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XFree86 3.3.6 released
kornyone writes "Freshmeat listed XFree86 3.3.6 as being released, among new features: "Highlights of the new release include: support for the ATI Rage128. support for the ATI Rage Mobility, support for the SiS 540/630 and SiS 300, support for Silicon Motion Lynx chipsets, support for the Savage2000, support for the NVIDIA GeForce, support for the Intel i810 (not enabled by default as it needs a kernel module), and fixes to several drivers." "
Mick! Come on, that was mean!
Mcdougal the llama
So any news on when 4.0 _really_ is coming. This is just some boring bugfix stuff...
Opinions expressed above are mine, and not my employees'.
Yes it was. Totally uncalled for and very mean.
Same as you: too much time on my hands. Isn't it obvious?
I have had a GeForce sitting in the box on the shelf for months now. Now I can really frag.
Lynx. Pine. Vi. MC. What the fsck is this XFree-whatever crap?
:-)
No sig.
Now that is really what I like seeing from the Opensource community. GeForce drivers before the thing has become mainstream.
If the 3D co-processor in the GetForce catches on then Linux will be right there with big boys as far as compatibility. Now all we have to do is convince people to starts using OpenGL instead of DirectX, and come one lets see Mesa nVidia TNT2 drivers already
It was anounced previously that 3.3.6 would quickly follow up (reportedly @ the same time ) as the 3.9.17 snapshot. This baby has been on the mirrors for a while now so is ready for test driving. 4.0 is supposedly released in Q2 of 2000, and judging by the buggyness (got a geforce, it worked but netscape and many motif&other apps crashed like a feather in a 2^10 G vacum space), they better take there time fixing it. I'd rather have a working release later, then a buggy-as-hell(Tm) release now. Also keep in mind that all the agp and DRI hooks for the kernel are also in way-beta-stage and likely to crash ur machine on there own..
-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
Freshmeat has a stale link. The 3.3.6 release notes are here.
It was my understading that nvidia's cards will have very poor 3d performance if they work at all with xfree's prior to 4.0. I don't think the geForce x-server is accelerated. I very well may be wrong though. -matt
In short all those Christmas newbies with their latest "hot" video cards should be able to get Linux installed pretty painlessly without going through the "Why doesn't X work for me" woes that were so common last yuletime round.
Thanks for the hard work XFree guys, eagerly awaiting version 4.0
-- Oh Well
Bah. Real Programmers use nothing fancier than ed, and what's wrong with telnetting to ports 25 and 110 anyway? Darn these whippersnappers...
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The deadly question is, how much time does a 3.3.x release consume that could have been spent making 4.x available sooner?
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Yes, yes, I LOVE a new Xfree release and so beautiful new supported cards, BUT, when 4.0 comes out, will it have working competitors?
Please, I know you Berlin and other people are reading this, so, will I have an alternative?
He is the Path, the Truth and the Life
Hey, there's a smiley on his post. I don't think he deserved worse than an "Off-topic", and perhaps it was even worth a "Funny".
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I agree with you for 99%
:)
Now 1% of reality:
1) I've not yet seen framecapable text browsers
2) I like to play a game now and then, i've not yet seen a svgamode quake 3 version
3) there is no spoon
Other 99%
1) Textmode works much faster than having to grab that mouse every now and then
2) Textmode takes up much less memory (does it takes up any memory?)
3) I don't want to see vi in an Xterm
This is a replacement signature.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I just tried out the Rage Mobility driver on my Rage Mobility M. Still get corrupted video. I guess this one isn't supported? They probably should have clarified which revisions they support.
A quick gander at their faq says nothing about this.
Specifically, what is the difference between:
thanks,
donfede
Does anyone know if 4.0 will support new keyboards like the logitech internet keyboard. I beleive these keyboards send multiple byte key sequences.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Still no support for this? Is there at least an active plan to get XFree working with the onboard S3 Trio3D chip in IBM 300PL's? I'd settle at least for some sort of statement saying that they're working on it!
I have the patch and will be attempting to get my GeForce working, but somehow I doubt that I'll be seeing X smiling at me before the day ends.
Any success stories to prove me wrong? (plz!!!)
