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New X-Free86 Snapshot Available 75

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-bang-on dept.
bento writes "There is a new snapshot(3.9.16) of XFree86 available. It now supports nVidia, i740, 3dfx Banshee, and the Voodoo3. " You can all wipe the drool of your chins: its gonna be awhile before this morphs into XF86 v4.0, but its cool to see/touch and compile progress. Update: 08/31 10:32 by CT : here are the release notes if you crave more data.
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New X-Free86 Snapshot Available More

New X-Free86 Snapshot Available

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  • overhead projectors and laptops ? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have had persistent problems getting the Dell CPi laptops at work to switch back and forth between overhead projectors and the LCD correctly. A common problem (in all the X's I've tried that worked at all) is that the screen shifts by about %25 when you go the to the overhead. Repeatedly cycling between the external monitor and the LCD causes it to get sicker and sicker til it freezes or crashes.

    Demos of project software on linux laptops have gone a long way toward making linux prevasive here, so this is important if we are going to abandon Windows and Powerpoint entirely at somepoint. (Presentations written and given using StarOffice created a lot of interest.)

    Anyway, this doesn't seem to be a focus of any of the changelog stuff. Is anyone working on this ? Has anyone sent email to xfree86 about it besides me ?
  • As it's going to be a while before 4.0 comes out, will other cards (notably g[24]00 via glx) become part of 4.0? I don't remeber seeing anything specific on the glx pages/list, but then, it doesn't really matter to me (I got it to work and it wasn't that hard to do).
  • The Voodoo3 can do 32-bit color in 2D. It is only limited to 16-bit color textures in 3D. I'm happily running X at 1280x1024 in 32-bit color as I type this.

    XFree86_3DFX-SVGA-3.3.3-5
    [debecker@sycorax ~]$ xdpyinfo
    name of display: :0.0
    version number: 11.0
    vendor string: The XFree86 Project, Inc; VMWare; Daryll Strauss
    ...
    screen #0:
    dimensions: 1280x1024 pixels (433x347 millimeters)
    resolution: 75x75 dots per inch
    depths (1): 24
    root window id: 0x26
    depth of root window: 24 planes
    ...
    visual:
    visual id: 0x22
    class: TrueColor
    depth: 24 planes
    ...

    Oh, and Q3test for Linux absolutely rocks at 1024x768 on this system :)
  • The topic says it all. I am stuck using the G400 options. 300Mhz ram dac vs 360, 16MBs ram vs 32, single head vs two.. sigh...
  • Oh, c'mon! That's why there are mirrors. I'm grabbing mine off ftp.rge.com.

    This is big news for all XFree users. It deserves more attention than simply a listing next to the nth update of some nifty little gnome applet.

    If you're an XFree developer, you're able to get releases that the rest of aren't. Quit complaining that you can't get the general distribution because you're too lazy to use mirrors.
  • Just press enter to close the window.. You don't have to use the mouse, you know.. :)
  • Athena widgets are the only easy to use widget set that is guaranteed to be on any X installation. So it forms a nice lowest common denominator.

    The standard X clients tend to use Xaw, even xterm. If you can't stand the look and feel of standard Xaw and find Xaw3d is less than exciting, then try neXtaw - the NeXT look and feel grafted onto Xaw.

    Simply compile neXtaw and symlink the Xaw libs to it. It's available from http://windowmaker.mezaway.org/toolkits/nextaw.htm l

    Chris
    Chris Wareham
  • Right now the Gx00 GLX drivers are being done on the XFree86 3 codebase. It is likely that the first public release of the accellerated GLX will be released on that codebase. Once optimizations are done on that codebase then porting to the new architecture will begin. There are some fairly substantial changes in how things are set up between the two architectures that could make it a fairly large port. On the plus side, 4.0 probably won't ship for a while so having something on the old server platform before 4.0 ships is good.

