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XFree 4.0.3 Released 121

Posted by HeUnique from the it-keeps-improving dept.
XFree 4.0.3 is out. New features include (among other): Better ATI Radeon chip support, Anti Aliasing improvments (and supported on more chipsets), Geforce 3 support added (2D), as well as other fixes. Matrox G400/G450 users will be delighted to hear that the 3D has been improved. Enjoy.
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XFree 4.0.3 is out More

XFree 4.0.3 is out

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  • Re:Interesting, the patch is only 138k! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Me thinks Dobbz has been too long working with M$ products. "It's not big, it's not good, uhg..."

  • Me personally: I upgraded when 4.0 came out (GL, baby), when 4.0.1 came out (no reason there), and when NVIDIA's official drivers supported XRender, I upgraded to 4.0.2 for the fonts.

    Back in the 3.x days, I never upgraded. It's different now, when we're talking 3D acceleration, GL, DRI, and all these cool new extensions. But I don't plan to upgrade to 4.0.3, because this seems to just be a bugfix release.
  • FYI, I often upgrade my *distribution* just to get an updated XFree86 (distribution vendors rarely update packages for older versions of their OS). Two years ago, I upgraded to RedHat 6.0 without hesitation because XFree86 3.3.5 supported NVIDIA cards much better than the old version shipped with RedHat 5.2. Recently I got a IBM laptop which uses SMI Lynx graphic chip. XFree86 didn't have hw acceleration for it until 4.0.2, and this is the exact reason why I ditched my old stable distribution and run a beta one right now. I'm a GUI-oriented user, and I consider XFree86 to be a very important part of my system.

  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I normally do not read comments on slashdot and I certainly don't normally post. If you ask why, it's because comments are stupid and the moderators are even more stupid. I don't believe I've ever seen a good moderated comment. It's a rare thing. It seems to show its face most obviously on physics posts. The most absurd and incorrect remark gets a high rank and the truly correct and informative remark gets a 0. Words from a Physics Graduate. P.S. A new X release is Big news.
  • Yeah, but Windows 95 can run in 4MB of RAM. 4MB is the minumum to BOOT Linux, never mind X which needs another 16-32MB unless your using something like OpenLook, which is not half as funtional as Windows. They are both bloated compared to GUI OS's like MacOS Classic and AmigaOS, which used 1MB of RAM to run.

  • Re:3D on MGA - closed source only (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Simply put.. It means we have to trust the vid card manufacturers(sp?) to keep the drivers up to date.

    Lets pretend for a moment that XFree 4.x has just been released, but it breaks binary compatibilty. The open source servers can be upgraded and recompiled. If the vid card maker has decided to no longer support their 2-gen old card, who's going to upgrade the binary to make it work with the new ver of XFree 4.x.?

    Also, lets remember that Open Source drivers are often faster then their closed source counterparts. For a while, the Matrox G200 open source drivers were outperforming the Win9x drivers. Also, remember when nVidia put out their first binary only drivers for the TNT. No DMA support, something the open source drivers of the time did. And the TNT drivers couldn't be easily fixed without the source and specs.

  • gcc 2.95.3 (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17, 2001 @09:48PM (#356559)
    Since we're announcing minor revisions of major software, thought I'd let you know gcc-2.95.3 was released yesterday - First update in 1.5 years.

    gcc.gnu.org
  • Hey moron, get a fucking clue before you post next time. Xfree DRI has never required a binary only module for 3d support. Where the fuck are you getting your information?
  • Posted by blerki:

    So it makes sense to slam Matrox [slashdot.org] for issuing closed source drivers, but praise nVidia for doing the same?
  • According to this document [xfree86.org], it looks like it's still supported.

    What kills me about the UID number was that I /waited/ on it, since I didn't think registering was a good idea when Taco implemented it. I guess 3 digits is enough of a status symbol anyway ;)

    Best of luck with your upgrade. I hope it doesn't fail horribly!

  • XFree 4 is not for machines more than a couple years old. My PCI G200 is no longer 3d accelerated because it's not AGP. I'm still working on getting XF3 to coexist on this machine so I can run a second X server for GL apps. Support for my 486's WD display has also been dropped, making X even more unnecessary and slow. Bleah.
  • I'll also point out that Nvidia's latest driver offering, 0.9-767, does now support RENDER, thus, you can have 3D *and* anti-aliased fonts, woo! (GTK developers, get your butt in gear! :D)
  • Speaking as a Matrox owner: At least on the G400, the HAL library is not required for 3D acceleration. It is required for using the dualhead features of the card.

    It's possible that HALlib is required for the G450, but I'm not sure.

  • Currently, X will only update a window at around 60fps

    XFree86 will update your window as fast as the card can draw. There is no fps limitation.

    from what I've seen there no support for any full-screen modes.

    There is full support for depth and resolution changing with direct graphics access to the frame buffer.

    If you want to make your life easier, use SDL from www.libsdl.org. It has a simpler API than the X extensions you'd need to learn.

