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Too bad XiG no longer makes their video card drivers available for individuals:

Notice

Xi Graphics, Inc. has ceased developing graphics
drivers and licensing its SW products for the
UNIX/Linux market on a per computer system basis.

Hopefully they will also be more commercial-source friendly as well. I've "resorted" to buying XiG's product in the past, because Xorg wasn't working quite right for me... but I (and many others with driver problems) simply don't have that option unless AMD passes the info to commercial vendors such as these as well. Yes, I know FOSS is all that, but when you need things to Just Work, sometimes it's easier to pay the money.

CDE (Common Desktop Environment) has never been open source. It is available for Linux from Xi Graphics, but you'll pay for it and in the end, it's more hassle than it's worth due to the fact that you need to use their "Accelerated X Server" to run it instead of your standard X.org installation.

There is a petition to open source CDE that looks like it may be successful. I, for one, sincerely hope so; I know that CDE is well outdated, but I got used to using it on our school's Sun boxes during my grad studies, and I wouldn't mind at least having the option to run it at home.

If you really want performance out of X windows on Linux, but a commercial X server. I may cost you a few $$, but its well worth it.

There are things hardware vendors will share with closed source shops that they just don't want to make free to the world for their competitors to see.

Xi make a nice X server: http://www.xig.com/

Yes, Xi Graphics is still in business.

Many of these laptops with odd ball screens have a real problem: The native resolution of the screen isn't supported by the video-bios.

Why is this a problem for Linux users ?

Last time I checked, Xorg/Xfree86 didn't support resolutions your video card didn't advertise. Which becomes a real PITA because now you are either forced to use the screen with chopped off ends, or full screen with the image being badly stretched out.

You could use the closed source XiG X server and you wouldn't have these issues. But a) it cost a pretty penny and b) they software itself is kinda dumb. (You'll install their X server, but you won't get any psuedo-rpm/dpkg's to trick the distro into thinking you have a regular X installed. It becomes a nightmare with dependencies.)

For accelerated graphics, try the XiG server. It's not free, but it works damn well and they support a lot of chipsets.

Also,has anyone ever used a Synthagram monitor? The adverts make them look awesome, and it's only $500 more than this one.

Accelerated-X!!! There's also Metro-X, though Metro Link's webpage appears to be down and I can't find them otherwise.

Laugh all you want about paying for commercial software, but when it comes to these quality products, it's worth it.

Some info about this commercial X server. I wanted a Linux laptop, but neither wanted to spend a ton of money and have to fight with the damn thing to install Linux, nor spend the assload for a Mac. So I got a reasonably powerful from powernotebooks.com. So I don't care too much about the licensing issue. Does this make me evil?

I've found Xi Graphics to have a very good X Server. Only real problem is that it doesn't handle Nvidia cards. It's very fast too.

I didn't call your evidence shaky, though it is. You initially made the claim that your drivers were "awesome" but you haven't posted any benchmarks to show that the OSS process has actually resulted in fast, conformant drivers. I'll post a benchmark showing the opposite, though: Look at the Radeon 7x00 scores.

In any case, being faster than ATI's binary drivers is not big win. ATI's Linux drivers suck as bad as their earlier Radeon Windows drivers did. And every benchmark I've seen shows that the ATI DRI drivers are even *slower* than the ATI binary drivers!

I'll say it again: there are no high-quality open-source 3D drivers, where "high-quality" means being comparable in speed to the Windows driver for the card, and exposing all the OpenGL features supported by the card.

the DRI drivers for the 7x00 are much much slower as well

Weren't you the one calling my evidence shaky? The drivers for the 7x00 (R100) were open source, funded by ATI. I'm not knocking the XiG drivers by the way. I think its just great if XiG can make cash catering to the CAD market. I'm not about to shell out money for video card drivers that don't support the multimedia features of my card though. I'm knocking ATI for its change in attitude. They once supported us, and now are forcing this binary driver down our thoughts, and until very recently witheld documentation for the R300 chipset. Probably because they were embarrassed by better support by XiG than for their own driver. Like the XiG page says:

The performance of the Summit v2.0 driver proved to be faster than the more mature ATI Windows driver.

