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XFree86 4.0.1 Released
Alphix writes: "The first update to XFree86 4.0 has been released, a ton of bug fixes etc and a merge of new DRI code along with SPARC fixes should be enough to warrant an upgrade =). patches are here, source is here. Sourceforge and other mirrors should have it soon."
However, Branden in May did announce that he would be releasing the binary packages for XFree86 4.0.1 during this month. If you're a Debian user who's hoping for the Debian packages for XFree86 4.x, then I'd advise you to read the plans Branden has for XFree86 4.0 packaging.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
I've used both DirectX and OpenGL. In fact, I program OpenGL mainly. I find Direct3D has direct hardware access in most implementations. You simply cannot get a pointer to graphics memory from OpenGL. First, because OpenGL has no symantics for interaction with another graphics API (like D3D does for DirectDraw). Second, because there is nothing in the API that allows you to do that, the API just wasn't designed that way. You simply cannot use a rendered surface for a texture without rendering to a windowing system bitmap. OpenGL has no conception of a rendering target, it simply considers the primary buffer. As such, rendering to anything other than the screen takes jiggering by the glue logic (GLX or wgl.) These are weaknesses in OpenGL itself. It is possible that an implementation could expose direct access and the concept of a rendering target through something in wgl or GLX, but in that case it would not really be OpenGL anymore now would it? It would be almost-OpenGL. Anything written using these extensions would have to be rewritten to use another implementation.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Or, more to the point, is there a bouncepoint for Xinerama that is worth reading? The xfree86 site doesn't have much.
HELP! :-)
I actually rather like the current status quo. Loki's selectively porting the good games, and I don't have to worry about the 90% of the games that are total crap.
As for OpenGL, it's easy to program in, reasonably fast, and extremely portable across platforms. Loki's working on the 3D sound API. In the future portability will be the key, as PC games are getting to be a niche market compared to the game consoles. Why limit your release platform to WinXX PC's when you could cover Apple and the ever-growing linux population (And the FreeBSD and Be niches) Anything to squeeze a few more dollars out of the production run.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've been happily running XF4 on my Banshee for a while now, I'm hoping that the dual monitor support with Rendition chipsets (I've got a diamond stealth s220) will work now.. Fingers crossed, starting ftp....
If I read CVS correctly, this has added support for at least some chips (such as the Rage Mobility 128).
IE is anything but simple. Up until Mozilla, it had the best HTML renderer out there. As for BeOS, Opera is out and has most of those features. I was talking about Opera 4.0, since that's what I've used, and 4.0 just recently came out of beta. True, Opera now has a lot of support (including CSS2 and XML.) As for Net+, I wholheartedly agree with you. Net+ is VERY feature poor. But does that suddenly taint my judgement about other OSs? I've used Netscape. It is ugly, it is bloated, it crashes. In fact, even the windows version crashes more often than IE does. So where's the problem. And me being a BeOS user has nothing to do with this. In fact (gasp) I think I use NT almost as much as I use BeOS. And I've been using Linux back since Slackware 3.x. I've used these OSs a lot, and I've gotten information on the usability of each one. Just because I like BeOS does not mean that I think everything in it is good. It has a dearth of applications (though to be fair, it does what I need), it doesn't have some cool things like COM, and it doesn't have DirectX :)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Matrox G200 is a fairly unique situation where Linux is faster. But if you look at the big picture (highest performance graphics cards, a wide array of apps), OpenGL on Linux is in a very poor state. I'm not saying that this can't be fixed (and it probably will be) I'm just saying, that it is not to the point where Linux users can claim to be even near the same level as Windows.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What a great debate this is. It's clear that you can't marshal any arguments to counter my position (because, really, there aren't any - you want support for a closed-source product, you have to pay for it) but are bitter about the delays. Doing business with people like that sucks, doesn't it? Hope you learned your lesson. Closed source isn't evil, but you have to know what you're getting into. And in a Free Software development effort, closed source modules always lag behind in both quality and currency. Live with it, or pick a different vendor.
Just installed 4.0.1 from source on my machine with a Voodoo 3 that had been having issues, and it started up fine for me. I don't know if I was having the same problems you were, but I would definitly give it a shot.
Well, I would say it's going extremly well, installing the drivers should be a snap with the new 0.93 release since they included a script that does all the work. Performance is great, in both 2d and 3d. the only thing you have to do is make sure you remove mesa from your system, or at least the libGL.so* files
>that i'm not too happy with the state of XFree86
>4.0. Primarily because there's a lot of support
>that was left out.
The alternative being not releasing it so that people who DO have supported chipsets can use it?
>Particularly on most 3dfx chipsets. Sure, it says
>all 3dfx chips are supported, but that's
>laughable.
The DRI drivers are being done by 3DFX, so they're the ones that you have an issue with, not the XFree86 team.
It is also worth noting that the drivers are specifically mentioned in the FAQ to be beta quality at this time.