-laMEduck BTW - 3.9.17 _does_ have support for the GeForce, but the readme is total fiction. I'm hoping that they're consistant with thier inconsistancies and this bit of cynicism is misplaced.
The 3.3.x releases are stable/production. The 3.9.x releases are the pre-release 4.0 snapshots.
Dude. Real programmers use
$ cat > a.out
3.9.x == the development branch, is X11R6.4 based;
4.0.x (or 4.x) == the forthcoming stable release branch (the first stable version of the 3.9.x branch
Intosi
Intosi
3.3.x is the current "stable" release. 4.0 will be the next stable release, when it's ready. 3.9.x are snapshots of the developing 4.0 source tree, and I'd guess wouldn't be usable by the average user.
Has anyone managed to get a TNT2 card working with 3D accelleration with X 3.9 by any chance? I've had no 3D accelleration under Linux since I got my Viper 770, and Nvidia isn't any help.
Well, kinda like the versioning with the Linux kernel: 3.3.x is the stable release, 3.9.x is the development release which, eventually, is going to be the 4.0.x release. Oke, it is *not* like Linux with even/odd numbers, but you get the idea...
Thimo
--
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
1) I've not yet seen framecapable text browsers
Emacs does this. ctrl-x 2 I think. And if you use the framebuffer with a matrox card you can get a lovely 44x148 (or better) text console (in graphics mode) which is great for displaying two files side by side.
Of course Emacs is not a text browser or editor. It is an operating environment :-)
Dosen't Pine have a pop mode built in?
Is anyone aware if XFree86 3.3.6 supports SiS6326, which is mostly used on onboard chipsets for motherboards. I've had a heck of a time finding relevent information about this thing (even the scant SiS web page is only half-useful), and have only been able to find a half-working SuSE XFCom driver.
I see Katz-O-Matic v 0.1 is working well.
This is funny. I think this should be incorporated into the posting guidelines as an Emily Postnews style article.
2 00&cid=9.
cid is http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/01/10/0837
However, the metawronka guy is just a sad and pathethic individual with no originality. Kid, a tip: layoff the automatic complaint generator. It was only funny the first time and that was a long time ago.
dave
Look at w3m, which converts frames into tables to display them.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
pardon my stupidity (the coffee hasn't really kicked in yet).. but can i install 3.3.6 binaries over top of my existing install (whatever is the default for slackware7) simply by using pkgtool? or are the .tgz files in the binaries/linux-x86-glibc2.1-whatever dir simply that... .tgz with no additional pkgtool parts?
have mercy on me.. i have a dell behind me with exchange server on it, so my outlook[1] for the day/week is already bleak.
[1] no, that was not an intended pun.[2]
[2] wow, now i think i'm gonna be sick.
-'fester
These great new drivers are ready for release. XFree 4.0 is not ready for release. If the XFree team didn't put out another series 3 release, the owners of these cards would be forced to wait to use their hardware.So everyone please stop bitchin' about this not being 4.0. The XFree team did the right thing.
Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin'
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Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Though the Karmas swollen
Keep them Post's a Trollin'
Slashdaaahhht
Firsts and grits and daily, Hellbent for Natalie, Wishin' my gal was by my side
All the things I'm missin', Good flames, opensource and petrified'
Are waiting at the end of my ride
CHORUS
Post 'em on, Mod 'em up, Mod 'em up, move 'em on
Move 'em on, Mod 'em up, Slashdaaahhht
Karma out, Trollin' in, First post in, AC's out
Mod 'em up, trollin's in , Slashdaaahhht
Keep trollin', trollin', trollin', Though they're disapprovin'
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Don't try to understand 'em, Just join 'em, post and cheer 'em
Soon we'll be postin' high and wide
My hearts calculatin', My first post will be waitin'
Be waitin' at the end of my sig
Hyaa!
CHORUS
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Hyaa!
Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin'
Hyaa!
Slashdaaahhht!
Slashdaaahhht!
.
.
Trollmastah
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distributions/mandrak e-devel/oxygen/Mandrake/RPMS/
They were built yesterday, it appears. How's that for cutting edge.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Real Programmer? *howls of derisive laughter* Toggle in bytes on a switch panel and we'll talk.(And I'm leaving this thread before we reach the "banging rocks together to make bits" stage)
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
On reality point one: lynx copes fine with frames. It gives a link to each framed page, which is often a more convenient way to look at the site anyway. Now table-display is another story. Why oh why w3m can do it and lynx can't I don't know.