  • Sounds like the only X development is being done by one guy at nVidia. Hopefully he won't decide to move on.
  • I have been runing Xfree from cvs for a couple of days now and it actually works better with 4.0.3 than 4.0.2, at least for me (on a GeForce256 DDR, Dual PIII). In 4.0.2 the Xserver died with strange error message. For the first time AGP works as well. I'd say. Download! /jarek
  • to open-source his code and 3Dfx provided XFree86 developers with full documentation for the whole Voodoo range.

    So where is SLI for Voodoo5? If full specs were released we would have SLI for Voodoo now.

    ...who are always a full XFree86 release behind with their 'closed-source' drivers!

    Huh? FYI, the NVidia drivers work with the newest X releases. The XFree86 driver model doesn't require a recompile for each new release. In fact, I would say NVidia is ahead of the curve, since there is already support for their Geforce3, even though you can't get it in stores yet. Unless you're a MacOS user, in which case you wouldn't care about XFree86 anyway.

    I got rid of my TNT2 when I found out that nVidia couldn't even be bothered to support the XRender extension with their 0.9.5 driver release and nobody at nVidia would reply to my e-mails asking if/when it would be supported.

    Guess what, Render support is in the new NVidia release! If you absolutely needed Render right away you could always have used the "nv" driver that comes with XFree86.

    Indeed, my computer doesn't crash now while playing Unreal Tournament using OpenGL with the Voodoo5

    Isn't that effectively a Voodoo4? :-) BTW, I want open source UT, damnit! What's with this partial open source UT stuff??! Hehe..

    -adnans
  • I thought that one of the "improvements" of XF86 4 was that driver modules were supposed to be inter-operable on the same arch? Like, the x86 module for Nvidia should work on both x86 Linux and x86 *BSD? Sort of disappointing if that is not the case.
  • However, a comparison with Win95 is totally irrelevant, only a comparison with NT is relevant. So, at least compare to NT3.5 or something.
  • and it gives a "GCC internal error" while compiling Qt 2.3.0 on Alpha... What a piece of crap! ;-p

    (of course, as a good OSS user, I have submitted a very detailed bugreport!:)
  • That may be 'official', but I've got the latest nVidia driver working on my GeForce2MX card under 4.0.2 just fine. Both 2D and 3D have no problems.

  • Keep in mind that X allocates ram *ranges* for framebuffer, etc... that aren't subtracted from system memory. The ranges are added by utilities like top though. Try adding all of the supposed allocated memory blocks, subtract the cached, swap and application memory and then marvel at the unaccounted for ram that is used... :)
  • The links are wrong because they changed .2 to .3 in the text but missed the links. If you manually fix the links it's all there on FTP.
  • DGA/DGA2 in combination with XVideo lets you get fullscreen with mode switching, etc. The easiest way to deal with all of that and just do fast 2d drawing without worrying is SDL (www.libsdl.org) - it's fast, it's got an API that mostly makes sense, and it's portable and LGPLed (on Windoze it's infinitely more fun than dealing with direct DirectX code).

  • Re:G450 and XFree86 (Score:3)

    by Arrowhead ( 7765 ) on Sunday March 18, 2001 @01:46AM (#356577)

    It's really very simple, but the Matrox support forum and people choose to make things complicated.

    The only thing you really need is to recompile the stock XFree86 mga driver with the binary-only HALlib available. The instructions on the Matrox forum choose to say that that means you should reinstall all of X, from source, nuking everything your distro put in /usr/X11R6.

    Of course, just going to the mga driver directory, hacking at it until you get two .o files and only moving mga_drv.o and mga_hal_drv.o to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers is all that's needed.

    My simplified instructions:

    • Get the Matrox beta source stuff that contains HALlib
    • Get XFRee86 source (4.0.3 should work I guess)
    • Do not replace the whole mga directory from XFree86 with the Matrox one. Instead, unpack Matrox's source and copy HALlib to xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/drivers/mga. Then follow the rest of the Matrox README file, but you can save an awful lot of time if you break out of the "make World" step and instead just go directly to the matrox driver directory and build only that.
    • Copy the abovementioned driver files to your existing installation (possibly reading up on dpkg-divert first so mga_drv.o won't get overwritten on a minor upgrade)

  • G450 and XFree86 (Score:3)

    by joneshenry ( 9497 ) on Saturday March 17, 2001 @09:59PM (#356578)
    According to the Matrox driver status notes [xfree86.org] the G450 is prominent in its absence. According to the DRI User Guide [xfree86.org] "MGAHALlib.a is a binary library Matrox has provided for use under Linux to expose functionality for which they can not provide documentation. (For example TV-Out requires MacroVision be enabled on the output.)" and "Currently the MGAHAL library is required for the G450 to work." A simple search of what remains of deja.com reveals many posts from people struggling to get their G450 cards to work with XFree86. Matrox has binary drivers, beta, unsupported, for XFree86 4.0.2 and Linux at their site.