>Perhaps 4.0 was build up quite a bit more than
>it should have been - but it comes down to the
>fact that this wasn't really a next-gen release.
Ummm, a new codebase (X11R6.4), more protocol extensions (can we say Xinerama?), a re-enginnered direct rendering interface, integration of a font server and OpenGL software renderer, a binary loader that can load drivers on any operating system under the same architechture...
This smells of major next generation release to me.
>For some people it was worth while to upgrade,
>while for others it was not.
And for almost all people it *will* be worthwhile to upgrade, once the driver base is brought up to snuff and the distributions start packaging it.
>I would have been much happier to see the folks
>at XFree86 wait a little longer to release a much
>better product.
What objections do you have to the current implementation, aside from whining that it the driver for your video card isn't finished?
Unfortunately its difficult for an unreleased product to gain a wide base of drivers, a signifigant amount of polish, and full bug testing.
>Something that everyone could upgrade to. I
>know at least 3dfx and some ATI chips got
>screwed.
Ummm, screwed? You can continue using 3.3.6 as you did before. The only people who need be affected are those that BENEFIT from the release.
And again, I must reiterate - waiting for all drivers to mature before release buys nothing. The only effect is to keep it out of the hands of the people who CAN upgrade and CAN benefit immediately.
XF86 is essentially a vastly better X. There is no need in such an architecture of antiquated chips (a lot of S3 stuff was left out). There is also no reason to weigh down the developers making all these old drivers when the could be doing something important (working on DRI!) As for 3DFx, those drivers are developed by 3DFx themselves, and it is widely acknowledged that they spent way to much effort on their 3.3.x drivers and let their 4.0 effort slide. (As such, performance on Voodoo boards is much better under 3.3.x)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The patches are up only at this point.
> Unfortunately, the Xfree 4.0.1 version does not
:)
> work with our drivers. We hope to have out a
> new release for that version out shortly.
They're working so hard on the new version that they have no time for grammar!
Note: flaming nvidia won't get the drivers fixed quicker. This is just a note so that other people don't waste time trying to get the nvidia drivers to work.
I could never get my GeForce 2 to work under XFree 3.3.x. It could never ever display anything after and then would hose display of even simple text aftewards. Luckily I could still issue a reboot locally or remotely.
On the other hand, I went to XFree 4.0 and snagged the NVIDIA drivers and it worked on the first try. Can't ask for any more than that from the software. ^_^
I used the nVidia drivers briefly -- every time I came back to my computer, if one of the GL screensavers had triggered, I was without fail back at the gdm login screen, because X had crashed. I envy you your painless experience.
Also, you might try compiling from source and installing into an alternate prefix rather than doing a binary install of XF4 over your Debian system -- if you keep doing that, you'll find you've fubared your system enough that Debian upgrades will stop working...
--
Ian Peters
Did I leave anyone out?
Yes.
Slackware (2.2.16)
Mandrake(Hacked Redhat) (2.2.??)
LRP (2.2.16)
Yggdrasil (err..)
------------
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Can you write down the problems that you are having, the equipment that you are using and the versions of the software you are running and send it to the developers?
This is called a bug report.
If you can do this just one time a year, then you have done a great thing and have helped out open source a great deal.
-- Never make a general statement.
All I want to know is how in the least bit this is going to affect my tetrinet game. ::
-Swift
-Swift
A) You have to use XF86Config no matter what. The visual-mode configurators don't work very well yet.
B) X is too stupid to figure out mouse protocol and screen refresh rates for itself. You absolutely should not have to specify refresh rate ranges. Sure you could use the stock SVGA that can do X at X hertz, but then you're not optimally using you're monitor.
C) With multiple RPMS, you can just open up the RPM and click install. You have to go through each on and install them in the correct order. I suppose you could highlight them all and select install, but I don't know how Kpackage would respond to that.
D) I recently did an upgrade equivilant to upgrading XFree. I installed service pack 6a on Windows NT. It updated the GDI, it added DirectX support, updated the kernel and server, and it installed Internet Explorer. This is equivilant to recompiling the kernel, upgrading X, and updating the window manager. I downloaded the 30 meg file, clicked the exe, it chugged, and it rebooted without any questions asked (aside from the "do you wish to reboot" dialouge.) The system came up fine later, I did not have to reconfigure anything.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Ah! iexplore.exe is simple! Simple com app placeholder! Not IE. IE itself is a web of COM objects which handle HTML display, JScript (r) and VBScript (r), image rendering, user interface widgets, ActiveeXploit, etc. ... This is what I thought you were basing your "Bloated NS! Bloated Mozilla!" views on -- because iexplore.exe is a few hundred K, whereas Mozilla/Netscape main binaries are many meg. IE just hides those in \windows\system as the various COM objects that IE uses to function (go ahead and compare the space used by a clean install of Win95 vs. Win95 + IE .. or Win98Lite and Win98 'normal'). Considering the amount of CPU time and RAM they use, I'd consider the DHTML widget components (and others) that IE uses to be worse than Mozilla's components (and far worse than the equivalent Gnome and KDE widgets which do the same thing).
