XFree86 4.0 vs. XFree86 3.3.x

Patrick Mullen writes "I've recently compiled a comparison of XFree86 4.0 vs. 3.3.x. The review includes benchmarks, an overview on 4.0, the bugs still in 4.0 and a few other tidbits. " Its a bit sparse but its a good overview piece. It looks as if its definitely not for everyone quite yet.

Comments

This is a lame review...

[m2]

This means we'll start seeing more standard 3D acceleration on cards-not just 3dfx anymore. With the present state, 3dfx is actually behind on DRI drivers, which is rather surprising.

Actually, it's the other drivers that are behind

The new GLX extension is OpenGL 1.2 compatible, meaning here comes 3D graphics, CAD and other such professional uses. This is starting to make Mesa look less and less desirable

And Mesa happens to be at the heart of the OpenGL implementation in XF4...

especially after seeing how OGL 1.2 performs on nVidia's .90 beta DRI drivers.

whose OpenGL 1.2 implementation is not complete/100% conformant

Taking Initiative It's clear who really wants this. nVidia clearly is fighting for victories on both Windows and Linux-what next, Macintosh? nVidia pushed the drivers out the door almost immediately, and in some cases it shows, but in others the drivers prove to be exceptional for performance-even if unoptimized. If nVidia gets on the ball and optimizes the drivers, they're looking to destroy Windows performance. I've never seen performance quite this fast on the first release candidate. Now only if nVidia would get off their lazy asses and release something new, maybe from the Detonator 500 series of drivers. We can all wish, right? Matrox also looks to be getting their hands in things, as they always do. They made the push on Windows, and proved to be one of the first mainstream cards to have OpenGL, and again they're a pioneer. The more the better, I say.

Which has very little to do with XF4, which is what is suppossed to being reviewed. Nvidia released a new server and a matching OpenGL implementation (without programmer's documentation or at least a dammed header, mind you). An own OpenGL implementation (or SGI's) is supposed to be behind it...

Unfortunately, with all new releases, some things just don't work quite as planned. Since it's Open-Source some of these problems can be expected, and it is also free. Here's a run-down of the problems faced in this release:

And you are comparing apples and oranges here... it doesn't say which Voodoo driver is being used, and I'd suppose it's compared against the nVidia recently released drivers. The point is nVidia says their drivers are beta, while the Voodoo ones are still in development.

I'm kinda surprised taco posted this, next thing he'll post is my (rather long) email that says "XFree86 sucks" or "XFree86 rulez"... :-(

Multi-headed works well.

[gukin]

For the last few years, I've used metrolink's multi-headed server. For $40 it was a steal (at least compared to XiGraphics $350 server and the multi-headed stuff on our RS/6000's.) It was easy to set up, install and reletively stable. It didn't work perfectly though, it left the mouse pointer behind on one of the screens and got "weird" on some scrollbar functions.

I compiled and installed XFree86 on my RH-6.1 system and, using xf86config, got my first head going in a few short minutes.

I then read _gasp_ the manual page for XF86config which told me everything I need to do to set up the multi-headed stuff.

The documentation (if you bother to read it) is well written and very usable.

Once I got the multi-headed stuff going add +xinerama to /etc/X11/gdm-conf and _poof_ I could drag stuff from screen to screen to screen.

I now have a three headed beast with one AGP Matrox G200 and two Matrox Millenium II PCI cards.
Performance is completely acceptable and it is really cool that I can define different monitor types per head.

My G200 is driving a 21" while the two Millenium II's are running old Viewsonic 7's.

The Xinerama feature is SOOOOO handy. I can drag unimportant stuff to the outboard monitors and use the big central for the important stuff.

XFree86 4.0's performance and flexibility is FAR superior to ANY other multi-headed X-server I have used.

If you can't read a man page and don't need Xinerama (oh yeah and have lots of monitors laying around) Metrolink is a good way to go.

Still, reading a man page is not too much to pay.

Oh yeah, the RPM's for RedHat are available via rawhide.

Gee I hope I didn't sound too stupid.