Your core confusion comes from confusing what X Windows is, possibly as a result of using Microsoft Windows. Windows does a great deal to blur the lines between the graphics display layer and the widgets on top.

X Windows is (to simplify a bit) just a way to display bits on screen. Exactly what you display is left as a problem for the next layer up. This might seem odd, but it has great benefits. This means that the user interface layer (often Gnome or KDE these days) can engage in rapid change and development while the base layer (X) can sit nice and stable. Conversely, because particular widget sets and other user interface details aren't embedded into the graphics system I can pick from competing offerings.

XFree86 is mostly stable because it works fine. There have been some important developments recently (XRender, XRandR, XVideo), but on the whole we've got what we need. The user visible improvements should take place on a higher level (Gnome, KDE, etc). Those higher levels can take advantage of the stable base X provides. All that's needed are regular driver updates for new hardware as it comes out (and bug fixes as bugs become known). The X Windows standard itself is gloriously stable. It works fine, additional functionality can be (and is) provided through extensions. That stability is key to allowing higher levels in the system to experiment.

The features you want sound like great ideas (although I notice that Microsoft Windows and MacOS doesn't support the snapshot and migration functionality you want either). But they're ideas for different layers. Complaining that X should provide them is like complaining that your dashboard should provide better traction.

Not true. I purchase quite a lot of closed source software for Linux. Some of it I run under Wine, but where possible, I buy Linux versions.

When I was working on my CS degree I purchased copies of Matlab and Mathematica, I also would have purchased Maya (went to the lab instead) if it had been less than $400 for the student version. All my windows friends found them on irc/p2p.

I used to purchase my copies of Redhat, I have the boxed sets (other than those I gave away) for every release between 5 and 7.3. However, I quit using Redhat since I received the exact same benefits for buying it as someone that downloaded it for free. I would have stuck with them if they had allowed me a year of priority access to up2date with the box set purchase. They didn't. I left. I now use Debian and am much happier with it. It isn't because I want something for free, but because I when I pay I want something more than is given away for free. If I get something better for a few dollars than I could get for nothing then I'll pay a few dollars. That is why my display is running Accellerated X. The display drivers in Xfree86 could not handle my laptops screen/videocard (1400x1050 lcd with an intel i830M graphics card) and left a nasty black border around the screen. I tried the Accellerated X demo and it worked perfect.

There IS software available to purchase for Linux. Much of it is better than the free stuff, and lots of us use it. Many people have no idea that some of it even exists. I think that many of the companies that sell Linux software and have superior products just need to spend a little more on marketing so they get some name recognition (this means you XIG). The companies also tend to get "stuck" on a distro. Many of them only release RPMs and refuse to provide instructions for other non-RPM distros, even when it works perfectly on the distro (this means you again XIG).

If the XFree86 project truly stalls (and judging by the way other major projects have fractured) then there'll be any number of groups choosing to fork it to develop with their own ideas. Unless they agree on an API or similar framework, this will make it hard for driver vendors like NVidia to target XFree86's derivatives as a platform.

What I predict then is multiple XFree86 fork projects springing up (a la 4.4BSD's fragmentation) and a decline in the quality and quantity of video support for Linux and the BSDs.

What I would *like* to see instead is some cooperation coming out of this. Or possibly a major vendor sponsoring, if they can keep their paws off the direction, an obvious target fork for hardware vendors to work with.

What I'm afraid of is that I will have to go buy an AcceleratedX license.

- J

As much as I really love VMWare (the software), I think the company's getting too high on the horse. Anybody remember that Accelerated-X package? Once the only x86 X version that would run more than one head? The one that everyone bitched about their prices? Well, I haven't even thought of them since XFree86 got dual-head running, and I imagine I'm not the only one (they were pretty arrogant on USENET, I recall).