:) .. I just remember DART and DIVE from OS/2 days).
The reason I said you judgement seemed tainted is because you gave a very "BeOS" slant to everything. It'd be nice if you gave more of an indication of having used other OSes (thus giving us a better view of where your opinions come from).
While I haven't used SDL, I hear it's quite good.. it is also portable across Linux, BeOS, and Windows. Given some proper code, it could be a nice performer on all OSes. SDL would make a nice portability wrapper on top of the various OS APIs, such as DRI and OpenGL on Linux, DirectX for Win32, and whatever BeOS uses (I have no idea
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Binaries and complete source tar balls comming later.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
And should be applied from the xc directory with the -p1 -E options to patch.
:)
Not the -p0 -E options as specified in the patch files.
Doesn't everyone keep the 400+ MBtyes of X source around to rebuild X when a new patch comes out ?
You're 3DFx support sucks because 3DFx spent too much time writing XF86 3.3.x drivers at the cost of the 4.0 drivers.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
a) Hungarian notation is, well, hellishly hard to understand, and that with this lovely notation, you don't need them funny characters above the numeric keys, or the languages Perl, INTERCAL, Brain**ck, or Malbolge to create write-only code.
;)
... not by a long shot. At least that's IMHO. Do I use them? Yes.
>>>
You only have to learn it once. People program Win32 everyday, and frankly, not that many people consider Hungarian notationa "deal breaker."
b) DirectX/3D is under MS influence (control, as it were), and that MS doesn't have much of a rep for releasing documentation that accurately reflects the underlying API. Not to mention that NT (at least previously) had a problem of keeping updated in terms of DirectX, whereas it ran OpenGL just fine.
>>>>>>>
Yes, DX is under MS control. That's why it can progress so quickly. The ARB is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because it insures that one company cannot use OpenGL to its advantage (like MS does with DirectX.) However, the consensus method slows down the introduction of new features. That's why I think the open source development model would be so cool for something like this. One core group is in control so the API stays focused and moves quickly, but they are required to commit changes, so the API stays Open. As for NT, it really wasn't a political issue. DirectX access hardware directly, while the NT HAL is designed to prevent just that thing. As a result, concessions (ahem) had to be made in Win2K.
c) Or that while The Gamers(tm) run mostly Windows machines, that The Gamers(tm) make up a tiny fraction of the software market, especially in terms of revenue. Of the remaining population, not everyone runs Windows 9X/NT/2000/Whatever, and writing in OpenGL means that your apps can be ported to whatever platform has OGL support.
>>>>>>
Think of it this way. Gamers are just like normal consumers. Consumers use DirectX everyday. Office uses it, MSIE uses it, RealPlayer and QuickTime use it. These consumers (including business people) make up 95% of the market revenue-wise. Plus most run windows. From a business point of view, leaving out the Linux, BeOS, and Mac users means almost nothing! That said, I'm not urging people to use DirectX. (I want ports to BeOS) I'm simply saying that it is a superior API to OpenGL.
I don't see all the hoopla about DirectX. Maybe it's just me, but I've always valued things like ANSI C, ANSI C++, and Java, because of their portability. Sure, some languages may be better, or more elegant for certain things, but writing in languages that are standardized and portable gives you great flexibility, and allows 'laziness'.
>>>>>>>>>>
The hoopla is that its fast, flexible, and usefull. An API is not like a language. Where the speed, flexibility characteristics of a language are pretty set in stone, and API can change and evolve. If I was a business person, it makes much more sense for me to take advantage of something like DirectX, and leave 1% of users out in the cold, than to not use it, and get that 1%. Then, I'm not urging people to use DirectX. I'm extolling its virtues as a better API
Is the C family of languages the best for programming? Um
Same goes for OpenGL. Is it necessarily the best in terms of features? Well, maybe not. Do I use it? Yes. Why? See the above reasons. 'nuff said.
Smee
>>>>>>>>
You can use it, that's great. In fact I use it! I like it better because I can run it on BeOS. But I hate every minute of using it, thinking that if I would just use Windows, I would have access to a much better API.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The learning curve to get into contributing to very complex apps such as XFree is incredibly steep, IMNERHO.
--
Well I would say it is more like the upgrade from Windows NT 3.51->4.0 (where the graphics drivers moved into the kernel) or Windows NT->Windows 2000.
>>>>
No you wouldn't. It is much more like a service pack, because it is an upgrade of the core architecture. WinNT to Win2K is something akin to retooling X to use DirectX! NT 3.51 -4.0 might work, though.