  • I don't know about other chipsets, but the new MGA driver outperforms AcceleratedX. Not only that, but there are more optimizations that are going to be made before the final release that should speed it up even more. Don't always believe the marketing drivel. Though, some of the cards will never be fully supported by XFree86 because the manufacturers refuse to release proper documentation. These cards will always run slower. My advice is to just not buy them.

  • Yes, I believe Diamond is going to be developing the drivers.
  • Most of the XFree86 distributions I've seen come with a readme that says, more or less:

    make World

    Failing that (if you really want to do it the hard way), xmkmf -a will execute 'make Makefiles', which should produce your Makefiles for you.
  • Anybody know when support for ATI's Rage Fury will be added?
  • Forget it. The only way to get a Rage 128 working is with the framebuffer support in kernel 2.{2,3}.x + XF_FBDev. It's slow, tricky to setup, and only 60Hz. but it works. The Mach 64 server does NOT work. Go to
    http://www.0wned.org/~cain/ragefury.htm
    for the frame buffer stuff. ATI contacted me when I emailed them about this. they will be supporting XFree86 on this (rage 128 support) and mentioned 3D support is in the works too. :)
  • So have you tried it?? I am killing for a G400 for the multihead support - but I don't want to get one without knowing for sure that it'll work with some xserver out there.. I prefer xfree86, but if a commercial vendor supports this hardware first ... $$$

  • ...recompile continually.

    We're going to win this war because we can reconfigure our officers. (Apologies to Iliad)

    --
    QDMerge [rmci.net] 0.21!
  • I believe these cards can already be used with the Mach64 server. Give it a try...
  • I'm actualy building a copy of linux on /dev/hda5 on my workstation,but its going slow
  • Hey, I have been using redhat for about 2 years, and Redhat 6 has made me sick. It makes me feel as if its not real, and friends of mine in germany feel realy sick about suse 6.2, i mean how do you accidently compile your own kenrel.

    If anybody out there, feels the same way, we can be found in #linux on XWorld.

    but seriously, if you try to make something user friendly, your genna alianate a few users, hey, i admit it, i love gnome, and i like some of the kde/qt stuff, but i dont like the feeling i get from redhat 6. Hell, they even got rid of xgal, i like xgal!

    well, cya, i know im genna get flamed over this one, but i dont realy even care.

  • Anyone know what's the respective timeline of XF86 4.0's scheduled release, versus the next RH dist?

    If 4.0's not going into 6.1, there's really no point in getting 6.1 in the first place. Might as well wait for 6.2.
    --

  • i'm for XFree[0-9A-Za-z]?\s4

    naaah... but... why not? ;-)
  • argh... that was a failure.

    XFree[0-9A-Za-z]*\s4

    or

    Xfree[\w\W\d]*\s4

  • XFree (Score:1)

    by warmi ( 13527 )
    I wonder why AcceleratedX consistently outperforms XFree sometimes by factor 2 to 1. Is this related to having better access to hardware specs or simply having better programmers ?

  • MGA ?? I have G200 and tested it both AcceX and XFree ( using x11pref ) and on almost every test AccelX was substancialy faster.
    In fact, one doesn't need benchmarks to notice that.
  • AcceleratedX on G400 is the fastest card yet - look up www.xig.com, they have benchmarks. It is just as fast as on Windows.Really sweet.
  • Dude, one mistake and you are up in the arms about my spelling. Well, consider this - English is my second language and therefore I don't give a damn what some AC looser thinks about it...
  • Haven't tried Q3Test but the driver itself is rather slow ... It is much much slower than G200 on another Linux box I have here so I think support for Voodoo is still in experimental stage.
  • That about sez it all. - I'm happy because this fixes a bug in support for the ATI Rage LT Pro which caused random crashes in X - was damn annoying.