    Can someone shed more light on the status of the G450 and XFree86 support?

  • 4.0.3 is a bugfix release (Score:3)

    by Caballero ( 11938 ) <daryll.daryll@net> on Sunday March 18, 2001 @06:34AM (#356579) Homepage
    4.0.3 is a bugfix release. XFree is now being more careful about bugfix releases versus feature releases. XFree 4.1 will be the next big feature release and you'll see a lot of improvements in 3D support as well as things like the RENDER extension.
  • - DRI (3d accel) only works with 16bpp

    - 32 bpp doesn't work at all
    Read the manual. 3d works almost fine in 32bpp, but you have to set the depth to 24bpp and the frambuffer depth to 32bpp.

  • XFree86 4.0.3 (Score:3)

    by image ( 13487 ) on Sunday March 18, 2001 @04:57AM (#356581) Homepage
    The biggest problem with people mistaking Slashdot for Freshmeat [freshmeat.net] is that there is rarely enough information given for a good software announcement. That said:

    XFree86 is a freely redistributable implementation of the X Window System that runs on UNIX(R) and UNIX-like operating systems.

    Author:

    The XFree86 Project <XFree86 at XFree86 dot org>

    Homepage:

    http://www.xfree86.org/ [xfree86.org]

    Tar/GZ:

    ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.0.3/ [xfree86.org]

    Changelog:

    http://www.xfree86.org/4.0.3/RELNOTES.html [xfree86.org]

    Trove categories:

    Old Appindex :: X11 :: System

    Summary of updates in 4.0.3.

    Some temporary file-related security vulnerabilities are fixed.
    Screen corruption problems and palette saving problems with some Neomagic chips are fixed.
    'XFree86 -configure' problems are fixed in some drivers (including sis and i810).
    A problem with some plain S3 ViRGE cards is fixed.
    Some Xaw incompatibilities with Xaw6 are fixed.
    Some XKB files are updated.
    Some trident driver updates, including fixing acceleration for the Cyber9388.
    A palette saving problem in the vgahw module is fixed.
    Support for the wsmouse protocol is added for OpenBSD/i386.
    A load problem with the sis driver module, and some depth 24 problems are fixed.
    Support for the "PD" variant of the ATI Rage 128 is added.
    Support for GNU Hurd is updated.
    Some TrueType font problems are fixed.
    The mga driver doesn't attempt to drive the G450 if the "mga_hal" module isn't available.
    A problem with bold font simulation in xterm is fixed.
    The (DPS) stub files created by pswrap are now compatible with the Adobe version.
    Some glint driver problems are fixed.
    Support for building on OpenBSD-current, and multi-thread support for OpenBSD are provided.
    A problem with the ThinkingMousePS/2 protocol is fixed in the mouse driver.
    Support for the Render extension with Xinerama is added.
    A DGA-related server crash is fixed.
    Some Chips & Technologies driver bugs are fixed.
    Some tseng driver bugs are fixed.
    Some Alpha platform updates are included.
    Support for the GeForce3 is added to the nv driver.
    Misc build-related issues are fixed.
    Various documentation updates, including a reworked XFree86(1) manual page.

  • nVidia's really on the ball (Score:3)

    by Osty ( 16825 ) on Saturday March 17, 2001 @09:56PM (#356582)

    nVidia released new XFree86 drivers for their line of chipsets, including the GeForce 3, on March 15th. They should work with any XFree86 4.0.x, so you needn't be upgrading just for GeForce 3 support, especially since these drivers include 3D, while 4.0.3's are 2D-only.

    Get your redhot drivers here [nvidia.com].

  • What are you talking about? There's no radeon_dri.o in the files list!

    It looks like we've got to stick with DRI's CVS for quake on a radeon...

    lib/modules/drivers/chips_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/cyrix_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/glint_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/i810_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/mga_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/neomagic_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/nv_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/r128_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/s3virge_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/savage_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/sis_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/tdfx_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/trident_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/tseng_drv.o
    lib/modules/drivers/vga_drv.o
    lib/modules/extensions/libextmod.a
    lib/modules/fonts/libfreetype.a
    lib/modules/input/mouse_drv.o
    lib/modules/libvgahw.a
    lib/modules/libxf8_16bpp.a

    that's it... (rage 128 looks updated tho)
    only mention of radeon in release notes is in the 4.0.2 section...

    but renderer extension on Xinerama!
  • But there are no modules/dri files in this update...

    check the file list here [xfree86.org]

    no radeon_dri.o

    my file list was the Xdrivers.tgz subsection of that list...

    posts on linuxgames [linuxgames.com] confirm it... HeUnique is smoking crack

    they haven't merged the DRI CVS with the main X distribution
  • check out Metro X's server... I believe that they post Quake 3 benchmarks as good as in windows... unfortunately I'm 300 miles from home stuck on a winblowz box (IE crashes every time I try to use google... must reboot)... or I'd post a link...
  • Because nVidia is closed-source. You can't update their drivers everytime somthing new comes out. So If U want 3d support with 4.0.2, or 4.0.3. heh. Too bad. Wait for the update.