Microsoft hasn't upgraded DirectX on Windows NT with any service packs. Is it because it would take too many changes, or because it's a marketing lever to get you to buy Windows 2000? How long will it be before DirectX 8.0 (or 9) is available on a Windows based on an NT kernel? Windows NT 4.0 is still DirectX 3.0
>>>>>>>>>>
You still have no clue about Windows architecture, do you? MS hasn't upgraded DirectX on Windows NT, becuase the NT Hardware Abstraction Layer is at odds with DirectX. The HAL was designed to prevent just the kinds of things DirectX is for. As such, it would require a total retooling of the HAL. Now Windows 2000 did this (it has the NT kernel) and I'm sure it was partially market driven, but I do think it was a good upgrade because it not only took a lot of work to retool the HAL, but they added COM+, ActiveDirectory, and rewrote the TCP/IP stack.
The architecture of XFree86 changed significantly with 4.0, and if you can't see the difference it's because, for the most part, it was done quite well and hidden behind unchanged API's. This is a Good Thing.
>>>>>>>>>>>
That's great. The architecture of DirectX was almost rewritten from 1.0 -> 5.0. I still don't consider an upgrade of a component like this akin to upgrading from NT4 to Win2K or from 95 to Win2K.
NT 3.51-> 4.0 was mainly a GUI shell upgrade, moving the video drivers into the kernel, and a few other tweaks (Direct 3D, DNS). Many people claimed NT 4.0 should really have been called 3.70 or something similar.
>>>>>>
Many did, as people are wont to. However, NT not only moved stuff into to kernel, retooled the GUI, but it also added stuff like fibers, DirectX, and improved networking and administration. Those kinds of changes take place between kernel revisions. If Slack justified a version upgrade between 4.0 and 7.0 (not taking into account the 3 digit leap) I think 4.0 was warranted.
As for the difference between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, they were substantial. But the groundwork for Windows 95 was definitely visible in Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with its support for 32-bit hard disk I/O, win32s API, and so on.
>>>
Win32S is just that, a subset (and rather limited I might add) of the Win32 API. The ground work was there, but the actual foundation was totally overhauled. Most of the code remaining from Win 3.x was not in the core architecture, but in components in user-space (which has a slightly different definition in Win9x architecture) like the GDI, user services etc.
A good part of the "major differences" between W4WG 3.11 and Windows 95 were so that Microsoft could convince users that those pesky alternative DOS's like DR-DOS and PC-DOS were no longer necessary. There were certainly changes, but the DR lawsuit established, to my satisfaction at least, that the announcement of the "disappearance" of DOS in Windows 95 was more for marketing than technical reasons. Microsoft's arguments at the time had as much technical credibility as their infamous video demos in a more recent trial.
>>>>
That's FUD. Win95 contains no DOS code aside from the compatibility module. It contains a great deal of Win 3.x code, but as I said its up top. Think of it this way. The core foundation was totally overhauled. It got rid of DOS, supported Win32 protected mode, etc. Once they had this skelatal foundation, they stuffed a lot of Win 3.1 back on there to support graphics, printing, UI, etc. That's why Win95 has a lot of 16 bit code, even though the architecture is totally new.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
(Even Mozilla isn't looking good.)
;-)
Bzzzzt. Wrong. Have you used any recent builds? Mozilla's rendering speed is spectacularly good now. It's rendering everything I throw at it, even broken Frontpage stuff. (I've heard there *are* pages out there that don't render properly but I haven't personally run across one yet.) O'Rei lly waxes poetic about Mozilla's extensibility. (the idea of extending Mozilla's wsiwyg xml/html editor is particularly intriguing.) Mozilla skins are hot. Mozilla still does crash - though not as much - and there are still a few features missing. But to say Mozilla isn't looking good... just shows you missed the cluetrain. Try not to be late for the next one please.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
It doesn't seem like it's a big secret that XFree86 4.0 was bleeding-edge. I knew it from reading the release notes. Why complain about the rawness of the release when the XFree guys stated quite plainly that it was tender code?
XFree hasn't released any release notes about this. Any clue as to what the DRI code merge is about? And what stuff was patched. As for 4.01, I wouldn't hope for much in terms of performance or stability. Usually, .01 releases are bug fixes (aside fromt his mysterious DRI code merge) and if you're 4.0 already runs fast and stable (a relative term for X) than I don't see the value in upgrading.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
If only it were that simple. Due to the very nature of OpenGL (open standard etc) it is moving much slower than hardware is. DirectX on the other hand gets an almost complete rewrite every year and only has to support one platform. For this reason GL won't be able to quickly take advantage of new card features (vertex/pixel shaders etc). Games publishers require DirectX support -- OpenGL is an optional extra that is mostly put in the schedule because the programmers would like to do an OpenGL version.
However, the DirectX people do seem to be interested in getting the best graphics API possible. When the time comes that it is necessary to support other OSs in order to make DirectX the best then it will probably happen. Look forward to huge licensing fees though. Unfortunately, Linux is not an OS that you're average gamer will have installed so publishers aren't pushing for Linux support. If that ever happens then developers will either move to a cross-platform API or start writing multiple versions of their renderers for different platforms. Which do you think is more likely?
i have used Xfree v 4.0 on three different chips. One ATI Rage, one 3dfx Voodoo 3, and a TNT2.