Make some sense.
I realize you really do not mean what you say because you are running some kind of text generator but please be original and make the stuff up yourself. This is supposed to be about XFree86 which you are not even close to talking about. If you went out on some mild tangent then it would be better understood but you are just weak.
By the way, metawronka you really ought to get a webpage. I see you doing much good with one of those free geocity pages.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
Whoever moderated http://slashdot.org/com ments.pl?sid=00/01/10/0837200&cid=33 is just jealous because their ass is not as yummy as basinger's.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
Dude, Real programmers use a magnetic pin on their disks.
BTW, didn't we already have this discussion a while ago, and didn't it end in "What, you had mitochondria? We didn't have all that fancy stuff back in the old days."
They played with the versioning scheme so that their first release of X11R6.4 would be Xfree 4.0.x .Thus, they moved the beta back one rev (3.9.x)
.sig: Now legally binding!
Hey I know it aint free but its the truth... supports 1600*1200 16 bit after a bit of tweaking (well a lot of tweaking actually :) wich XFree wont since it only allows 4 meg memory. (ignores the other 4 even if you force it, its hard coded into the driver)
i don't know if this will be of any use to anyone... but here's a link to intel's guide for installing X for the i810 - it covers the extra kernel mod needed.
I think that's what he meant, using 'browser' to mean 'web browser'. So a 'text browser' is not something like less(1), it's a browser that runs on a text terminal.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Am I the only one who has problems downloading 'extract'? The last time I updated X, I had problems downloading it, and this time I'm having similar problems. I can't download the whole file - I am consistantly missing about 30k of the file. Anyone else having similar problems? Any ideas on how to fix it? I have tried both Netscape and Opera, but to no avail. IExplorer crashed on my when installing the 200k file that allows you to view FTP sites. Typical.
Looks like they might have folded in some of 3dfx's Voodoo3 improvements to the SVGA server, as screen updates and the like are definitely looking smoother and better now. Not perfect, but definite improvement.
I just read the release notes and I don't know if I'm reading wrong but it blatently says that the new rage 128 chipset is still not supported.
Nuff Said.
...To which the standard rejoinder is:
No way. Real Real Programmers use
$ zcat > a.out
'cause you can type faster that way.
-jacob
Wow, looks like BeOS finally found its niche: dumb-ass users.
BeOS is the OS/2 for the next millenium, live with it.......
read the release notes, it tells you how to upgrade. You need xf86's extract program to extract the .tgz files.
So is Linux, but yo can't live with that, you have to pretend that Linux is mainstream OS ..
I just finished building my new Potato system with 3dfx's Voodoo3 drivers from their site...
.deb packages will be available?
I guess I have two questions...
1. Any idea when
2. Are any of the Vooodoo3 specifics folded into the main release? I saw a mention of Banshee but not Voodoo3.
It was a MAJOR pain getting the Voodoo setup with Debian and it'd be cool to have that stuff folded into the "norm" XFree distribution...
--hunter
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
And you are...drumrolll...the perfect example of a dumb-ass BeOS user (who can't stand the success of Linux!)
AWESOME! i knew all my research on hardware accelerated VGA text mode would be useful to someone someday.
There are also binaries of 3.9.17 now, for all those, including me, who couldn't get it to compile right. Now I have a question: why does it (3.9.16) use such an insane amount of memory ? RSS is over 40 MB on my machine, having a matrox mystique with 4MB of mem. Even when just starting up it is 18MB. And it isn't just X mapping videomemory onto real memory or somesuch.- --------
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UNIX isn't dead, it just smells funny...
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UNIX isn't dead, it just sme
tada!
Hi there! Windows rules!
Windows is good! Mircrosoft is the best!!!
W kicks a$$.
Enough of this nonsense, or I might have to whip out my abacus and teach you fools a lesson
Will this XFree86 release make it into the soon-to-be-released-in-a-few-days Debian 2.2 (potato)?
