 that could compete with D3D in terms of features (rendering to auxilliary buffers, etc) and then heavily fund the Kronos project to take on the rest of DirectX. That is the only hope *NIX has of getting a hold on the desktop market.
PS> Yes you need IE. Why would you use netscape? It is a bloated, buggy piece of shit. (Even Mozilla isn't looking good.) Sure you can use Opera, but can you live without CSS and DHTML?
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:2)
slashdot != freshmeat (Score:3)
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:2)
articles about software shops pushing them towards Windows boxes and the backlash that occured as a result. It's my understanding that professional
animators and CAD/CAM engineers overwhelmingly prefer Unix platforms to Windows.
>>>>>>>>>
I was talking from an architecture point of view. Sure animators prefer UNIX, but that because it fits much better in a network environment and is much more stable under high load. Also, UNIX machines usually have pretty hefty hardware. From the architecture side, however, media on both UNIX and Windows is somewhat of an ugly hack. (Especially X.)
Nobody wants to deal with installing all the libraries and keeping stuff up to date and all that. Take, for example, this latest XFree86 upgrade.
Under windows, it would have been distributed as an EXE. You double click on it, it chugs, you hit OK when it asks you to reboot, and voila,
you're running a new version.
Nope, with Windows this is more like an upgrade from Windows95 to Windows2000 Professional. No, the upgrade to XFree does not change as many underlying
OS level pieces as a 95 => 2000 upgrade would, but it does change the basic architecture of the windowing system and would not be a simple "click the EXE
file" upgrade. This is not equivalent to upgrading a display driver in Windows! Now, Windows "beats" Linux as far as that is topic is concerned, but that's not
what XFree86 4.0 is compared to 3.x.
>>>>>>>
I was talking XFree86 4.0 --> 4.01. 3.x-> 4.0 is MUCH more trumatic. It's also not similar to the upgrade between Win95 -> Win2k (considering that they're different OSs entirely.) The upgrade between 3.x and 4.0 would be like installing service pack 6 on NT. This pack (when installed on a clean 4.0 pack 1 machine) upgraded the GDI (akin to X) Internet Explorer (which functions as the window manager) and introduced stuff like fibers (a lighter kind of thread, akin to upgrading Pthreads.) It also introduced bug fixes to the kernel. All it was was a 30 meg download and a clicking on an EXE. To get the same effect under Linux you'd have to upgrade X from 3.x to 4.0, recompile the kernel, and upgrade the C libraries (new threading support.)
An even more accurate comparison would be upgrading Windows 3.11 to Windows95. The underlying OS architecture was, and still is, basically the same, but
the graphics architecture changes so drastically that it was often easier to reinstall the whole box than attempt an upgrade. At least with Linux the windowing
system is not tied so tightly to the core OS that screwing an upgrade of the windowing system up basically screws your box up beyond repair (or fubar for those
that prefer that term).
>>>>>
You have no clue about Window architecture, do you? Win95 is vastly different from Win3.1. It is certainly more than a change in the graphics system. (Actually, the GDI was relativly unchanged from 3.1 to 95.) I don't even feel like explaining, but read BYTE magazine around 1993. They go into the details behind the architecture changes.
Re:I have to say (Score:2)
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:2)
Learning (Score:2)
Most of the good programmers didn't learn their programming in school, but learned it on their own.
You learn by looking at what is there and writing your own code. You get better by doing the same.
Before I worked on device drivers, I didn't know how do it. My first device driver was for a Vista V1200 Diskpack under CPM on a 6502 (the IO code was 6502 on the apple, and the higher code was running on the Z80B card). I found it slow, so I got source code and optimized the driver.
Even if you can't program, you can provide finely detailed bug reports and run tests that could reduce where the problem in the code is located.
You could always pay someone to write the driver that you want.
It's a funny troll but, (Score:2)
This is the funniest troll I've seen in a long time, and most loved by moderators! I'm thinking our poor friend must've used either Opera 2.11, or an extreme Alpha for BeOS which didn't support CSS.
Considering that Net+ doesn't support HTML 4.0 fully, let alone CSS *, I find it downright hillarious that this fellow would claim that somewhich which doesn't run fully yet on the BeOS doesn't have these features. Given an incomplete version of any software, you could claim anything and probably be correct!
Opera! (3.6 at least, probably other 3.x series too) supports CSS 1, ECMAscript, and Java via a plugin (ye olde surfin' joe Java plugin from Sun). Although I personally disable ECMAscript (for obvious reasons). I'd love to turn it off in NS, but it somehow breaks CSS parsing (what a tanlged web of dependancies!)