;-)
out of these three. the only one that i even gotten to work without hacking the XF86Config file was the TNT2 - that's not to say the the whole setup took a dump when i tried to use the nv driver provided by nVidia.
I'm just saying that the original 4.0 release wasn't all that it was built up to be. I know a signifigant number of people still running 3.3.6 because 4.0 was more of a beta than anything.
as far as the 3dfx drivers being published by 3dfx. This is only half-true. The drivers that 3dfx is providing are 3d only, the 2d servers they provide are meant as a replacement for the current XFree86 drivers, but XFree does in fact specify standalone 2d support for these chips. What bugs me is that the support pages specifically list the Voodoo chipsets as supported, even more specifically the Voodoo3 and Banshee chips (using the 'tdfx' driver). This is just not so. I would rather see the folks at XFree86 just come out and say it's not supported yet.
I'm still going home and trying 4.0.1 when i get there
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I don't buy a new graphics card every 3 months, but at least I have something more modern than an S3 (virge, etc) card.
I'm sure that you're aware that the Savage4 and Savage2000 chipsets are produced by S3/Diamond and that they have OpenGL capability that isn't supported by XF86. This is a shame, they're relatively common and cheap. Why should we have to spend several hundred dollars on a more expensive card just because there's no software support for a cheaper card? (Actually a big part of the answer to this is that S3 have been recalcitrant about releasing specs to developers. There was a thread on the Utah-GLX lists about this in March, S3 had been contacted and nothing came of it).
All hardware supported in 3.3.6 is also supported in 4.0.1.
All hardware supported in 3.3.6 is also supported in 4.0.1.
The AP6422 is supported in 3.3.6 but not fully in 4.0.1. The AT25 is supported in 4.0.1 but not in 3.3.6.
No ARK Logic chips are supported in 4.0.1.
All chips supported in 3.3.6 are supported in 4.0.1 except for Mach8 and some old Mach32 chips. The support in 4.0.1 is, however, unaccelerated for all chips except the Mach64, Rage and Rage 128 variants.
No Avance Logic chips are supported in 4.0.1.
All chips supported in 3.3.6 are also supported in 4.0.1.
The following chips are supported in 3.3.6 but not in 4.0.1: 6410, 6412, 6420, 6440, 5420, 5422, 5424, 5426, 5428, 5429, 6205, 6215, 6225, 6235, 7541, 7542, 7543, 7548, 7555 and 7556.
No Compaq AVGA support in 4.0.1. DEC TGA support is equivalent in both versions.
No Cyrix chips are well-supported in 4.0.1.
No Epson chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No Genoa chips are supported in 4.0.1.
The standard VGA core is supported in both versions, but there is no support for the 8514/A or XGA-2 in 4.0.1.
No IIT chips are supported in 4.0.1.
The i740 and i810 are supported in both versions, but the i810 is only supported on Linux/x86 platforms at present.
All chips supported in 3.3.6 are also supported in 4.0.1.
No MX (???) chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No NCR chips are supported in 4.0.1.
All chips supported in 3.3.6 are also supported in 4.0.1.
All chipsets supported in 3.3.6 except the NV1 are also supported in 4.0.1.
No Number Nine chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No Oak chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No Paradise/Western Digital chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No RealTek chips are supported in 4.0.1.
All chips supported in 3.3.6 are also supported in 4.0.1.
Only the ViRGE and Trio3D chipsets are supported in 4.0.1. All of the other chipsets are only supported in 3.3.6.
Support for the 86C201, 86C202, 86C215, 86C225, 5597 and 5598 is currently only available in 3.3.6.
No SMI chips are supported in 4.0.1, but the fbdev driver is reported to work on Linux.
The following (older) chipsets that are supported in 3.3.6 are not supported in 4.0.1: TVGA8200LX, TVGA8800CS, TVGA8900B, TVGA8900C, TVGA8900CL, TVGA9000, TVGA9000i, TVGA9100B, TVGA9200CXr, TGUI9400CXi, TGUI9420, TGUI9430DGi.
All cards supported by 3.3.6 are also supported by 4.0.1 except for the old ET3000.
No Video 7 chips are supported in 4.0.1.
No Weitek chips are supported in 4.0.1.
I couldn't get the newest nvidia drivers to work with xfree 4.0.1. I thought maybe my configuration was wrong, but when I reinstalled xfree 4.0 it worked fine. I would have thought that the xfree people would check to see if they were breaking someone else's drivers!
.93 drivers to work with xfree 4.0.1?
Has anyone gotten the
Yes, I too dislike rpms... that's why I don't use an rpm-based system. Debian is great. Upgrading will not involve downloading an obscene amount of packages, but rather "apt-get upgrade". The packages will be tested for quality before they're even put on the apt mirrors, and you will barely notice the upgrade, until you discover the faster performance. This is why debian is so much better than all of those OTHER distributions :-P
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Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
I've been running XFree4 for several months. On Debian. Hasn't crashed yet. Either there is no problem, or nVidia's drivers are just that much better than all the other ones. :)
The only real problem I've noticed is that copy/paste ops sometimes lock the system for a second or two, and sometimes KDevelop gets screwy (menus get slow and text gets messed up). The first problem is only a minor annoyance, and the second can be fixed by restarting the program. I don't have 4.0.1 yet, so maybe these problems are fixed. Anyone know?