When VMWare dropped the home pricing a couple of years ago, I had high hopes for bochs and plex86. Unfortunately, I don't have much hope these days, as development pace appears to be pretty glacial. Some Linux distros need to pitch in to fund the plex86 project. Emulation/virtualization has been commoditized enough that we shouldn't be paying $300/seat for it.

I have been thinking that what Linux needs is a good free CDE clone based on Lesstif

http://www.xig.com/

Do you realize that most of X being "slow" is really XFree86 being slow.
In fact some X servers for Linux are FASTER than Windows.

Check out the benchmarks

Just because it's a fork doesn't mean it's incompatible. Sure, some of the extra extensions may end up being incompatible- but when it comes right down to it, they're still doing X11, just as tons of other nonrelated X servers are. MetroLink's Metro-X and XiG's Accelerated-X are good examples of 3rd-party X servers, and many of the proprietary Unix vendors have their own X servers. These servers are extremely different, but they all use the X11 protocol, so though extensions may be different, apps ought to run just fine under any of them. Keith Packard's xwin isn't going to try to invent some sort of X12 protocol- it's an X11 server and thus will be compatible.

Just as Linux, BSD, SCO and a few others all provide implementations of (more or less) the "UNIX" specification on i386 hardware, there are multiple implementations of the X11R6 standard on i386-based unixes.

If you don't like XFree86, the folks at XiG would be happy to sell you a copy of AccelX. MetroLink systems still offers Metro-X (which was the bomb back in the RedHat 4 days...dunno about now), and if you don't have any money to spend, you can still download, compile and use the honest-to-god MIT/XConsortium X11R6.6 server.

If you want a windowing system that's not based on X11, your options are a bit more slender, but they're there. The Fresco project (formerly "Berlin") looks promising, as does PicoGui.

There's AcceleratedX, which I used long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away because it was one of the only X Servers that supported the Imagine128 chipset back when it was new.

Yes. It's commercial.

I believe there are others as well, but don't feel like Googleing hard enough to find them.

You can not blaim linux for bad hardware is might be implemented on.

OS support for real hardware
what is real hardware?
Dynamic hardware reconfiguration
Depends on the unix. In the end you might have to restart it all agina, but it might get better in the next release
Hot-swap hardware (incl. PCI, system boards, etc)
This is not a linux failure, this is more the case that this features are are not defined for most used hardware
POSIX compliance
The nice thing of a stnadrard is that there are so many ways of explaining it. and posix can be implented very thin.
NEBS level 3 compliance
Isn't this mainly hardware?
Telecom alarms
You are running a sun shop dont you?
NFS that works
Cough..... maybe you found an implementation that works without "features"
CDE (as opposed to cheap immitations)
like " CDE for Linux is available from Xi Graphics"
Support for all peripherals that go in the box
Not a big problem if you do not put a lot in the (standard) box 8-)
Vendor's-ass-on-the-line support
depends on the implementation. A lot of times you receive a workarround, and a year later maybe a patch.
Standards
Vendor specific standards.

Xi Graphics

I have been less than impressed, but they do work. Maybe you will find it is worth while.

is available from XI Graphics. This is a drop-in replacement for XFree86, and it includes (link points to) multimonitor support versions.

My pet peeve with the Matrox driver version is that it would not power down the second monitor, so it went to screen saver and never turned off, while the primary monitor did power off. This was indicated on the Matrox site as a known issue. From other comments here I gather there have been no releases lately of the Matrox XFree86 driver, so that's probably still true.

XI is faster than XFree86 in my subjective testing, and it works nicely. There's a free demo you can download to try it out.

Epic made the call to only support the newer nVidia cards in the demo

XiG has a free, fully functional demo of the X server which supports all the necessary features to run the UT2K3 demo. The X server runs for 30 minutes before stopping, but it can be run as many times as you like. In addition, Epic has said they're working with ATI to get S3TC supported in the binary drivers ATI has released.

If you want to try it with your Radeon under Linux, download the demo of the Xi Accelerated X server from XiG's website.