    I took the blue pill !!!

  • NV20? (Score:1)

    by Crag ( 18776 )
    That's gotta be a first: Support for a card in XFree86 which isn't even available to consumers yet.
  • Hey, but at least the build is automatic! Give it a low priority and let it build in the background. No muss no fuss.

    (unless of course you're using a modem. with close to 30 megs of sources, that would suck...)
  • Though iirc it kills any and all hardware accel....
  • Will this version of XFree86 make it into the next major release of Debian distribution?
  • We've got Linux running on a Compaq iPAQ from pocketlinux.org, and when we tap the side of the screen the orientation switches between portait/landscape. Ximerama rocks!
  • I know I'm replying to myself here... Ximerama is standard in XFree86 4, and allows multiple screens per display. Thus, on the iPAQ we have two screen (one landscape, one portait) on the same display which are switchable between.
  • Why haven't they submitted their changes back to the XFree team? That looks like a hellish installation.
  • 4MB of ram will certainly run Win95 but most certainly not make it useable. I got acceptable performace on a 486DX33 with 24Meg which at the time also gave me acceptable performance running RedHat 5.0 and X.

    Btw, you are comparing apples to oranges. Skip Win95, which is two versions behind what MS puts out now, and compare linux v. NT. But just for grins, the minimum requirements for WinME is 32Meg and a P150 or higher. Getting your MCP would require you to know that the min requirement for WinNT was 12Meg and, fwiw, Win2K Pro requires a minimum of 64Meg.

    OS X will require 128Meg and Mac OS 9.1 requires 32Meg. Overall I think Linux+XFree isn't that bad with its memory requirements.

    And I'd love for you to put a machine running Mac "Runs in a Meg" OS and a machine running OS 9.1 in front of Joe Average and see which one they want to use. So much for those "pure and uncrufty" GUIs of yore.

  • This is probably better off on some X mailing list - but maybe someone can provide some enlightenment for me. From my POV Xfree86's biggest weakness is the lack of a decent framework/API/whatever for 2D graphics with respect to say full-screen (or even windowed) canvas sizes and decent update speeds. Currently, X will only update a window at around 60fps (or is it 30) and from what I've seen there no support for any full-screen modes.

    Basically I want an OpenGL for 2D graphics under X. I quite like SVGAlib, but the graphics card support is fairly limited and it's obviously no where near as ubiquitous as Xfree86.

    Anyone care to shed some light on this issue?

    --
  • Best of luck with your upgrade. I hope it doesn't fail horribly!

    Yeah, that would suck! ;-)
  • Which means - if G450 is detected and the closed-source module "mga_hal" is not found, don't try to use the "mga" driver - it won't work.

    This certainly qualifies as an improvement, especially if the error message if clear enough and mentions where to get "mga_hal".

    But should I really enjoy it?

    Well, let me put it this way:

    Do you enjoy women even though you don't have clue what the operating software looks like?

    Closed source - it's nature's way! ;-)
  • Do you happen to know if the Matrox Millenium I (PCI) is still accelerated?

    Is there a list of cards whose PCI acceleration has been been dropped in 4.x? This is pretty relevant to me, since I am/was about to upgrade to Mandrake 8.0 ...

    BTW, cool user # ! :-)
  • I'm running under 4.0.2 just fine, w/AA fonts in KDE/qt2.3. NVidia's readme actually says 4.0.1 and up are support; maybe this changed in last week's release.
  • Microsoft has for years claimed that the #1 cause of blue-screen crashes on Windows was from poorly written drives (not their fault -- someone else did it).

    Specifically, they blamed video drivers.
  • Indeed, my computer doesn't crash now while playing Unreal Tournament using OpenGL with the Voodoo5 - why ? - because nVidia's drivers don't fully support SMP and freely admit in the driver README file that it can cause random lockups on SMP machines.

    I guess somebody needs to take a look at the fact that there have been TWO releases of the NVidia drivers since then. SMP support has been greatly improved, as has performance and stability.

  • I'm running a GeForce 2 GTS and I can't get a distribution to install that uses X 3.3.6. I have to use X 4.0+. This may be the problems that you're hearing. I personally have never had a problem with my GeForce in X 4.0.
  • I just got 4.02 working yesterday :(
  • Your argument is flawed because the mga_hal module is used for DualHead and TV-Out support, not 3D.

    The source is out there.

  • I can't speak for anybody else, but usually the only time I upgrade X is:

    1. when I upgrade to a newer version of the distribution I use, or switch distro's, and the new distro includes a newer version of X.

    OR

    2. I might upgrade just X itself, on a major version change ( eg, from 3.x to 4.x )

    Other than that, I pretty much leave X alone, as long as it works.
  • I've had the same problem with FreeBSD and nvidia products. Currently, I have an old PCI TNT that I'd love to get working so I can do opengl stuff, watch DVD's, and play games (Quake 3, CounterStrike, etc) without having to reboot.