For Debian users who want X4 NOW: Just use the binary installer provided by the XFree86 people. It is a completely painless process. It just asks a few questions ("do you want XYZ fonts?", etc.) and does its thing, and everything works. (at least, it worked for me)
Be careful, though. Recently, potato had an update for X3. dpkg though the thing was still on my computer, so it automagically downgraded me, which completely destroyed my whole setup. I had to re-run the X4 installer from a VC, but then everything worked again.
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DirectX is great, once you learn the programming technique. (Not that hard really, once you get used to it.) And it is, in the words of Andre LaMothe, essentially a miracle. As for not being on Linux, neither are 90% of the good games. Does that mean you shouldn't play them? As for your comparison to OpenGL, there is none. Maybe you think DirectX==Direct3D? Cross platform is not even an issue, because even under OpenGL, Windows still kicks the ass of Linux, BSD, and BeOS (until this fall that is!) Plus, DirectX (even D3D) is much better. Let me iterate:
1) DirectX has an integrated programming interface. Once you learn it and can get past the hungarian notation, you'll find it is pretty easy to use. Not only that, but in the time it takes you to learn all the native media APIs on Linux, and also learn OpenGL, you could have learned DirectX a lot sooner, because there is only one mindset to learn.
2) It is a higher quality API. DirectDraw gives you direct access to graphics hardware. It is really, really fast, and gives you a lot of control over what you're doing. (Want to quadruple buffer, no problem!) DirectInput is hard to use, but hideously flexible. (Just like... UNIX!) It supports any kind of device on the market, even ones that haven't been invented yet, due to the generalized API. DirectMusic has MIDI composition unmatched by any other mainstream (hardware accelerated of course) API. DirectSound is a lot better than OSS or even ALSA in terms of compatibility and speed. The only mediocre API is DirectSound3D, but with extensions like EAX, even that is pretty good. (Especially considering that the other option is the propriotory A3D.) And now, Direct3D. It used to be a slow, hard to program, feature barren POS API. Now, it is a fast, hard to program, feature filled API. First, it has much closer access to hardware than OpenGL does, via DirectDraw, and as such, can do some really nifty things. It can render into secondary surfaces ACCELERATED. OpenGL can do that too, but only in software mode. The core API supports a LOT more features than the OpenGL core API plus standard extensions. Only when you add in propriotary extensions does OpenGL become feature competitive. Seriously, extensions suck. They aren't standardized in the beginning, so you end up with the ATI version of an extension, the NVIDIA version, and the S3 version. Also, the ARB slows progress of stanard extensions. I was looking at the meeting notes of the recent OpenGL conferance, and right now they are deciding on a standardized extension for texture compression! D3D has had that for a long time, and now has an array of new features that OpenGL can't touch such as vertex blending and per pixel lighting. Sure nVidia promised to expose all of them as propriatory extensions, but will developers use them until a standard comes out? These days, D3D is just as fast as OpenGL on the same hardware, and can do tricks that GL just can't do. Sure it is limited to one platform, but that's the price you pay for DirectX.
In short, DirectX is a great API for anybody developing for media applications. Sure it is MS only, but you have to give it credit for being great. You don't even have to use it (I don't use D3D because I like programming on BeOS) but you have to acknowledge its power. If I were SGI, I would light a fire under the asses of the ARB, write an OpenGL version 2.0 that could compete with D3D in terms of features (rendering to auxilliary buffers, etc) and then heavily fund the Kronos project to take on the rest of DirectX. That is the only hope *NIX has of getting a hold on the desktop market.
PS> Yes you need IE. Why would you use netscape? It is a bloated, buggy piece of shit. (Even Mozilla isn't looking good.) Sure you can use Opera, but can you live without CSS and DHTML?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Funny. That's why DirectX versions are free? (And only take one reboot?) If you're going to argue, at least have a point.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Although I do appreaciate announcements of LARGE updates to POPULAR software packages (E: Linux 2.4.0, FreeBSD 4.0, XFree86 4.0.0), I feel that posting a story everytime a tiny release of some popular package is lame. Perhaps we could have a new "software" section akin to the BSD section for discussing mildly momentous updates like this.
I assume that you are not referring to professional animators when you make that statement. I'm certainly not a professional animator, but I've read plenty of
articles about software shops pushing them towards Windows boxes and the backlash that occured as a result. It's my understanding that professional
animators and CAD/CAM engineers overwhelmingly prefer Unix platforms to Windows.
>>>>>>>>>
I was talking from an architecture point of view. Sure animators prefer UNIX, but that because it fits much better in a network environment and is much more stable under high load. Also, UNIX machines usually have pretty hefty hardware. From the architecture side, however, media on both UNIX and Windows is somewhat of an ugly hack. (Especially X.)