It's a fully functional demo of their server that will run for 30 minutes before killing the X server. You can run the demo as many times as you want.

Dinivin

I used to have a savage4, but I never got the 3d to work under Linux. I think the only 3d driver I found was commercial(ie. you pay for it, might as well just get an nvidia if you're going to dish out some cash). There were rumors of an open source driver in development, but I never got an address, and my source (s3planet.demon.co.uk) died a terrible death(of dead links and eventual closure).

the link to the commercial drivers

You can also download a demo above, but I'm not sure how long it lasts or what problems with it could be.

You show me better Linux alternative to XFree86 and I will agree with you.

Like this Accelerated-X?

My dell with a 1ghz tualatin and radeon 7500 64meg DDR does ~130fps in 1024x768 normal mode. the 1.2ghz tualatin is even slighty faster, and these arn't even the newest cpus. XIG's benmarks

Yes, the spec documents cost a pretty penny from what I can see. The minimum price to join the body is $2,500, and then you can access the specs. But think of all the work that has gone in to this spec by people who understand both programming and human interface. Has anyone even approached OpenGroup to see what they would charge the FSF/GNU or someone like it to access the spec and generate a free, open-source CDE? Even if it is 'full price', what's the price of going down the current GUI road: competition with Microsoft, Apple, CDE (Sun, HP, IBM, etc) versions of a GUI by a fragmented (KDE and GNOME at least). open source community. Seems better to join the one party that it's feasable to join (CDE) and spend the development cycles elsewhere, like developing better user-centric applications.

Even if no-one can/will create a group to join and access the spec, there's still the fact that almost every other platform in the computing world ships with one standard GUI look & feel, and accompanying APIs and libaries. Gnu/Linux is the only OS that seems to suffer this multiple personality disorder.

There are apparently at least a few groups of people in the open source commuity that are capable of designing the operating stuff of a GUI. What needs to happen is that a group needs to combine all those resouces and some people with good computer/human interface skills to design one community agreed on standard API and look & feel. I merely suggest CDE since it exists, it's proven and there's a lot of software already in the world that's written to use it.

->"Those 3rd party drivers for ATi are pretty shabby and not worth anybody's time."

You are smoking crack!

XIG's Summit Stealth/Accelerated-X servers have awesome performance under Linux, FreeBSD & Solaris x86.

"On account of ATI's generally/traditionally superior image quality, I'd get a Radeon over a Geforce if it weren't for that nvidia linux drivers actually take advantage of all the card's hardware features. My experience with owning an older Radeon has been that even the most concerted DRI efforts haven't put half of the Radeon's features into effect. Thus, I do not want to play games in linux with my radeon."

If you are willing to shell out a few bucks, you can get XIG's Summit Stealth/Accelerated-X drivers which provide awesome performance in both Linux/Solaris x86. Lookie here.

"On account of ATI's generally/traditionally superior image quality, I'd get a Radeon over a Geforce if it weren't for that nvidia linux drivers actually take advantage of all the card's hardware features. My experience with owning an older Radeon has been that even the most concerted DRI efforts haven't put half of the Radeon's features into effect. Thus, I do not want to play games in linux with my radeon."

If you are willing to shell out a few bucks, you can get XIG's Summit Stealth/Accelerated-X drivers which provide awesome performance in both Linux/Solaris x86. Lookie here.

XIG makes great binary only drivers for the ATI Radeon 8500. They have awesome performance in both Linux and Solaris x86.

I think these guys may have something to say about that...

I just remembered, it is possible to buy OpenGL support for the 8500, but the driver costs as much as my GeForce3 did. :P

The current DRI Radeon drivers are horrible in 3D too, and don't go anywhere near taking full advantage of the hardware. I know - we've tested it: Radeon 64 benchmarks. Note: I work for Xi Graphics, an evil, closed source, Xserver company. ;-) -jon

This is good news indeed, since Solaris is still used on x86 by some, because people say it scales better.

BTW: Xi Graphics has been shipping graphics drivers for Solaris (and Linux) for a long time. Although not for free. But when you are using Solaris, I guess you have got the proper money. (Yes, Solaris is for free now, but I think of business applications and maybe enterprise solutions)

I'm glad to see so many great desktop alternatives for Linux these days... doesn't seem like that long ago when fvwm(1) was one of the few good choices.

These days I use DeXtop, a Linux version of CDE sold and maintained by Xi Graphics. It works great along with their Accelerated X server, which I use with my Matrox G400. There have been all sorts of comments (good and bad) about Xi lately, I personally haven't had any problems with their products and AccelX feels a great deal faster than any other G400 drivers I've run across. Also, DeXtop has worked well for me on machines running XFree, not just Xi's AccelX. It's main requirement are glibc 2.1 libraries. Works well with GNOME/GTK and KDE/qt librariess, too.

For folks that want or need CDE, Motif, docs, and development tools but don't want to pay the $50 for DeXtop, Solaris X86 with Sun's linuxrun package may fit the bill for quite a bit less, perhaps even free.

My $0.04 (I rambled on a bit).

"DeXtop v2.1 contains everything that maXimum cde contained EXCEPT X server. Now that we have AX, LX, MX, 3DAX, and LGDs for laptops, single-head and multi-head cards, we separated the X server from the GUI for customer flexibility (and so we didn't have to have so many combinations as products). If you are upgrading from one of the maXimum cde products, the DeXtop Upgrade Table might be helpful."

So it would seem to me that their CDE does work with AX - look at MaXimum CDE. Are you saying it doesn't?

The funny thing about this is if you go to Xi Graphics' web site (they make a commercial product called 3D Accelerated-X), they seem to bitch about how uncooporative nVidia is with their 3D technology...

The funny thing about this is if you go to Xi Graphics' web site (they make a commercial product called 3D Accelerated-X), they seem to bitch about how uncooporative nVidia is with their 3D technology...

I've had a few CDE discussions in past months and am actually amazed to see how anxious some folks are to bury it. I use CDE at least 4 times a week (whenever I'm developing on my linux system (XiG's Maximum CDE) or my Ultra30 (Solaris 7). CDE offers a nice launch bar, decent multiple desktops, and a nice set of applications. Everything matches and looks professional, it's not funky and it doesn't look like MacOS or Windows. The Motif widget set also has a very professional, yet simple, clean look to it.

Not everyone needs or wants the ultimate in clashing, flashy, upgradable desktop environments, some of us want a well-supported, commercial product that does its job.

The V770 is supported, including gamma. http://www.xig.com/Pages/CardMfgrDiam ond.html has it right at the top.

The link above must be to something else. If you got to This card link it has all the manufacturers and the cards supported along with whether or not they support gamma correction.

My advice: Don't buy this GL server. Wait for XFree 4. Just because they're first to market doesn't mean they're the best; personally, I can't stand the thought of supporting any company which resorts to Microsoftian tactics to try to put themselves above the rest of the Linux world.

Speaking of Microsoftian tactics, they even have separate versions of their CDE for executives and developers each on desktop and laptop computers! Four different versions "optimized" to the supposedly different needs of different users, rather than having a single product which can be tuned to the needs of the individual! Pathetic.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Basically, this amounts to "only professionals need multiple GL contexts, and so you need to pay 2.5x as much to get multiple GL contexts." I find this somewhat outrageous, myself. They also make a big deal about features which are standard parts of OpenGL and which, as I already stated, are basically just parts of a graphics card driver which are only being enabled for people willing to pay more.

Also, 64 MB RAM for an X server? That's just beyond ridiculous. (That's for both the entertainment and pro versions.)

None of the feature lists say anything about GLX (network-transparent OpenGL), either. XFree can do GLX now.

Oh, another thing: they are a bit incomplete, at best, when saying what cards they support. The only nVidia chipset they seem to support is the TNT2 - they don't have any listed support for the TNT, or the Riva 128 series. They also don't have any listed supported Matrox cards. For their sake I hope they just forgot to complete their supported cards list.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.