Am I the only one who is wary of how the Xfree Group handles such a important project? Don't get me wrong, I have much respect for anyone who releases useful OSS, however there are a number of things that have always bothered me about Xfree86.
1) Xfree86 has never provided the quality of documetnation that most OSS projects of its size provide.
2) They do not seem to try very hard to interact with user needs.
3) They do not go out of their way to solicit users for feature requests (it is 2000 and we still don't have a decent API to change color depth or resolution on the fly!), or provide a decent forum for bug tacking/reporting (I reported a bug with ALL matrox drivers (Matrox Mill - G400MAX) where in 16bpp pixels will be dropped when using scroll bars that use the default Xfree96 widget set. This bug was reported back in 3.3.3 and as of 3.3.5 it was still a issue. (I doubt it will be fixed in 3.3.6 either).
4) Finally, Xfree86 does not act like most other OSS groups of their size. Maybe this has something to do with their *bsd origins (no insult intended). It has been my experince that the *bsd people has always had an eleetist approch, where a group of "old school" gurus huddle in a dark cave somewhere and scheme over the "right way" (TM) to do things. (which I am not saying isn't their right to do it that way), it just does not seem to produce the type/quality of software that I (or linux for that matter) have come to depend on.
-- You can be a geeklord too
It would be nice if Xfree would be a bit more descriptive.. rather then forcing its users to "try and see your problem has been resolved" or "read the source code".
*sigh*
-- You can be a geeklord too
More evidence that Ritalin should be used MORE, not LESS.
I'm another of the folk that can't get the
ibm 300pl w/ s3 trio 3d with the 86c366
chipset to run. It would appear that there
are subtle differences in the OEM 85C366
chipsets used in these. Some are essentially
identical to the normal 85C365 trio 3d and
some have an unknown (at least to me)difference.
It's enough to make it fail but subtle enough
that debug output shows that the xserver thinks
everything is working fine.
I've sent queries to IBM on this and gotten
no response at all (surprise). I've also
scoured the usenet groups and tried all
suggestions found there - even the ones that
seem silly (cargo cult diagnostics?). no
joy.
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I'm really excited to see that the Silicon Motion Lynx graphics chips are supported under this latest release. For those of you not familiar, this line of graphics chips is really low-power and supports dual display (that is, the ability to display one set of output to your local screen and another to an external device like a projector or a television). These chips are specifically for portable computing and have only been out for a short time. Does this herald some serious work being done towards making *nix really portable?
Yep you are right, but theres something weird... the datasheet specs only allow for 1600*1200 in 8 bits. (it doesnt have the memory bandwith to go higher) It also only has specs going up to 4 meg memory. Maybe 8 meg allows extra open memory pages to allow for more bandwith or something? Anyway both AcceleratedX and Windoze drivers can use 8 megs and 16*12*16 but how they coded their support is a bit of a mystery... because SiS certainly doesnt provide us with any clues.
If anyone has ever gotten one of these little b*st*rds to work in XFree86 in anything other than 320x240x4bit, please let me know how.
You can even make fun of me all you want...
You know you want to....
Pretend? Unlike you we don't have to pretend, check out this article that was posted today.
I have noticed that a lot of the newer, low-end consumer-oriented PCs are coming out with something often referred to as "shared memory architecture", whereby a portion (usually 8-16 MB) of the system memory is also available for use as video memory. Does anyone know whether such a system will work with XFree86? I would hate to think that we had another Winmodem situation on our hands.
Wow, now there is a new XF86 with support for my card (ATi Fury) and I don't have to use the FB drivers (or the closed source SuSE drivers) anymore :*). But what I really want is one feature I've seen at the German "Linux Tag" in Kaiserslautern last year: The Dual Head support! It was working over a half year ago, so why didn't they implement it to the new version?
Anyone knows a site with rpm packages for RH6.x?
>2) I like to play a game now and then, i've not yet seen a svgamode quake 3 version
Nahhh, lets stay textmode: A textmode Quake port exists already (I am not lying, check freshmeat and slashdot).