Nobody wants to deal with installing all the libraries and keeping stuff up to date and all that. Take, for example, this latest XFree86 upgrade.
Under windows, it would have been distributed as an EXE. You double click on it, it chugs, you hit OK when it asks you to reboot, and voila,
you're running a new version.
Nope, with Windows this is more like an upgrade from Windows95 to Windows2000 Professional. No, the upgrade to XFree does not change as many underlying
OS level pieces as a 95 => 2000 upgrade would, but it does change the basic architecture of the windowing system and would not be a simple "click the EXE
file" upgrade. This is not equivalent to upgrading a display driver in Windows! Now, Windows "beats" Linux as far as that is topic is concerned, but that's not
what XFree86 4.0 is compared to 3.x.
>>>>>>>
I was talking XFree86 4.0 --> 4.01. 3.x-> 4.0 is MUCH more trumatic. It's also not similar to the upgrade between Win95 -> Win2k (considering that they're different OSs entirely.) The upgrade between 3.x and 4.0 would be like installing service pack 6 on NT. This pack (when installed on a clean 4.0 pack 1 machine) upgraded the GDI (akin to X) Internet Explorer (which functions as the window manager) and introduced stuff like fibers (a lighter kind of thread, akin to upgrading Pthreads.) It also introduced bug fixes to the kernel. All it was was a 30 meg download and a clicking on an EXE. To get the same effect under Linux you'd have to upgrade X from 3.x to 4.0, recompile the kernel, and upgrade the C libraries (new threading support.)
An even more accurate comparison would be upgrading Windows 3.11 to Windows95. The underlying OS architecture was, and still is, basically the same, but
the graphics architecture changes so drastically that it was often easier to reinstall the whole box than attempt an upgrade. At least with Linux the windowing
system is not tied so tightly to the core OS that screwing an upgrade of the windowing system up basically screws your box up beyond repair (or fubar for those
that prefer that term).
>>>>>
You have no clue about Window architecture, do you? Win95 is vastly different from Win3.1. It is certainly more than a change in the graphics system. (Actually, the GDI was relativly unchanged from 3.1 to 95.) I don't even feel like explaining, but read BYTE magazine around 1993. They go into the details behind the architecture changes.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The Savage chips barely support OpenGL under Windows! The Savage 2000 has a geometry engine but the drivers under Windows don't support geometry acceleration! S3 cards are beyond hope!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Sorry, I don't know HTML that well.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Most of the good programmers didn't learn their programming in school, but learned it on their own.
You learn by looking at what is there and writing your own code. You get better by doing the same.
Before I worked on device drivers, I didn't know how do it. My first device driver was for a Vista V1200 Diskpack under CPM on a 6502 (the IO code was 6502 on the apple, and the higher code was running on the Z80B card). I found it slow, so I got source code and optimized the driver.
Even if you can't program, you can provide finely detailed bug reports and run tests that could reduce where the problem in the code is located.
You could always pay someone to write the driver that you want.
Fight Spammers!
"Yes you need IE. Why would you use netscape? It is a bloated, buggy piece of shit. (Even Mozilla isn't looking good.) Sure you can use Opera, but can you live without CSS and DHTML? "
This is the funniest troll I've seen in a long time, and most loved by moderators! I'm thinking our poor friend must've used either Opera 2.11, or an extreme Alpha for BeOS which didn't support CSS.
Considering that Net+ doesn't support HTML 4.0 fully, let alone CSS *, I find it downright hillarious that this fellow would claim that somewhich which doesn't run fully yet on the BeOS doesn't have these features. Given an incomplete version of any software, you could claim anything and probably be correct!
Opera! (3.6 at least, probably other 3.x series too) supports CSS 1, ECMAscript, and Java via a plugin (ye olde surfin' joe Java plugin from Sun). Although I personally disable ECMAscript (for obvious reasons). I'd love to turn it off in NS, but it somehow breaks CSS parsing (what a tanlged web of dependancies!)
As for the comment about IE. Clearly you haven't subscribed to Bugtraq. iexplore.exe is a simple COM program which displays ye olde DHTML widget + a few other bits and bobs. The problem? MS Active*.* gets a new report on average every 2.5 days on Bugtraq. There's a thing to be said for keeping your code modular, with security partitioning between components enforced. Unfortunately, you can only say it about Unix systems -- because MS products don't enforce them (or break if you try.. ever run NT with *proper* permissions on the %systemroot% dir?)
And being a BeOS user, our friend is obviously well suited to commenting about software for other operating systems.
Thank you for making my day more entertaining!
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I'm pretty sure this is because of the way top counts shared memory between processes (which X uses heavily.) So, if you have 3 processes all sharing the same 10 mb chunk of memory, top will report 30 mb in use. There may be some way to turn off this behavior. Perhaps an expert can comment?
