XFree86 News 200
PseudoMan was the
first with the news: XFree86 3.3.4 has finally been released (yes, you
can actually see the contents of the directory now). Rumour has it that
the new release contains support for various Matrox cards, and may be the last release before
we see 3.9 show up. Update: 07/20 06:05 by J : It seems that the first public beta of 4.0, 3.9.15,
is now available. xinerama, here I come!
Re:Why is font handling so bad? (Score:1)
However, using xfsft and a bit of tweaking XFree86's fonts look every bit as good as Windows (and certainly much better than Solaris's default font configuration):
cd
cp
ttmkfdir > fonts.dir
/etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart
Look here: (Score:1)
If your 17 can't do it then you are probably pushing the refresh too high.. It can do it, but only at a low refresh.. I would never push my refresh below 72Hz.
Here, save up for a bit and check this out:
From www.pricewatch.com
$209 - 17" PX-780
$297 - 19" KDS VS-195
$824 - 21" CTX EX1300 1800x1440x76Hz
Sure, you can get cheaper ones.. But with hardware, you usually get what you pay for..
At home I have a Viewsonic P817, running at 1800x1440x80Hz (soon to be 2048x1536@85Hz when my G400Max comes in).. My wallet may be hurting, (@~$1,400) buy my eyes have never felt better.
Re:XFree86 could be a little more open (Score:2)
I really think that if they were to change this, it would accelerate the pace of XFree86 development, which I consider to be way behind the curve in how fast it's evolving compared to other projects of the same significance.
To some extent, though, the choice of a closed development model is to allow them to have greater ability to work with hardware vendors and software contributors that have restrictive requirements. There are clearly two sides to this coin; it lets things happen that wouldn't happen otherwise (more hardware support, more cool-neat-features), but it also lets things happen that wouldn't happen otherwise (being put in wierd positions by vendors such as with the NVidia stuff).
It may be possible for the XFree86 team to organize their in-development tree into friendly parts and unfriendly parts, where the former is stuff that could be made available by anoncvs and the latter can't. This might be a compromise situation that could make more people happy than the current scenario.
Re:XFree86 could be a little more open (Score:2)
I can't show you mail that says 'bugger off' but I definitley got that impression.
When I read about SGI releasing GLX as open source I also read this on the Precsion Insight site:
Programmers who are interested in working with the DRI are encouraged to join the XFree86 Project.
As I was interested in working on this project, I went over the the XFree86 site and studied their procedures. They say
One of the XFree86 Project's scarcest and most valued resources is its developers. We're never short on things that need to be done, just short of people to do them. If you're interested in donating some of your spare time to help advance XFree86, we'd like to hear from you.
To join The XFree86 Project as a non-voting member, send email to xfree86@xfree86.org requesting a membership application form, and briefly state the reason why you wish to become a member. It is very rare that we knock back membership requests, but we are looking for members who will be active in developing and/or testing rather than people simply looking for early access to new code.
So I wrote a short e-mail stating my reasons to join and asked if they have a task that was suited to introduce me to the project.
The reaction was not a TO DO list, but a mail from XFree86 Prez Dirk Hohndel that told me rather to join some other related project that was run by another SuSE guy, Simon Pogaric. Thus I contacted him and frankly, IMHO he was not looking for any help, he had no TO DO list either.
This was not what I expected. As I did not want to force my help on people I did not pursue matters further and looked for some other stuff (after all there is enough work).
I might be paranoid but I have the feeling to have been gotten into some competition between two rivaling groups (Red Hat, PI vs. SuSE).
The whole matter rather annoyed me because I think such large projects should have enough tasks (documenting, code cleansing, implementing) where good coding skills (in my case 18 years of programming, plus strong scientific background) would help and that would allow one to get accustomed to the code base.
Other large projects like egcs or FreeBSD work that way and offer a kind apprenticeship system. With XFree86 I have my doubts.
Re:XFree86 could be a little more open (Score:1)
It's not very closed. All you have to do is send in a request to join. Has anyone ever actually been turned down? Would you also claim that Linux development is closed because you have to actually get off your proverbial backside to subscribe to the linux-kernel mailing list?
You can quite happily write new drivers for the current X servers, based on the released source. If you want to do something more involved, then you should join the team and get on the mailing lists. What could be simpler?