    You can try kludging around with the nvidia drivers, but it didn't get me anywhere.

    I do have a second monitor though attached to a G200 AGP however, and it plays DVD's full screen just fine, but it is way too slow for games.

    I'm thinking of dumping my current TNT/G200 setup for a G450, any FBSD users try G450 for multimon/dvd/games?
  • I'm wondering if anyone feels like distributing simple binary driver files to be dropped into the /usr/X11R6/... directory. I have a G400 and it would be quite nice to have these drivers but I've never had the time to be bothered with recompiling everything.
  • Huh? The X server that most people here use has an upgrade, including improved 3D support for Matrox cards and improved anti-aliasing, and this is somehow not news?

    Is this the best thing you could think of to make a first post not actually sound like a typical first post?

    Come on, I wait for upgrades of XFree86 and compile from source every time. For me, this is BIG news. Much bigger than hydrogen powered cars, though I would'nt complain about that as not being news because to some nerds, it would be.

    I don't doubt that you may have written some stuff worthy of being mod'ed up, but this is not. I would have scrolled past it, thinking it borderlining on Troll but saving that mod point for something more worthwhile.

  • To each, his own.

    Hey, if you don't like GUI's, then don't use them.

    If you do and you have gripes about the GUI you use, then get stuck into that source code!

    2D X does'nt ever lock up on me, in almost 4 years. However, testing some bleeding edge 3D in X has on occasion.

    But I am doing something to fix that.

    I'm not just hanging around here whining. For me, the open source stuff does blow away crap like MS Windows, but not necessarily other proprietary "crap". I happen the think BeOS and Solaris are great. QNX is interesting as is MacOS X.

    3+ years with NO crash, running Linux and OpenBSD says something. Now that X is as fast as it is, 2D and 3D wise, the future of free OS'es is just getting brighter by the day.

  • The only time I upgrade X is:
    apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade

    Why did this get moderated down?

    This is a show of how fantastic debians package management software is and how simple an upgrade of X could be.

    It is Interesting and Insightful, could have been more Informative though, but Redundant?

  • I don't plan to upgrade to 4.0.3, because this seems to just be a bugfix release.

    Okay??????

    Microsoft would LOVE you! ; )

  • It's different now, when we're talking 3D acceleration, GL, DRI, and all these cool new extensions.

    Ack! You sound like a Windows user! Go away, lest you corrupt my text consoles and xterm windows!

    Free software, affords free choice!

    YOU, don't have to use it. The fact that others can, is great. Your text consoles will always be there. All YOU have to do, is not bother keeping "up" with the times and just keep working with what you have. You'll be happy, and so will he.

  • Do you enjoy women even though you don't have clue what the operating software looks like?

    Um, actually, I quite enjoy examaining womens internals. But that's probably for to much information than you needed to know :)...

  • full and comprehensive support for *all* Voodoo cards in XFree86 4.0x

    Voodoo 3s run at about seventy percent of their Windows performance. Voodoo 4 and 5s (effectively V#s in SLI mode) only support 1 GPU per chip. 3DFX have been promising better drivers for ages now, but neither the company or the Open SOurce community had made them.

    In contrast, both ATI and NVIDIA have drivers that peerform between 95 and 105% of Windows performance - check the linuxgames.com benchmarks. ATIs are Open Source, NVIDIAS are closed. However, even with the weak Australian dollar, the Australian distributor of ATI products charges twice as much as their US counterpart so Radeons are basically unaffordable. 3DFXs drivers might be Open Source, but NVIDIAs still allow me to get more fucntionality out of my card. I use Linux because its good, and it happens to be good because its Open Source. I use NVIDIAs drivers because they're good, despite being closed source.

  • Skip Win95, which is two versions behind what MS puts out now, and compare linux v. NT.

    I think the reason for the comparison of WIndows 95 with modern Linux is that both are the earliest releases of their OSs with complete working Windows / Icons /Menus / Pointer type GUIs (as opposed to lightweight Window Managers, X desktops are larger and need more RAM). As a Linux user who started using computers in the days of Atari and GEM, and expects a slick GUI to do their work in, I think its a reasonable comparison to make.
  • Yah... but how long will it be before we get good and proper support for the GeForce 3?

    I mean, I still hear people complain about TNT/TNT2/GeForce 2 support under X.

    (Not that I've had any problems, cuz I haven't... but...)

    "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
  • What, exactally, is so wrong with a closed-source binary video driver? Thats how nvidia distributes their drivers, and everybody loves them. Is it a compatability issue with different Linux kernels? (eek, that sounded a little flamish, not intended to be). Im a long time Windows user, and I'm wondering what the Linux crowd is thinking.

    Mark Duell
  • Heh, but not for long, The gcc page [gnu.org] says its out, but the dload links point to 2.95.2 - pulled for some reason....
    --
    Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
  • AFACT it has been pulled, just looked with an ftp client in case my isp's caching proxy hid it....
    --
    Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc

  • Re:Better Radeon Support? (Score:3)

    by barneyfoo ( 80862 ) on Saturday March 17, 2001 @10:02PM (#356620)
    I think you're confused. the modules/drivers/ directory contains the 2D (along with other various X functions) drivers.

    For dri, look in the modules/dri/

    here are the contents of mine:

    gamma_dri.so
    i810_dri.so
    mga_dri.so
    r128_dri.so
    radeon_dri.so
    sis_dri.so
    tdfx_dri.so

    Btw, this was compiled from CVS a week ago (pre 4.0.3).
  • Except it hasn't been placed on gcc.gnu.org or ftp.gnu.org yet.
  • Rage 128 is updated. For everyone who's been having their rage card lock up, go black, and not let you do anything, a four line fix went in to the driver (it's the kernel module) that fixed it. It's due to early Rage 128 cards and a buffer problem. So, if you've had that happen to you too, then grab it!

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."
  • I've just finished "make" and started "make install" on one of my FreeBSD boxes, fucking crap.


    You sound quite the fool to anyone who has actually compiled X from source. Especially a BSD style build.

  • Well, If I had more choice I would prefer loadable kernel modules over anti-aliased fonts anyday. It takes a primitive OS to still require one to reboot everytime a new driver is installed.
    And oh yes, Win95 was quite impressive, many "new" features, long file names (oops, UNIX already had that), true multi-tasking, (oops, no a first either!).
    Sigh, Oh well, I am done responding to the troll now.

  • Remember that the nVidia XFree86 3d drivers only support XFree86 versions 4.0 and 4.1.

    I'm running them in 4.0.2 just fine. Haven't tried 4.0.3 yet.

    ------

  • Ahem...

    Glide was an API that was fully open to anybody that cared to develop for it; only the libraries were closed source... except that changed when 3Dfx open-sourced it.

    I downloaded a free SDK for Glide when I bought my original Voodoo1 and couldn't find any license restrictions (apart from the usual 'do-not-reverse-engineer-this-code' paragraphs!), so no, it wasn't proprietary. You can liken it to DirectX if you want, the includes/libraries are freely available from Microsoft, but you can't actually get the source to see how the runtime really works.

    A proprietary API such as 'undocumented' Win32 calls is completely different to a proprietary standard which is only used by one company's products. Anybody can write Glide code, just don't expect it to run on anybody elses cards but 3Dfx's.

    If Glide is so bad, why did Creative go to all the trouble of writing a 100% compatible Glide wrapper for Windows 95/98 machines using nVidia cards ? (see here [slashdot.org] if you want more info)

    Additionally, when 3Dfx introduced Glide, DirectX was just a twinkle in Billy G's eye, and most people ran their games under DOS. Therefore, it was logical that 3Dfx, as the market-leader, created an API that made it easier for developers to write for their cards... it's called 'looking after your own product'.

    I didn't buy the Voodoo5 5500 so I could get shit-hot-masturbatingly-high frame rates on Super Kill'em Up XII; I bought it because it was the *fastest* 3D card available with the best (but not necessarily complete) support under Linux without the drivers crashing every five minutes.

    So, nope, by buying a Voodoo5 I was supporting a company that has provided me with a stable graphics platform for the past three years and quick response times to driver bugs; compare that with a company that refused to answer my e-mails and is completely unresponsive to calls to open up the specs of their chipsets.

    As for support, I have full 3D, extremely fast 2D, ability to run Glide stuff (although I only use this with certain apps) and the warm fuzzy feeling that I can run multiple OpenGL apps on my display without worrying that it is gonna crash!

  • Re:voodoo5 5500 (Score:4)

    by LiteForce ( 102751 ) on Sunday March 18, 2001 @12:25AM (#356627) Homepage
    Your comment says a lot about supporting open-source, doesn't it ?

    I purchased a Voodoo5 5500 not because I saw 3Dfx commercials (I'm in the U.K. and we don't get them); but because they allowed Daryll Strauss (who implemented Glide for Linux) to open-source his code and 3Dfx provided XFree86 developers with full documentation for the whole Voodoo range.

    Which is more than nVidia have done; and which is why you will find full and comprehensive support for *all* Voodoo cards in XFree86 4.0x - and that is more than you get with nVidia; who are always a full XFree86 release behind with their 'closed-source' drivers!

    I got rid of my TNT2 when I found out that nVidia couldn't even be bothered to support the XRender extension with their 0.9.5 driver release and nobody at nVidia would reply to my e-mails asking if/when it would be supported. The XFree86 2D-only support provided support for XRender but then I couldn't use the 3D acceleration of the TNT2 for anything.

    Indeed, my computer doesn't crash now while playing Unreal Tournament using OpenGL with the Voodoo5 - why ? - because nVidia's drivers don't fully support SMP and freely admit in the driver README file that it can cause random lockups on SMP machines.

    Add to that the number of problems people have been experiencing with these drivers, enough to add comments to the Freshmeat project page here [freshmeat.net].

    If I am going to experience random lockups while using my machine; then I might as well be running Windows :-P

    P.S. No, j00 d0n't 0wn a11 u5 3Dfx u53r5, nVidia does (seeing as though they bought out 3Dfx), so get yer facts straight!

  • Agreed; 3dfx was effectively dead and rotting way before the 5000 series was released. IMNSHO, no one has an excuse for owning any 3dfx board later than a Voodoo3 3000. The owner of a Voodoo5 board is someone who spends more time watching TV (and enjoying 3dfx's lame commercials) than reading the newspaper (to watch stock prices) or surfing the net (to read reviews). Happily, Glide is now deader than Daikatana! I sold my soul to nVidia back when the TNT2 first came out, and have not regretted it since. Now we 0wn j00 3dfx lusers, bwahahaha!

    (Although I must admit that I've been digging some of ATI's stuff lately. Too bad they lost Apple... nVidia now effictively dominates the consumer, gamer, and low/mid performance graphics markets.)

    --

  • There has been an option for this since 4.0

    Matt Newell
  • i upgrade whenever i do a new install. i hand install the binararies, and install the nvidia drivers. i just don't like how most distro's package x (dependancies of xdm?!?)

    -------

  • "Geforce 3 support added (2D), as well as other fixes. Matrox G400/G450 users will be delighted to hear that the 3D has been improved."

    The card with the best 3d has its 2d improved, the card with the best 2d has had its 3d improved. Tres nifty
    --
    Peace,
    Lord Omlette
    ICQ# 77863057

  • dude. why don't you splurge and buy a $40 card that is supported?

    Because some of us are on a laptop or other computer whose video subsystem can't be replaced easily. Does XFree86 support PCMCIA video cards?


    All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.

  • So energetic/enthuiastic users develop drivers so that larger companies can "sell" support to less energetic/enthusiastic users.

    So why don't hardware makers publish drivers for their hardware?


    All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.

  • Yes, X only takes 30MB. But your GNOME session adds another 30MB, and your window manager adds anywhere from 10MB (for FVWM, the Fuckingugly Virtual Window Manager) to 512BM (for Enlightenment; the window manager which proves that enough eye candy can make up for any lack of usefulness).

    Provided you believe top, which double- and triple-counts shared memory. For example, when some drivers map video card memory three times, top counts it three times. GNOME isn't as bloated as you think; a lot of the memory that GNOME programs appear to use is in .so (shared library) files (which also are multi-counted). Mozilla isn't a hog either; top overcounts any multithreaded app.

    If you think a WM is ugly, design a new color scheme and post it somewhere. You bash [slashdot.org] GNOME for being bloated, but is KDE any better? (Please take this flamewar to the NES [8m.com] if you must continue it.)


    All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.

  • Also, X is ugly as sin, and no Window Manager can hide that.

    What's so ugly about X11? It's just a graphics subsystem (equivalent to Win32's GDI). I can see your point if you're talking about Motif and CDE, or the default configuration of a particular distribution, but slap a decent theme onto GTK+ and Sawfish and it's no longer ugly. If you really want it, there's a theme that looks almost pixel-perfect like Microsoft Windows. (Are Windows's widgets any less ugly than Motif's?)


    All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.
  • Basically I want an OpenGL for 2D graphics under X. I quite like SVGAlib, but the graphics card support is fairly limited and it's obviously no where near as ubiquitous as Xfree86.

    In fact, you have answered your own question. There is nothing wrong about doing 2D-stuff in OpenGL. (Of course, XFree doesn't support OpenGL but Mesa, but most people will never notice...)

  • what is the state of the support for the second vs100 gpu on this board .... have not found any info about this in the releasenotes ... :-(
    i am missing this feature for a long time :-(((
  • I have access to a nice LCD monitor that can be conveniently rotated into portrait mode (and I'd love to use it this way!). However, no free X appears to allow that. It's not in the new XFree86 release either.

    It's a pity.

  • Late me clear up some issues.

    The hallib has nothing to do with DRI. The hallib is used to set up DualHead and other little features.

    The G450 for that release does need HALlib. But there's some patchs that I submitted to Xfree86 to have the G450 running completely open source. This driver even has the G450 DualHead. The new driver did not make the 4.0.3 release. But the next version should support it. Don't think that Matrox does not want to make their card work Open Source.

    The open source version of the driver should be on the matrox web site soon.
  • Can someone shed more light on the status of the G450 and XFree86 support?

    It works. I've been running it for about a month and a half. Works pretty well too. I can do rediculous resolutions and 32bit and all that but I just run 1280x1024 at 24. My machine did lock up *once* but it was when I was just starting to set up the new box and crazily tweeking all sorts of stuff.