S3 hardware is not being dropped. It is simply a lower priority than getting DRI finished. As for people who "play" with their computers, define "play." Is it playing to develop OpenGL apps. Is it playing to do 3D animation. Is it playing to do desktop publishing. (Oh I forgot, on /. anything not related to server or database programming is "playing!") I don't buy a new graphics card every 3 months, but at least I have something more modern than an S3 (virge, etc) card. X4 is meant to imporve graphics performance. If you are a sysadmin, or a programmer that simply uses Vi or Emacs, then guess what, you probably don't need improved graphics performance!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Nope, with Windows this is more like an upgrade from Windows95 to Windows2000 Professional. No, the upgrade to XFree does not change as many underlying OS level pieces as a 95 => 2000 upgrade would, but it does change the basic architecture of the windowing system and would not be a simple "click the EXE file" upgrade. This is not equivalent to upgrading a display driver in Windows! Now, Windows "beats" Linux as far as that is topic is concerned, but that's not what XFree86 4.0 is compared to 3.x.
An even more accurate comparison would be upgrading Windows 3.11 to Windows95. The underlying OS architecture was, and still is, basically the same, but the graphics architecture changes so drastically that it was often easier to reinstall the whole box than attempt an upgrade. At least with Linux the windowing system is not tied so tightly to the core OS that screwing an upgrade of the windowing system up basically screws your box up beyond repair (or fubar for those that prefer that term).
I have always said the same about Slackware. A fast, stable distro with none of the "everything must be free" crap that Debian has and that I don't care about.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
I was talking about Linux. Suddenly you think Linux stands for UNIX in general? Even with DRI, IRIX is still better at 3D than Linux is. Still, IRIX is a hack. It is fairly fat, and 3D make X have to jump through hoops. Of course, on SGIs, they can afford it, they have huge machines. But on commodity hardware (read low power) hacks like DRI and media on UNIX really sap too much speed.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Let me correct a few facts that have shown up in this thread. First, all the 3dfx boards that do 2D are supported under XFree 4.0. That means that the Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo2 are not, but since they don't use the X server at all they don't need any special support to run under X.
2D performance of the 3dfx boards is much better under 4.0 than it was under 3.3. The new architecture of 4.0 and the release of 3dfx specs allows the server to run much better.
3D performance is a more complicated matter. I suspect this is where people are complaining. The DRI is a new architecture and it has somewhat different goals than the hack I put together for doing 3D under 3.3. It is designed to run multiple applications, in a window, reliably, and securely. Those extra features do take a toll on performance. Our goal for 4.0 was always to make it work correctly before worrying about the performance. We've just gotten to that point and are now putting some attention on performance. I've made some substantial improvements in the last week, that will be showing up in 4.0 soon.
Finally, Precision Insight and now VA Linux Systems is doing he 2D and 3D work for 3dfx. That work is being done primarily by me. I also did most of the 2D and 3D work under XFree 3.3. (I did have some good contributions by few other developers) So mostly the same people are doing the 3.3 work and 4.0 work. It both cases it was done mostly by a very small group (less than 3) contributors.
The XFree 4.0 support for 3dfx boards is far from laughable. It's one of the best boards supported under 4.0. XFree 4.0 had ambitious goals and we've done a remarkable job pulling them all together. Is the job complete? No. It is running nicely for a lot of people? Absoltely. If you'd like to see it improve then quit complaining and contribute code or bug reports.
- |Daryll
BeOS programmers format their code mostly according to K&R style. And BeOS has nothing to do with DirectX. As for the formatting, I don't know HTML that well, so I stick to preformatted text. And in this blasted little box, formatting is difficult.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
4.0.1 is more significant than a "tiny release". 4.0 was a long-awaited release, but many users have not upgraded because of stability concerns. 4.0.1 is, for most people, more significant than 4.0 was, because it's finally ready for them to use. Once 4.x is stable, I'd agree with you that tiny releases aren't newsworthy.
then preview it until it doesn't look like somebody puked the ravings of a 17 year old windows user all over your comment.
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The source files are available at ftp://ftp.cs.umn.edu/pub/XFree86.
;)
Should probably have waited until I finished downloading before submitted this though
If you'd like to give me a point by point overview of where I'm wrong, I'll be glad to listen to you.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Ok, I have to ask -again-, is there dual head support for the G400 yet? I bought this card to use two monitors with Xinerama months ago, and have yet to see even an alpha/beta release of the code. I know they're working on it, and it probobly isn't stable yet, but how about release early and release often? I for one would be willing to isolate bugs and test it, I'm sure others would be too.
A link to the gzip'd diff, which you then have to search through for the changelog? Nah. I appreciate the post.
And what's with all the "instructions to moderators" type posts - is this some sort of pseudo-meta-moderation?
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I used to get the mystical black screen of video card lockup on this ATI chip.
It's now working (seemingly) properly under 4.0.1, which is great because Xfree86 4.x is pretty slick. I'll have to do some more testing to make sure it's stable though.
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Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot