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XFree86 3.9.18 Today, v4.0 in March
John Fulmer writes, "The fourth and final beta of XFree86 3.9.x has been released and up on their ftp site. From the announcement:
'This snapshot version is 3.9.18. We are planning to release 4.0 in early March 2000.'
You can download (source only) from here.
"
Most of us are looking forward to antialiasing for fonts, somehow. Unfortunately, the server returns fonts as a 2-dimensional binary array (if I'm understanding things correctly). That's means pixels are either "on" or "off" (no greys).. So, it would seem that antialiasing would not be possible without a major rewrite of the API or something.
That's my question, though. Is a rewrite of the API likely? Or, do you think that a competing display technology to XFree taking hold would be more probable?
Alex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Would anyone be willing to explain what these great new features are, and what they will do for us?
DRI - Direct Rendering Infrastructure
Basically, the DRI allows a 3D application (game, most likely) to talk directly to the video card. Currently, GLX is a network protocol, and so all 3D requests go over the network (this is a simplification).
Multi-Head/Xinerama
The ability to use 2 video cards at the same time. Classic multi-head means 2 X sessions at the same time. Xinerama is an extension to allow you to have 1 session that splits across 2 screens. Very cool.
Unified Device Drivers
In previous versions of XFree, you'd have to write a driver for each video card and then port it to each platform. So, Matrox (for instance) didn't makr XFree drivers. They'd have to make it for Linux and port it to FreeBSD and Solaris x86 and OS/2. Porting requires significant effort. Now, they write 1 driver and it works on all x86 machines.
Better Mouse Support
These new fangled mice have all sorts of buttons on them. Mine has 3 buttons and 2 scroll wheels (each scroll wheel is seen as 2 buttons...one pressed when you scroll up and one on down). XFree 3.3.x only supported 5 buttons (and thus my second scroll wheel doesn't work). XFree 4.0 supports unlimited numbers.
General Re-write
The XFree guys have been at it a long time now. So, they're taking this opportunity to rewrite some portions of their code. It's supposed to be faster and use less memory.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Uhm, no. A "quantum leap" is a big advance. From Meriam-Webster Online:
It does derive from quantum mechanics. I think it comes from the idea that energy levels are quantized, so that to move from one to another you have to have some minimum energy jump. So the step forward your talking about is not a minuscule step, but a a more revolutionary step forward.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
Another quick mirror is:
e 86/snapshots/3.9.18/
/ snapshots/3.9.18/
ftp://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/XFre
http://download.sourceforge.net/mirrors/XFree86
Well, people seem to like stuffing everything that they are missing in their windowing system into their toolkits nowadays, sans fixing the windowing system, which is not the way to go, imho.
The ggi-project on the other hand basically is a portable graphics library, not a windowing system, which wont help unless someone built a windowing system on top of it.
Thats what the berlin folks are doing, but their project seems to be very (very, veryvery) ambitious. To the point that I fear they will not be able to attract new developers because of their lack of a production (sort of) system.
GGI on the other hand seems to be out of the game kernel-wise and is (partly) still suffering from "nobody recognizes my work, I dont want to be a part of society"-attitude. All this is really a shame.
I wish the fbdev- developers would get more support (and 3D accel support in the kernel that is not made solely for X) so that people can get together and finally build a modern windowing system without having to think about graphics libs and devices first. They have to think about that enough anyway.
No, Debian stable = proven packages. It may not be sexy, but it means you aren't constantly mucking with the system while others are muttering that maybe they should go back to good old reliable MS Windows.
And if you really want to run the cutting edge, you can always run unstable.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Gee, I could swear I submitted this late yesterday when the file tree changed..
Anyway, the source can be had here, and you really should read the release notes here once they appear.
No real info is available on what exactly is new in 18: Any XFree developers here that can fill us in?
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Yes, there are usually binary-only RPMs available for the major supported platforms (Solaris, *BSD-x86, Linux-x86/alpha, etc) within a week or so.. I'd be terribly surprised if it took much longer than that
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No. Have a look at the current beta - some packages will change (some have changed already), but there won't be any major changes such as moving to XFree86 4.0, Kernel 2.4, glibc 2.2, KDE 2.0, GNOME 1.2 or whatever else is ahead.
XFree86 will definitely bring a lot of good things, but also some breakage because of library and header changes. Anyone shipping 4.0 as soon as it's released (without fixing up some applications or waiting for them to be fixed) is setting himself up for some trouble.
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I just built this on an OpenBSD box a few hours ago. Overall it was a smooth process except for one hitch which might be a problem for those who use OpenBSD.
On OpenBSD in the file Xlocale.h you have to add:
#define X_NOT_STDC_ENV
to get it to properly compile. Hopefully this helps.
Don't hate me because I'm a troll.
If you like to run with lots of colors (who doesn't?), but still need support for 8bpp screens, overlays are for you. It works by using 32 bits, but running in 24bpp mode. The remaining 8 bits are used to support a 8bpp mode. So, you can still run 8bpp apps (FrameMaker is one. I think xfishtank is also one, unless it's been updated) on a high-color screen. You lose some of the finer color control that's useful for graphics production. But, 24bpp is generally more than the human eye can perceive.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Note: I'm speaking as an individual who has read quite a bit on 3D support under linux and who has used the following 3d chips under linux (not as a developer): Savage4, ATI Rage 128, TNT2, 3dfx.
Currently, the best supported 3D cards under linux are 3dfx and Matrox. 3dfx is probably better supported at the moment. By mid-year Precision Insight plans on having DRI drivers for 3dfx (already available from cvs), Matrox (G200/G400), ATI (Rage 128), and Intel (I810). nVidia should be releasing drivers in the next few months for their line of 3D cards, although the impression I've gotten is that they won't be using DRI (apparently they or SGI didn't feel that DRI was the most appropriate means of doing accelerated 3d for nVidia's cards).
Utah-GLX already supports hardware acceleration for ATI Rage Pro, Matrox, nVidia, S3 Virge, and probably something else that I'm forgetting. However, Utah-GLX doesn't use the Direct Rendering Infrastructure.
when I was at sgi, we had 2 kinds of dual-screen xservers. one was the classical dualhead setup (running on an Octane). you had a :0 and a :1 screen. and only the mouse would travel between them. for each client, you had to have their 'default' set to :0 or :1 to get a window on that screen, or specifically ask for it at launch time. after it was bound to a screen, there was no easy way to move it over.
then there was the hybrid hack that the O2 systems used. it combined each head into a virtual contiguous screen (ie, there was only a :0 screen). you could bind the 2nd display either below the first one or along side of it. running xdpyinfo would show a single big screen and not two. the problem is that window managers didn't deal well with this arrangement. and you'd end up with mouse problems and dragging issues when trying to keep windows inside a screen border. I hated it - it was an aweful hack.
with xinerama, you have the best of both, sort of. you don't have a :1 but you do have a sane setup that respects the vertical screen edges, yet dragging can occur seamlessly horizontally.
and btw, if you want classical dualhead X, you can choose to startx WITHOUT xinerama mode. that is, if you really do want a :0 and a :1 screen device.
for the price of 2 used matrox cards ($50/ea at current used prices), a dualhead setup CANNOT BE BEAT. I run the same dual head setup at work and at home. its VERY addictive ;-)
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
My prediction: Redhat 6.2 with Xfree86 3.3.6, all the current stuff. Then in late summer/ early fall , Redhat 7.0 with Xfree86 4.x, and a 2.4 kernel (I thought the DRI in Xfree86 4.0 needed some special kenel modules anyway). Also should have the upcoming version of Gnome that probably won't make it into 6.2, also expect to see a Redhat branded Mozilla in there. In my opion it is going to rock.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Slashdot = News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Freshmeat = New cool open source related software.
Not all of the new software is news, not all of the news is related to new software. But having the crossover in both places is good. Anyone who actually reads freshmeat can tell you, it's easy to let an important program get lost in the shuffle. There are now rougly 60 new items on freshmeat daily. As someone who reads both, I am glad to have the redundancy.
I'm so excited about XFree86 4.0 any new info should be written on the moon and stars. As I understand it, this will be a quantum leap forward in Gaming, Graphics and usability for Linux. Goodness knows we could use it.
Thank you for not thinking.
As of now, Precision insight is working on DRI for 3dfx and ATI 128 cards, for inclusion in XF86 4.
The Utah GLX project has working under the XF85 3.3.X series writing drivers for Matrox, ATI Rage, S3 Virge, Nvidia, and i810 cards, outside the DRI framework. These will need to be converted to DRI to be included XFree86 4.
As far as FreeBSD goes, the new module loader will allow you to run the same of XF86 4 module on any OS, as long as it uses the same processor. So x86 Linux modules will run on FreeBSD without a recompile. Pretty cool huh!