DualHead (Score:1)
Plus, the 2D performance of the matrox cards is just amazing. If I can get 10% better performance in the 2D world over a TNT2 then even if the 3D performance is half as good I'd go for the Matrox card.
But, that's just me. I use 2D much more than 3d.
Re:NO! (Score:1)
Re:YES!, dammit! :-) (Score:1)
In ~/.netscape/preferences.js, there is an option called user_pref("intl.font_spec_list". Then next to it is a LARGE list of fonts (it's all one line, by the way.) The final font name is the default font for most things. Change it's -0- to -160- or whatever you want. Then save it (make sure Netscape isn't running), and change to root and chown preferences.js for root, then use chmod to make root the only person that can write to it (but still let users read it.) I used the Midnight Commander (regular version in an xterm or console) to do the chmod'ing and chown'ing. Of course, if you run netscape as root, you'll have to make a script that copies the correct preferences file under a different name to preferences.js.
God I hope this is fixed soon.
Re:Three factors. (Score:1)
Re:NO! (Score:1)
At any rate, I wouldn't mind if there were different systems for the simple 1-bit fonts, and another for antialiased font. Just use whichever works better for the situation. If you need speed, use the traditional stuff. If you want it to look pretty, use antialiasing (or whatever other fun technique they come up with).
*shrug*
fonts.dir (Score:1)
Re:fonts.dir (Score:2)
Re:NO! (Score:1)
Antialiasing has a bigger problem: X fonts are depth-1 bitmaps. Changing this would involve major, incompatible changes to the X protocol and Xlib, breaking every application. Or a whole new API added on top of the existing one, making the new server even more complex (= bloated and buggy, trying to make the two font systems work together properly) and making life hell for the X toolkit and application folks. This might be an idea for X Version 12, but I expect it won't happen in any X11 release.
Re:XFree86 could be a little more open (Score:3)
Once upon a time, it was open. Then certain Linux distribution maintainers (no longer around) decided it'd be neat to include outdated, buggy pre-alpha X releases in their distributions --- and redirected all the bug reports to the XFree folks. They Were Not Happy, and I don't blame them.
The upshot here is that *we* screwed up, and the XFree folks got burned badly as a result. If we want to see more open XFree86 development, we're going to have to prove to them that we're not going to pull stunts like that any more.
(Unfortunately, with Red Hat's fondness for including prerelease stuff in their distributions --- "prepatch" kernels and Perl "m" releases, to name some from the 5.x era --- I'm not sure I'd trust them to keep their mitts off prerelease XFree86 code.)
XFree86 could be a little more open (Score:1)
"Being a developer" implies a commitment that may discourage occasional developers and patch submitters (such as myself).
Don't get me wrong; I respect and value the work that the XFree developers do.
Re:woop! (Score:2)
Now that I've said all that, Adam, just s/Branden/Adam/ and it's still true. =)
G400 Max? (Score:1)
XF86-3.9 is the best news in months! (Score:1)
Do I sound excited? YOU BET!
Re:NO! (Score:1)
John
What's New with XFree 3.3.4 and 3.9.15?? (Score:1)
John
Re:fonts.dir (Score:1)
Re:Driver support (Score:1)
Re:damn thing won't compile (Score:1)
Re:X11 (Score:1)
Re:XFree86 needs the GPL! (Score:1)
Dumb-ass question (Score:1)
_damnit_
Re:Welcome to the 90's (Score:1)
Where else have the others moved on exactly?
At the moment Windows is still playing catchup on the remote display issue.
BitBLT timeout (Score:1)
Why is font handling so bad? (Score:3)
Anyone know of any progress being made in this area?
Also font setup is appalling. I can't believe you have to edit font.dir files for each directory - why on earth wouldn't the server do this for you? I was astonished at the amount of work it took to get a few TrueType fonts working before the perl TrueType tools came out to do some of the work for you.
I guess you could consider this a bug report.
Matt.
perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-:
Re:Sinclair ZX80 is better than Windows (Score:1)
Porting the entire of XFree86 4.0 into 256 bytes of memory... Am I allowed to skimp on the fonts?
Re:X11 (Score:1)
I am running right now on Sparc Solaris using XFree86 3.3.3. It doesn't have some of the features I would like like loadable server modules but otherwise seems to work. All of the original Sun drivers from X11R6.3 are still there. Indeed they would have had to still be there for XFree86 to support Sparc Linux, as it does.
Re:Completely wrong. (Score:1)
In my dual-head system,
I am currently running
2048x768 : 1.5 Mpixels
2304x864 : 1.99 Mpix
2560x1024: 2.6 Mpix
Normal single screen modes:
1024x768 : 0.8 Mpix
1280x1024: 1.3 Mpix
1600x1200: 1.92 Mpix
So I get as many or more pixels, more screen surface area, save money, better refresh if I go down a tube size.
My suggestion wasn't about DPI. On paper, dots are almost everything. On screen, flicker happens. I'm not sure how close your eyes are to your screen, but I'm not anywhere near bothered by minute text blockiness as I am with flicker and high tube prices for marginal size and performance gain.
Re:NO! Go dual head and save money. (Score:2)
You think THIS is a good idea? A 15" unit shouldn't be run above 1024x760 for ergonomic reasons.
But really, I'm ahead of the game. People blow good cash on a 21" monitor when they should go dual head with 17's and 19's. I'm willing to gamble that the two 19's cost less than a single 21" can give you better than 70% more total pixels at a better refresh rate with more than 70% additional screen surface area. That is from my own analysis. I'd post the numbers, but I lost them. I considered getting a 19" when the costed about 400$, but I found a pair of cheap 17" for about 350$, an extra video card for the remainder savings (Matrox Millennium 8MB - solid units) and come out way ahead. MetroX also supports multiple screens on all Matrox products.
Re:Maybe so, but not everybody uses X (Score:1)
So far, I see no great contradiction to his (admittedly made-up) statistic.
Re:NO! (Score:2)
17" = 1280x1024
19" = 1600x1200
21" = 1880x1440
Great idea. However, I have yet to see any monitor which is even capable of those resolutions at the sizes you have indicated. I don't know of any 15" monitors which can do more than 1024x768, and I can't even get my 17" higher than that (never mind that it says quite plainly on the box that it should be possible). All of the 19" monitors I've found can't do more than 1280, and the 21-inchers can't do more than 1600.
Re:XFree86 could be a little more open (Score:1)
This is correct. I posted it in February, while the DRI code was released in June.
Normally everyone who sends email to XFree86@XFree86.Org and states "I would like to work on ABC" with "ABC" somewhat more informative than "XFree86" or "drivers" will get an application form within a few days.
That's what I anticipated (and reading this now explicitly from your side doesn't exactly make me feel better :-)
As to the generic issue here, yes, I think that XFree86 should open up its development a bit. And guess what, we will.
Glad to read this. I want to stress here that I don't want you folks to lower your quality criteria, just be more transparent, please. The usual way to do this is having some public forum of discussion. At that time I applied I did not find one.
I don't want to transmit the message that the XFree86 folks are snobs, but rather (as the title of this message suggests) that the Xfree86 could make it easier for people to find out what is going and eventually participate.
The release of the 3.9.x snapshots is a first step in that direction, more will follow.
I would rather be able to follow the developers discussion (and join it on occasion). Without knowing where the project is heading I find it rather useless (for me) to have snapshots, with the exception of analyzing it to find out what is going on. :)
To illustrate that I am not just ranting let me end this post with a link that might be interesting for the BSD crowd:
http://www.netcologne.de/~nc-vanwoma/ riva-glx [netcologne.de]
Re:XFree86 could be a little more open (Score:1)
At the last count that I saw, xfree had ~1.5 million lines of code. That's a whole lot of code to understand before you can start to do any serious development.
it would a rather hefty time commitment, and xfree strikes me as the kind of project where you'd want to know how the whole thing works before you started mucking around too much.
who knows about 4.0, though. a lot of things have been rewritten from scratch, if i read correctly. could be a whole different ballpark. but i doubt it.
Re:Glint driver (Score:1)
Verdana! (Score:1)
Definitely ... I'm using Verdana as my browser font (running the xfstt font server) and it definitely looks very nice on a 15" 1024x768 screen, even with Netscape's questionable rendering technbiques. (Can't wait to see how it'll look in Nav 5 though!)
Plus, there's just something deliciously ironic about taking something free from Microsoft (their web fonts collection) and them not getting any platform lock-in in return.
Missed it! (Score:1)
Today, BOOM, It's there! But flooded...
--
Marques Johansson
displague@linuxfan.com
Re:XFree4.0 (Score:1)
Furthermore - Riva 128/TNT cards with GL support are also $99 at compusa...
In X i can get 32bit color at all modes my monitor supports, and the framerates are still awesome.
What home user really needs much beyond that?? (attn smartasses: don't even bother answering that question)
--
Marques Johansson
displague@linuxfan.com
Re:DRI - oh yes, finally (Score:1)
I have a Creative TNT card, and q3test runs in the seconds-per-frame range. Maybe I've just installed the libraries wrong, but as of now the TNT drivers perform very poorly.
Stripping away religious issues, what 3D card PERFORMS best in the games available _right_now_ for Linux?
--
Re:DRI - oh yes, finally (Score:1)
3D under linux
1) 3dfx
Binary-only drivers using glide. It's worked under linux for ages.
2) Matrox G200/G400
Vendor supplied near, but not complete documentation.
3) TNT/TNT2
Vendor supplied/supported 3D acceleration with full source.
Not a hard choice for me =) (well, ok, G400 is still a possibility, it seems to be slightly cheaper and some of the features are really nice. Not that I have space for two monitors, so the dual head support is useless)
Re:woop! (Score:1)
-Scott
Re:NO! (Score:1)
ViewSonic 815 will do 1880x1440. Good luck getting an off-the-shelf video card that will drive that... (most seem to max out at 1600x1200).
to be honest, on my system here (ATI RageII Pro driving a GW2K "VX900" 19" monitor at 1600x1200), I see ZERO difference between turning on "sharpen screen fonts" and having it off, in Windows NT.
Anti-aliasing does less and less at higher resolutions.
Re:X11 (Score:1)
Re:What's New with XFree 3.3.4 and 3.9.15?? (Score:1)
http://www.xfree86.org/releaseplans.html
It'll tell you a quick update on the difference.
Re:Glint driver (Score:1)
branden compiles? (Score:1)
Re:fonts.dir (Score:1)
No, I think he's talking about fonts like the nexus font (among others). If you've ever used xfontsel, those fonts don't show up because they don't have a true font string embedded in them, I ran into this problem trying to use the gtk fontselect box...fonts under X just suck.
GGI on DGA advantage (Score:1)
And, of course, you get the usual LibGGI advantage of extreme display independence. No more releasing separate console and X versions.
---
Fear not, it's being worked on... (Score:1)
---
Re:GGI on DGA advantage (Score:1)
You cannot change resolution/mode at all with DGA. It's not within the DGA API. You can use the vidmode extension, which is XFree86 specific, to change resolution but not depth (as of 3.3.3).
This is true, and it is in fact exactly my point ("cannot be done with plain DGA") -- DGA by itself cannot change the resolution or depth. Even with vidmode, however, you still can't change the depth on-the-fly. At least not yet.
Programs like xmame and snes9x exploit this, with DGA used for speed and vidmode to change res.
I was aware of this.
LibGGI's DGA target can use fbcon, if present, to change both the resolution and depth, while getting access to the framebuffer via DGA. That's just kind of neat, and if vidmode or some other extension evolves to do the same, that's fine.
But you're a Berlin developer, no wonder you know nothing about X or XFree86 extensions.
Why the hostility? There's no need to resort to these sort of attacks just to correct a simple omission on my part. Honestly, what reason do you have here to feel either angry OR threatened? If GGI was intended to replace X in most situations, LibGGI wouldn't display on X, and they wouldn't have XGGI (an XFree86-derived server that uses LibGGI), would they?
Chill out, man. Us Berlin folks are just playing around with a heavily CORBA-ized Fresco-esque GUI. It's no threat to your hegemony unless Berlin turns out to be better for users and developers than X is. If it turns out to be a bad idea, you're safe. Let the ideas speak for themselves -- on their own merits and demerits -- and leave the ad hominem attacks out of this.
On the other hand, how much longer are you going to keep grafting extensions onto X to work around deficiencies in the initial design? It never hurts to experiment with a clean design once and a while under such conditions, and I really don't think the Berlin folks deserve to be vilified for doing so.
---
Re:YES!, dammit! :-) (Score:2)
1) Install TrueType fonts. Use the xfs server from Redhat 6.0 or xfstt.
2) Install the Arial font from Windows according to instructions with the TT font renderer.
3) In Netscape's preferences Appearance/Fonts, use Arial as the default font, click on the Allow Scaling button.
4) In the same place, type the number 16 (16 point font) in the textbox next to the "Allow Scaling" button.
5) Save preferences
At this point your fonts should be MUCH better on all pages, and comparable to the Windows handling of fonts. This works for my home 15' monitor at 1024x768 and my 21' at work at 1024x1280. This is an OLD problem with Netscape, one that Mozilla doesn't have (thank god).
Oh, one problem with this setup. Netscape doesn't save the point size of scalable fonts, but rather defaults to 12. You have to enter the '16' into the text box every time you start Netscape...
jf
Re:Why is font handling so bad? (Score:3)
1) The Type1 font engine was donated by IBM many many moons ago. It works, and sometimes well, if you have a good font, but has never been optimized.
2) Many of the standard XFree fonts were donated and they weren't really high quality.
Personally, I find that TrueType fonts look very nice in X (with RedHat 6.0's xfs (freetype) or xfstt). I've compared them with the local NT box with a 'real' TT font renderer, and they are at least as good.
One thing to remmeber is that Netscape is broken as regards scaleable fonts. That's why some pages look really odd with tiny fonts. However, if you do a trick (deals with typing in the font size in preferences), my Netscape fonts look as good as NT's on all pages.
jf
NM2260 (MagicGraph 256ZX) support? (Score:1)
Re:XFree86 could be a little more open (Score:1)
Yep. Well, maybe not turned down, but certainly not replied to. A year or two ago, I sent a message to their main address volunteering to help with the Matrox driver, and never heard a peep back.
John
X Windows 3.3.5 (Score:2)
X 3.3.5 should be released in a week or two.
Not everything made it in this release...
Multi-head & Xinerama: How are they? (Score:1)
---------
Re:Multi-head & Xinerama: How are they? (Score:1)
---------
woop! (Score:1)
This is NOT an official word from Branden. There is no timeline as to when this will be available from debian.
Re:woop! (Score:1)
Fortunately, the build system(and debian/patches/*) makes this new version easier to work with.
Re:woop! (Score:1)
Re: Cool. Now I know why Debian is buggy! (Score:1)
Now, if they had a buggy/unstable version of X in potato when potato became stable, that would be a different story.
Re:XFree4.0 (Score:1)
Re:Yes (Score:2)
Re:Yes (Score:2)
The, shall we say "novel", theory about how antialiasing works, by playing with your eye focus, simply isn't born out by any facts. I eagerly await revelation to the contrary.
Mirrors anyone? (Score:1)
Re:Look here: (Score:1)
25.4*20*0.75=1731 dots per row
In other words, you might be able to sync up to the higher resolution, but you aren't really getting better than 1800x1440 pixels.
Re:NO! (Score:1)
Re:No, actually. (Score:1)
CID font support (Score:1)
At last, we have support for CID fonts. Now if the Japanese font makers would only get off their collective asses (*cough*Morisawa*cough*) and release fonts under a fucking REASONABLE license, then I'd be happy...
DRI - oh yes, finally (Score:2)
I'd like to see what a DRI driver can do for Q3Test, as this is what was holding back cards like the TNT2 and G400 from performing well.
With LAN tournaments coming up, I would love to be able to compete with Q3Test/Q2 native on Linux. That would certainly raise eyebrows for the Windows folk
make that three issues (and some solutions) (Score:1)
Indeed they do look quite nice if you use a good font. However, you're forgotting about antialiasing. That's part of what makes Windows tt rendering so good. Freetype already supports this, so it shouldn't be too hard to hack something in, though the proper way is to use alpha-blended drawables, I expect. Perhaps with the hardware accelerated Imlib extension in XFree 5.0?
2) Many of the standard XFree fonts were donated and they weren't really high quality.
This is definitely true. Microsoft, oddly enough, has commissioned some very good truetype screen fonts. Unfortunately, there're not redistributable, but you can download them here [microsoft.com] for free; unzip works on the Windows 'self-extracting'
One thing to remeber is that Netscape is broken as regards scaleable fonts. That's why some pages look really odd with tiny fonts. However, if you do a trick (deals with typing in the font size in preferences), my Netscape fonts look as good as NT's on all pages.
I think this is more a function of the lack of resolution-independence in the OS. Most operating systems make different (wrong) assumptions about the physical resolution of your monitor, so a webpage that looks reasonable under one OS won't on another. See this tidbits article [tidbits.com] for details.
Re:make that three issues (extracting MS fonts) (Score:1)
Ah, I spoke too soon. unzip works on the Win 3.1 versions (I think it just skips the executable part and looks for the zip header). The Win32 versions don't work--you're right--and some of them aren't available in the old format.
I tried wine on them, but the (older--981018) version I had handy didn't work. Other options: borrow a Mac or Windows machine, or try decoding the mac format one. There are some tools for doing that under linux, but I didn't have any luck.
Re:DRI isn't the only thing needed for performance (Score:1)
Re:NO! (Score:1)
Like some other people have mentioned, you probably want to shell out some cash for your monitor. It's one of the parts of your computer that will actually last more than a few years, so go ahead and splurge on it.
"The value of a man resides in what he gives,
and not in what he is capable of receiving."
Re:NO! (Score:1)
Re:YES!, dammit! :-) (Score:1)
Re:broke my font server (Score:1)
Re:Yes (Score:1)
Re:XFree86 needs the GPL! NOT (Score:2)
X11 doesn't have the advertising clause of the BSD licence, so basically X11 code can ``become'' any other licence. It's truly all things to all people.
Cheers,
Joshua.
Re:Multi-head & Xinerama: How are they? (Score:2)
The second thing to know is that 3.9 is highly unstable, especially with multihead. Feel free to fix bugs and submit patches if you do hack around with the 3.9.15 release, though. =)
(I actually played with multihead on a Microchannel/XGA-2 system, but that's another story).
Cheers,
Joshua.
sounds pretty sweet (Score:1)
OpenGL support whoo hoo! (Score:1)
If they support OpenGL for my card (i740) half as well as it is supported under Win98, then I don't have to boot into Windows to play Quake anymore!
Wheee!
I heard the dude (too buzzed to remeber his name) from XFree86 talk about 4.0 at the LinuxWorldExpo and I have been very excited ever since. True type font support (tho I already got that set up, and they will be using the same thing (xfsft and FreeType)) plus more OpenGL and Multi-head support.
Then if KDE comes out with a great 2.0 (Especially with high color icons) w/ a better looking widget set, then the future indeed looks bright for Linux on the desktop.
(I like GNOME, it looks way better than KDE, but it just doesn't seem to work as well at this point (except for it's file manager, which is way faster than kfm))
alright.. i'll stop with my drunken ramblings.. but DAMMIT, I'M EXCITED!
-geekd
Re:Why even release it . . . (Score:1)
Ack.. I hope by previous releases you dont mean 2.0.x . just finished downloading all the source, and about to try compiling with 2.1.1 on RedHat 6.0
Re:NO! (Score:1)
Glint driver (Score:1)
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
Thanks, but you misunderstood... (Score:1)
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
My 17" does 1600x1200 (Score:1)
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
Re:DRI - oh yes, finally (Score:2)
And it seems like it's more a GLX crowd than a G200 crowd now, despite the mailing list name. Stuff like GART and DMA support isn't Matrox specific.
Re:i740 is a terrible card... (Score:1)
Why can't intel stick with something that it is good at.. like well ummm like.. so okay.. x86 processors..
Re:XFree4.0 (Score:1)
I for sure know more than 4 Linux users who have supported hardware, and besides, if you check Linux 3D [linux3d.org], you'll se that support for other cards is under way as well!!
---
Ilmari
Remove the capital letters from the e-mail-address
YES!, dammit! :-) (Score:1)
Anti-aliasing may not be the 'right' solution in the most anal sense but it makes life better for lots of people. e.g. back in 1991 Acorn introduced a fully scalable, anti-aliased font system on their machines and all I had was a 50Hz telly but it still looked pretty nice. Today Netscape does some 'orrible things to my fonts and I can't afford to buy a posher monitor, so I for one would really really like some more apps to use it.
Hey ho.
Why even release it . . . (Score:2)
"Due to a few important changes that came after 3.3.4 was finalized , a 3.3.5 release (which will include binaries) will be made in the next couple of weeks."
Ok, so they're releasing this version, which is known to be somewhat incomplete under a full blown version name. Why? Shouldn't they just call it a pre-release or a beta? It's only a couple weeks until the Real Deal comes out. Why say "Well, We have this new version of Xfree, but its got problems and we'll issue the fixes under the next version." Doesn't this sound like some idiot software company out of Redmond who releases service packs to fix service packs?
Ok, that was a little too much of a parallel. But do you see my point. If an Xfree86 release addmittively sucks, don't give it the entitlement of a full version number. Just call it 3.3.x-pre or something and let the world know: "For bleeding edge users only." At least they were half-thinking like that . . . they left out the documentation so idiots like me can't see if I need it for my Banshee. . .
Re:DRI - oh yes, finally (Score:2)
BFWIW, I've found that the Voodoo 2 is the "best" solution for the games I want to play under Linux (Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3).
For the record, I bought a Diamond Viper 770 (TNT2 Ultra) and it plays Q2 ok, just Q3 is too slow (yet). The 3dfx plays all these games very well.
But, I got the TNT2 card because the Voodoo is running out of gas and XF86 4 with DRI is what I expect to use with the TNT2 to replace it.
Granted, gaming is not my primary activity in Linux, but I'm getting really sick of dual-booting back to Win98 to play games.
X11 (Score:2)
XFree86 needs more developers. (Score:4)
It's kinda sad how short the XFree team is on developers when more or less 99.999% of Linux users use X and 100% of distributions package it. It could really use some more commercial support from RedHat and SUSE, though they have helped a little bit in the past (RHat donated NeoMagic code once...).
For information on becoming an XFree86 developer, please visit the XFree86 developer [xfree86.org] page.
Also, you non-programmers that use X can do your part by knowing that RedHat [redhat.com] and other commercial Linux vendors have ears for their customers and showing concern for the frequency of XFree86 release cycles is a good way to let them know that support for X development is very important to the success of Linux.
Re:XFree86 could be a little more open (Score:3)
somewhat closed approach. There are other issues (the devel
sources often contain drivers that were written under NDA
and for which we haven't received permission to release,
yet. Those obviously can't be publicly available).
The 3.9.15 release is somewhat a test case. If we receive
tons of support email from people trying to use it and
asking for help, then we might revert back to the closed
cycle that we did before. I certainly hope that none
of the distributions will attempt to include 3.9.15.
It is definitely not ready for that. SuSE will NOT include
it on their next distribution, btw...
Don't get me wrong. Bug reports (and of course, patches)
are extremely welcome. I saw another comment that we didn't
respond to bug reports. My answer to that is simple.
We get so many reports, and there are only so few people
to respond. Usually none of them go unseen and as long
as they contain a fix or the fix is obvious, things
usually get fixed as well.
Of course, the 800 or so bug reports "my Trio3D card
doesn't work" didn't really help to fix the problem...
Dirk
Re:XFree86 could be a little more open (Score:4)
of emails a day, so I must admit that I don't
remember the incident that you are commenting on.
There is no competition whatsoever between the
work that PI does and the work that SuSE does
for 3D. I am sure that Frank LaMonica from PI
will be happy to comment on his take on the issue.
Most likely your request came before the
DRI stuff was released to XFree86 (at which point
I usually deflected people since the stuff they
were looking for simply wasn't there, yet).
Normally everyone who sends email to XFree86@XFree86.Org
and states "I would like to work on ABC" with "ABC"
somewhat more informative than "XFree86" or "drivers"
will get an application form within a few days.
And those people are always added to the devel
team.
As to the generic issue here, yes, I think that
XFree86 should open up its development a bit.
And guess what, we will. The release of the
3.9.x snapshots is a first step in that direction,
more will follow.
Dirk Hohndel