There is this one little product called Visual Slickedit (No I don't work for them -- I got exposed to it first at the University I went to). It has things like syntax highlighting (also a feature of vim -- I know), and you can have multiple windows open at the same time. You can also bind the keystrokes to vi, emacs, or make up your own. Also handles tags, etc, etc Maybe you like typing in :e alot?? Seriously, i much prefer an editor that allows me to have multiple windows open (MDI). sincerely, converted vi maniac
Who cares if you scribble '0's and '1's on dirt? As long as you can code efficiently and quickly with your method, then more power to you.
I was wondering... will there ever be a Windows version? Or wouldn't that be politically correct?
--
Play Match-It.
It is true that Direct3D is pretty bad, but it has gotten much better and AHH, is within the OpenGL ballpark now. And I take it you mean Direct3D don't you. DirectX is a fast set of libraries to access various hardware accelerated devices in a consistant way. Just what Linux DOESNT have. Even Quake 3 uses DirectInput for its input stuff.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Yo, moderators! Can I answer this jackass with some of his own level of crap? BeOS has a niche. Its users who want a powerful, fast, easy to use machine. Linux fills the first, nothing major as of yet fills the second, and macs fill the third. I believe that BeOS is on its 3rd year on Intel hardware, and already has a huge amount of mindshare. Question: Were hardware manufacturers making Linux drivers back in 1994? Don't count Be out just yet.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Manufacturers are writing drivers for BeOS? You gotta be kidding. Go look at NVidia's site, they have a nice big fat BeOS logo which points you right at Be for drivers! NVidia is not writing BeOS drivers, Be is! On the other hand, NVidia is writing drivers for Linux.
:-)
:) I own a BeBox BTW, fun computer back when I bought it, unfortunately it's not so well supported by Be these days (and it's hella slow compared to my Athlon :). Oh well, there's always LinuxPPC and NetBSD...
Oh and manufacturers were already writing drivers for Linux back in 1994, check out the Cyclades serial card driver history
And if memory serves, BeOS development started in 1990, back then it wasn't even called BeOS and ran on the ATT Hobbit processor. So it took almost 10 years of closed source development and tens of millions of dollars in R&D just to get BeOS at this level, frankly that sucks IMHO
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
just upgraded with the mandrake rpms and it feels very smooth
There seem to be a couple mediocrely-maintained (to coin a word) sites that purport to be depositories for XFree monitor timing tables. They're trying to take up the slack that XFree has dropped.
My first day with RedHat 6.1 was spent wrangling with one "Plug & Play" Sony CPD-200SF (Multiscan 200sf). I lacked X experience, but thankfully I had the *manual* for this monitor and knew how to use Unix and vi. I could adjust the probed entry to support more than 31.5KHz-only, set the faulty init runlevel 5, and fine-tune it from there. The depository sites didn't have my monitor, and the closest equivalent couldn't be centered or scaled enough by my onscreen controls.
I gather that's a very common experience in the Linux community, but it seems to fall on deaf ears. XFree doesn't seem to care, and the few who DO collect the info have uneven and errant data (pieced together from email submissions manually, no doubt).
Why isn't there a nice CDDS-style automatic feature? It could get called by the setup script, if the CDROM doesn't have the sensed monitor. My RedHat came up in text mode, sure, but it had eth0 and ppp0 just about ready to connect.
If RedHat asked for the PPP phone number, dialed me in, and accessed the "Xfree Monitor Database Service" instead of the nearly unusable "configure X dialog" in 6.1, my Linux Out Of Box experience would have been a LOT more gratifying.
[
I went crawling back to 3.3.3 after my fonts would not display in the dialog boxes. Does anyone know why? Well I will give 3.3.6 a shot but I don't know.
- kernel
module"? Is the only "kernel" in the world the lignux kernel?"kornyone writes "Freshmeat listed XFree86 3.3.6 as being released,".
Oh CmdrTaco. It was announced 12h before Freshmeat at AppWatch. Now you can see what Fresh really means, right? You refused to run our announcement, so live with it, little corporate toy.
Because they never double check the announcements.
found this: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~steveh/inspiron/xserver .html It's about ATI Rage LT Pro/Mobility-P 3D on dell, but writer says that it should work on other laptops too.
It was on topic. I did not know if BeOS used XFree86 or not and it was more or less a inquiry. I have sinced learned that BeOS does not use XFree. Sorry-- it really was meant to be relevant.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.