As for the comment about IE. Clearly you haven't subscribed to Bugtraq. iexplore.exe is a simple COM program which displays ye olde DHTML widget + a few other bits and bobs. The problem? MS Active*.* gets a new report on average every 2.5 days on Bugtraq. There's a thing to be said for keeping your code modular, with security partitioning between components enforced. Unfortunately, you can only say it about Unix systems -- because MS products don't enforce them (or break if you try.. ever run NT with *proper* permissions on the %systemroot% dir?)
And being a BeOS user, our friend is obviously well suited to commenting about software for other operating systems.
Thank you for making my day more entertaining!
---
shared memory (Score:2)
Re:I have to say (Score:3)
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:2)
Nope, with Windows this is more like an upgrade from Windows95 to Windows2000 Professional. No, the upgrade to XFree does not change as many underlying OS level pieces as a 95 => 2000 upgrade would, but it does change the basic architecture of the windowing system and would not be a simple "click the EXE file" upgrade. This is not equivalent to upgrading a display driver in Windows! Now, Windows "beats" Linux as far as that is topic is concerned, but that's not what XFree86 4.0 is compared to 3.x.
An even more accurate comparison would be upgrading Windows 3.11 to Windows95. The underlying OS architecture was, and still is, basically the same, but the graphics architecture changes so drastically that it was often easier to reinstall the whole box than attempt an upgrade. At least with Linux the windowing system is not tied so tightly to the core OS that screwing an upgrade of the windowing system up basically screws your box up beyond repair (or fubar for those that prefer that term).
Slack? (Score:2)
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:2)
3Dfx is supported? (Score:5)
Let me correct a few facts that have shown up in this thread. First, all the 3dfx boards that do 2D are supported under XFree 4.0. That means that the Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo2 are not, but since they don't use the X server at all they don't need any special support to run under X.
2D performance of the 3dfx boards is much better under 4.0 than it was under 3.3. The new architecture of 4.0 and the release of 3dfx specs allows the server to run much better.
3D performance is a more complicated matter. I suspect this is where people are complaining. The DRI is a new architecture and it has somewhat different goals than the hack I put together for doing 3D under 3.3. It is designed to run multiple applications, in a window, reliably, and securely. Those extra features do take a toll on performance. Our goal for 4.0 was always to make it work correctly before worrying about the performance. We've just gotten to that point and are now putting some attention on performance. I've made some substantial improvements in the last week, that will be showing up in 4.0 soon.
Finally, Precision Insight and now VA Linux Systems is doing he 2D and 3D work for 3dfx. That work is being done primarily by me. I also did most of the 2D and 3D work under XFree 3.3. (I did have some good contributions by few other developers) So mostly the same people are doing the 3.3 work and 4.0 work. It both cases it was done mostly by a very small group (less than 3) contributors.
The XFree 4.0 support for 3dfx boards is far from laughable. It's one of the best boards supported under 4.0. XFree 4.0 had ambitious goals and we've done a remarkable job pulling them all together. Is the job complete? No. It is running nicely for a lot of people? Absoltely. If you'd like to see it improve then quit complaining and contribute code or bug reports.
- |Daryll
Re:It's all good news but, (Score:2)
Re:3Dfx is supported? (Score:2)
I suppose i was sort of turned off by XFree86 4.0 because i've had so much trouble with it. Much like you base your opinion of any piece of hardware/software on your experience with the product. That is to say my experience with 4.0 hasn't been to good.
Specifically with the 3dfx drivers - i keep getting a few "unresolved function called" type errors. I *do* know that when running xf86config from the CLI to setup 4.0 - there are no 3dfx chips mentioned in the driver list. I was not to pleased about this (being that it was mentioned). When hacking the XF86Config file manually to add the tdfx driver - i still had no luck.
however, this does not deter me from running home and trying out 4.0.1 - and doing a bit more hacking, if necessary. I will dutifully submit a bug report if problems arise. And, most importantly, I want to thank you again for your post, and most of all, your work!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
4.0.1 is important (Score:3)
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:2)
----------------------------
Re:ftp.xfree86.org still empty... (Score:2)
Should probably have waited until I finished downloading before submitted this though
Re:No notes. (Score:3)
+2. Summary of new features in 4.0.1.
+2.1 X server
+
+ o New DRI drivers for Intel i810, Matrox G400 and G200 (AGP only) and the
+ ATI Rage 128, and updates to the 3Dfx DRI driver, including Voodoo5 sup-
+ port.
+
+ o The X server now runs on Linux/Sparc including drivers for many video
+ cards used on SUN hardware.
+
+ o DRI support for the Linux/Sparc implementation that allows 3D direct
+ rendering with Creator3D cards.
+
+ o Fixed recently publicized security issues.
+
+ o Update Mesa to the latest version.
+
+ o Xinerama updates and fixes.
+
+ o Xv updates and fixes.
+
+ o Mouse support in DGA 1.0 compatibility mode should now work correctly
+ for most games that make use of it.
+
+ o Some bugs with 8+24 overlay support have been fixed.
+
+ o Some XKEYBOARD extension problems have been fixed, including improve-
+ ments to the MouseKeys support.
+
+ o Add generic DGA support to the sis, neomagic and i810 drivers.
+
+ o xf86cfg, a new graphical configuration tool.
+
+2.2 X libraries and clients.
+
+ o Thread safety issues have been resolved in a few places in the
+ libraries. Upgrading to the latest libraries is essential for multi-
+ threaded X applications.
+
+ o Some fatal bugs in the big font support have been fixed. Upgrading to
+ the latest libraries will fix this too.
+
+ o Fixed recently publicized security issues in some of the X libraries.
+
+ o Updates and bug fixes for some clients, including xedit, xman, xcalc,
+ fstobdf, xdm.
+
+ o Fix some xfs problems.
+
+ o XTerm updates. These include:
+
+ o Improve logfile security.
+
+ o Workaround for fixed fonts which are generated from Unicode fonts:
+ they omit glyphs for some xterm's less-used line-drawing charac-
+ ters, which caused xterm to set a flag telling it to use only its
+ internal line-drawing characters.
+
+ o Limit numeric parameters of control sequences to 65535 to simplify
+ checks for numeric overflow.
+
+ o Change index into UDK list to unsigned to guard against numeric
+ overflow making the index negative.
+
+ o Add limit checks to ClearInLine(), ScrnInsertChar(), Scrn-
+ DeleteChar() to correct potential out-of-bounds indexing.
+
+ o Add a resource (limitResize) limiting resizing via the CSI 4 t and
+ CSI 8 t sequences.
+
+ o Ignore out-of-bounds resize requests, i.e., where sign-extension or
+ truncation of the parameters would occur.
+
+ o Change Sun function-keys resource name to sunFunctionKeys to work
+ around redefinition of the token sun by xrdb on Solaris. Simi-
+ larly, renamed resource sun keyboard to sunKeyboard. Change simi-
+ lar resource names for HP and SCO to avoid potential conflict with
+ xrdb symbols on other systems, as well as for consistency.
+
+ o Change line speed from 9600bd to 38400bd to accommodate users who
+ mistakenly use $TERM set to vt100, to reduce the effect of padding
+ associated with this terminal type.
+
+ o Fix a problem that caused the right scrollbar to be positioned
+ incorrectly when re-enabling it.
+
+ o Fix a problem with color support that showed up on some platforms.
+
+ o Modify logic for deleteIsDEL resource so it has internally 3
+ states: unspecified, true and false. If unspecified, the keyboard
+ type determines whether the Delete key transmits <esc>[3~ or \177,
+ and the popup menu entry reflects the internal state. Otherwise,
+ the popup menu entry overrides the keyboard type.
+
+ o Portability fixes for os390, AIX 4.2, Digital Unix 4.0 and IRIX
+ 6.5.
+
+2.3 Fonts and Internationalisation
+
+ o Many of the "misc" bdf fonts have been updated and extended, and a wider
+ range of ISO-8859 subsets have been added. Oblique/italic versions of
+ some of them have also been added.
+
+ o The converters in Xlib have been improved and reworked. UTF-8 support
+ has been added.
+
+ o Support for ISO-8859-13 has been added to Xlib and to the UTF-8 convert-+ ers.
+
+ o XKB keyboard definitions have been added and updated for some countries.
+
+ o Locale support for Celtic languages has been updated, and a Compose file
+ for ISO-8859-14 added.
+
+2.4 Miscellaneous
+
+ o Preliminary support for Linux/mips (no X servers yet).
+
+ o Update support for BSD/OS.
+
+ o Update Linux/IA64 support.
+
+ o Support for LynxOS 3.1.0.
+
Re:Xfree86 4.0/Direct 3D architecture (Score:2)
G400 Dual Head Support (Score:2)
bah (Score:2)
And what's with all the "instructions to moderators" type posts - is this some sort of pseudo-meta-moderation?
---
FYI: ATI Rage 128 & derivatives now work. (Score:4)
It's now working (seemingly) properly under 4.0.1, which is great because Xfree86 4.x is pretty slick. I'll have to do some more testing to make sure it's stable though.
---
Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.