    It's a pain to install though. That is XF4.0.2 I mean. I suspect XF4.0.3 is no different. Actually this release looks like some relativly minor updates. To install you have to pull down like 25MB in 12 files and run there installer. Good luck getting your old X back though. Cross your fingers and toes for that one(actually it wouldn't be that hard to re-install an older version and might be just a matter of moving some dirs back in place). After that, get the latest drivers from matrox [matrox.com] and generate or get a config and help from others on the matrox linux form [matrox.com].

    I didn't try 3d accel and DRI and GLX or other acronyms but I've read about people doing all that stuff and dual head, etc. If you like hacking though you'll have a blast!

  • Who, matrox? The matrox install is trivial. You just copy the .o into the modules directory. It's the XFree install thats involved. I think that will always be the case. Most people are better off just waiting for it to be provided in their favorite distro.
  • Why give a comment on the post? It doesn't seem worth pointing out, really... (first flame?)
  • Sure, free speech and individual thought are nice programs in and of themselves or whatever, but upon doing further studying of the scientology program packages one finds that it also removes any and all versions of money you have installed. Warning, this also includes any money derivitives such as stock, bond, paycheck, cash, and has even been known in some instances to empty user bank account directories as well. (Kind of reminds you of middle ages, where Roman Catholics only those who could afford it... Same as many of the "popular" CULTS and televangelists seem to do today. Sometimes it seems like everybody who wants to save my soul also wants to aquire more money than God...) I guess I will remain a pagan because salvation is too expensive :)
  • Most likely 4.0.2 is in Woody right now and works great and it did not take that long to go from 4.0.1 to 4.0.2. So I would assume that this will be there pretty soon.
  • I love that attitude....I mean, it just wins over so many people! "Hey, we don't support your hardware, but we would love it if you did!"...

    So energetic/enthuiastic users develop drivers so that larger companies can "sell" support to less energetic/enthusiastic users. This is a great business model.
  • Yes, rotate clockwise/counterclockwise. :)

  • Every time I try to read illicit scientologist texts, X seg faults. They got to the CVS tree. I bet 4.0.3 is just a patch to remove all that scientology code. Or maybe 4.0.3 will make yr monitor explode when you say bad things about scientology...

    I think it's the first one. The scientologists won't let XFree 4.0.3 into the tree for Woody.

    dds:~#apt-get install scientology
    Reading Package Lists... Done
    Building Dependency Lists...Done
    The following packages will be REMOVED:
    free-speech libfree-speech0 reason freedom task-individual-thought
    The following additional packages will be installed:
    fear uncertainty doubt libfud11 libfud-dev harrassment task-intimidation-core
    0 packages upgraded, 13 newly installed, 17 removed, and 6 not upgraded
    Need to get 234GB of archives. After unpacking you will be brainwashed.
    Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
  • Matrox G400/G450 users will be delighted to hear that the 3D has been improved. Enjoy.
    Where did you find that? It's impossible to improve something in XFree86 that doesn't exist there. XFree86 does not support 3D on Matrox without a binary-only close-source driver from Matrox, called "mga_hal".

    Now let's look in the release notes:

    The mga driver doesn't attempt to drive the G450 if the "mga_hal" module isn't available.
    Which means - if G450 is detected and the closed-source module "mga_hal" is not found, don't try to use the "mga" driver - it won't work.

    This certainly qualifies as an improvement, especially if the error message if clear enough and mentions where to get "mga_hal".

    But should I really enjoy it?

  • ... and displaying this page on the second display, I'm quite happy with it. I've not played with output to my TV, but I plan to soon. Also, since the version of the drivers that I downloaded from Matrox was from late january, I'm not exactly worried about downloading a new X for features that might already be implemented in my driver.

    Regarding the drivers being closed source, they are perfectly entitled to do that if they would like, I'm personally glad that a large company is providing such good support for such a new product. If they want to make it closed source but keep the development going, I'm all for it. If someone else wants to engineer their own drivers that are GPLed, that's great too, but in several respects I'd rather have the hardware manufacturer's code than something that was reverse engineered, because the manufacturer is less likely to be missing important pieces. I've been running X for a couple of weeks straight without switching out, and I haven't had any problems. They are doing a wonderful job.

    "Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
  • Not to be overly critical, but I am in agreement here. A minor version of X will not change the way I run my computers (yes, they are running Linux), nor does it seem to have any other implications.

    I can assume that many people submit these things and that the editors have to avoid lots of duplicate posts from fans of the software.

    This raises an interesting question. How many people ever upgrade X on their systems? (I am really asking this. Not a retorical question.)

  • from XF4.0.3 release notes
    Support for building on OpenBSD-current, and multi-thread support for OpenBSD are provided.
    Some Alpha platform updates are included.
    Support for GNU Hurd is updated.
    if you've been having problems compiling XF4 on minority architectures/operating systems this might be a good time to try updating.
  • Nvidia is pure shit because you can't use their cards under FreeBSD with XF86 4.0+ :-(

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