    Anyway, on with downloading and testing the new server.
  • My experience with X's Voodoo3 support has been little discouraging. I really love the VESA framebuffer -console, but that allways produces some weird shit on the screen (mouse cursor to be more specific. Some times the cursor totally disapears, sometimes it's just a black square, sometimes (I could go on and on)... Also, if I've used windows before I start linux (with loadlin), I get similar problems. I don't know if 3.9.x has these problems, but 3.4.x sure does.
  • I have seen 3.9.15 running on a G400 with multihead support.

    :)
  • I don't know if this will help you but these are
    the steps that I took to get it to compile on my system (gcc-2.91.66).

    Make a backup of your old stuff
    cp -a /usr/X11R6 /usr/X11R6/old

    Copy the xc/config/cf/xf86site.def to
    xc/config/cf/host.def

    Append the lines:

    #define DefaultCCOptions -Wall
    #define DefaultGcc2i386Opt -O2
    #define LibraryCDebugFlags -O2

    to the host.def to override the -ansi -pedantic flags which prevent it from being compiled on Redhat 6.0.

    Then build/compile Xfree

    make World >& world.log
    make install >& install.log
    make install.man >& man.log

    After completion make sure you copy your old libXt.so.6.0 to the new location so that Netscape
    will work properly.

    cp /usr/X11R6/old/lib/libXt.so.6.0 /usr/X11R6/lib/

    Like I said....that worked for me...unsure if it will work for you.


  • I don't know if this will help you but these are
    the steps that I took to get it to compile on my system (gcc-2.91.66).

    Make a backup of your old stuff
    cp -a /usr/X11R6 /usr/X11R6/old

    Copy the xc/config/cf/xf86site.def to
    xc/config/cf/host.def

    Append the lines:

    #define DefaultCCOptions -Wall
    #define DefaultGcc2i386Opt -O2
    #define LibraryCDebugFlags -O2

    to the host.def to override the -ansi -pedantic flags which prevent it from being compiled on Redhat 6.0.

    Then build/compile Xfree

    make World >& world.log
    make install >& install.log
    make install.man >& man.log

    After completion make sure you copy your old libXt.so.6.0 to the new location so that Netscape
    will work properly.

    cp /usr/X11R6/old/lib/libXt.so.6.0 /usr/X11R6/lib/

    Like I said....that worked for me...unsure if it will work for you.
  • Well,if XGal is your quality metric for a distro, why not just make XGal-linux that does nothing else? :)
  • What ever happend to the most glorious saying within the open source movement? (see subject)

    -- Chris Chabot
    "I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This may be a little offtopic, but is xfree86 like linux 2.0.36, and uncompilable with gcc 2.95 and pgcc? I've tried compiling them, and they start, but immediately crash after loading netscape (signal 11). I've seen that mandrake has successfully compiled xfree86 with pgcc, and I was wondering if there was a trick to doing it. Thanks.
  • sounds like a good idea. of course, that idea could also be extended to cover basically the whole thing (or, rather, in someone's more realistic view, only the parts that lack/take more time & effort) so that the XFree86 project could have a panel that designated the individual projects that were developed by groups, and then they could just put the finished pieces together into a nice, finished product. hmm.. smart idea of yours!
  • I don't see why they have to keep telling us so many warnings about how unstable this is. It's harder to get these snapshots up and running then the newest experimental kernel. Everyone knows that this is pre-release. its not going to burn your computer nor format your hardrive. However there have been experimental kernels which have caused file corruprtion, security flaws, etc...
    Yet they make it sound soo... extremelly dangerous to use these X-severs. I know that it's unstable but so is cvs enlightenment and I choose to use it anyway.
  • call me a moronic simpleton if you like, but how does one get this to compile? I dloaded 3.9.15 and tried imake and xmkmf with as many options as i could. What ever i did it wouldnt recurse and do all the makefiles. Surely i dont have to cd to each dir and do imake in every one??
  • Hopefully not much bigger than 3.3.1?

    The module system sounds particularly hopeful, since it sounds as if modules are not loaded until needed, speeding startup and reducing memeory usage. I don't think I've ever used pex, and I don't even know what xie is.

    Does anyone know why there are *two* truetype backends?
  • More importantly will it support the New GeForce 256 from Nvidia!! This card kicks ass, and if you havent then DO check it out!
  • Could someone post a link to download 3.4? I can't seem to find it on their FTP site... TIA
  • Looks like someone forgot something.
  • Is it just me, or when you try to view the release notes from xfree86's ftp and you get the window telling you to try a different server, the window that pops up (in netscape), is too large to see and impossible to close. That's what I get for using Windows I guess.
  • Wow, what a great idea. Let's make stable, new technology inacessable to the masses so some stuck up prick can get a few Kbps more bandwidth. Sure, make things hard to compile so people use Windows and proprietary software out of frustration. What an amazing community spirit you have...
  • Because thats the only way I could get my new box up and running with X support.

    I had to download XSVGA.tgz and copy it into the right dir, and now my Roadster 3D card works!! woo hoo!!
  • What are the prospects for NV10 drivers? Anybody hear buzz on that? (For 4.0 that is)
  • True, but the card is out there for some privileged few to develop with (so far as I have heard anyway) (and it is definately out in limited release to some advance companies now), and presumably Nvidia has done some work along these lines. (I've heard bits and pieces about a Linux openGL driver). If the card does indeed ship by the end of Sept as buzz would have it, it would be great to be able to play w/ and code w/ it's keen new features from within Linux (rather than just Win9x/NT).
  • !/bin/bash
    #Modify with filenames as necessary... ;)
    #
    # YMMV
    find *.gz -exec tar -zxvf {} \;
    cd xc
    less README; less INSTALL
    echo "You should know enough to compile this now,"
    echo "but be sure to BACK UP your"
    echo "/usr/X11R6 directory before going"
    echo "any further."
  • Well, it'll help for the card to be *finished* first...
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • That would make sense if XFree3.9 were stable technology. However, it's not. It's a prerelease snapshot, not a stable version. Using XFree3.9 is like using Linux2.3. Not a Good Idea. And so if the whole world decides to play with it and ends up stopping actual XFree developers from getting the source tree so they can work on it (admittedly, the guy could wait a bit, but I can understand his frustration), that does cause something of a problem for those who actually are working on getting it to the masses who scream for free software and scream for it now, now, now.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Just remove -ansi -pedantic from config/cf/xfree86.cf
    (atleast if you have glibc 2.1).
    The problem is in that it also #defines
    _GNU_SOURCE, which causes the glibc header
    files to have lots fun stuff that's not ANSI
    compliant.

    Also, before upgrading you should know that
    it seems to still be in a very experimental state,
    I'm seeing funnyness like nothing happening after clicking a link in netscape.
  • Version 3.4 of XFree86 already supports the 3dfx Banshee and Voodoo3's. It works quite well on my machine. :)
  • I just like to keep bringing this up.

    Jane Curtin: Damn it! It's not just for x86 anymore!

    (You may be too young to catch the Saturday Night Live reference.)

    And what happens when everyone starts using 'IA32' and 'IA64'?

    Maybe version 4.0 should be called, 'XF4'.

    This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.

  • Try Here [xfree86.org].
  • I noticed there are many improvements to the xterm program provided with X. This is good news; the terminal emulation provided by most X terminal programs is pretty poor. Unfortunately, all this effort will have to be duplicated for the terminal emulators in the Gnome and KDE desktop environments. I wonder if most of the emulation details couldn't be put into a toolkit independant library and shared between these projects.
  • HEHE... your thinking screenshot arn't you??.
  • Well, its more of a preliminaty examination. You wouldn't let a crop duster pilot fly and f14 without giving him a test first. Same as you wanta make sure only the people who can handle the negative effects of installing the newest software will be installing it. You don't want it to crash average joes computer and have him cursing x86 and never using it again do you?

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