Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the let-the-games-begin dept.
sammy!! writes "Debian unstable now has XFree86 4.0, so use apt-get or dselect and start downloading the new packages!"
There are still a ton of issues with it, but I've been using the XF86 debs for several months on my desktop, with no significant problems.
i have been using the phase1 (starting at v12) debs and also apt-getting the phase2.
I currently rebuilt my system (testing, wanted to be super clean after) and i stayed at x3.when x4 came into woody (yesterday i believe) the problems started.
i needed to reboot my box do to hardware issues. nothing serious. then when i when to start X i found my backspace and delete werent working (guys on irc had a riot with my typing, mad props to #clan_gun:) ) the keyboard maps for X were gone.
so i wanted to look at the problem, noticed x3 and x4 installed on my box ( first time i used dselect in a while). i thought to my self "what a great time to upgrade to x4" i removed x3 and added the extra x4 that was missing.
shut down X when to restart, startx was missing.
i removed EVERYTHING x related and reinstalled x4 debs. now everything seems fine.
now. nvidia GLX drivers, i had test10, compiled with warnings about a INC and DEC pionter not right. and insmod NVdriver gave me "unknown symbol xxINCxx() and xxxDECxxx()
downgraded to test7, module compiled fine.
removed mesa conficts and restarted X couldnt start X.... su segfaulted. reboot worked
ran blender system locked (harshly) manually needed to run fsck./var/lib/dpkg/available was missing touched it and continued
changed xf86config-4 back to nv from nvidia
x wouldnt restart. removed x4 installed x4 everything khosher ( i am sure i only needed to remove/usr/X11/lib/modules/extension/*glx* but i reinstalled anyways)
now everything works minus closed source nvidia glx.
not fscking with anything else:)
-rev
normally i am not this lame, just wanted to share with others incase they ran into similar problems.
Re:some minor issues.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 01:02:29 +0100
From: FORT David
To: "linux-nvidia@lists.surfsouth.com"
Subject: [Patch]compiling NV 0.95 with 2.4.0test10,
avoid unresolved symbol while loading module
Everything's in the subject, fix mem_map_inc_count which has been removed recently from kernel headers. It works like a charm @ home.
+#define mem_map_inc_count(p) atomic_inc( &(p->count) )
+#define mem_map_dec_count(p) atomic_dec( &(p->count) )
+
/*
* Our main lock for everything.
*/
---
The moral of this story: Subscribe to lists instead of bitching and moaning.
Re:some minor issues.
by
Rev.+DeFiLEZ
·
· Score: 1
1) that was 2% of my problem. not even a concern in the grand scheme of things
2) i did it today, posted today, even if i subcribed to the list, that email wasnt posted today.
3)my last remark states: this is to help others if they get into issue.ie dont do what i did.
-rev
no wonder you posted AC.
this is why my sources.list is pointed to 'stable' and 'proposed-updates'.
I'll admit sometimes the package maintainers screw up and install a package into 'proposed-updates' that breaks the system (like lprng 3.6.12-7 with buggy setuid kernel bug-check) but overall you get the same important package upgrades without the risk to production or important systems.
When X4 has support for the Savage4 chipsets (and it better be free) and it's in proposed, I'll upgrade, but horror stories I've seen and heard with X4 will keep my system in 3.3.6 for a while.
-- # debian/rules
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
PhilA
·
· Score: 1
by the way I seem to remember some of the older ARM3s were at 25Mhz, could be wrong though... I had one put in my A3000 back in the day.
You're right -- My A310 had a 25Mhz ARM3 in it.
It got donated to a school eventually. sob
Phil --
--
nosig
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
PhilA
·
· Score: 1
You're right -- My A310 had a 25Mhz ARM3 in it. It got donated to a school eventually. sob
I know, replying to my own post, but before the pedants get to me, I should point out that this was a heavily upgraded A310:)
Phil --
--
nosig
Re:Font anti-aliasing is NOT evil
by
binford2k
·
· Score: 1
If you are running a Windoze box (especially on a laptop) download this demo for an example of the advanced rendering tjwhaynes is talking of.
Render demo
-b
Re:XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody
by
zonem
·
· Score: 1
This is a fairly big move for debian. Debian developers are devoted to producing *stable* packages (unlike a certain other distro). I've seen using debian XF4 debs forever, and have seen them mature into what they currently are, which is, to say the least, very imperssive. Plus, people are always happy to see when something new is implemented into their favorite distro (*high 5 to all the unstable debian users out there;)
P.S. All flames go to/dev/null as I don't check that email address.
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
Surak
·
· Score: 2
What's wrong with Windows' font antialiasing (other than the fact that it doesn't work all the time?:)
Hee hee! The Corporate lackies of OSDN Inc. post yet another less-than-trivial announcement for Debian LinuxOS. I think that they can't handle The One True OS(tm).
-- A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Anti-aliasing definitely looks good on 14-pt
fonts, but personally I never use them; I'd like
to see how things look at 10-pt and below.
Re:XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody
by
Xtifr
·
· Score: 1
Well, lets see -- this is the first major xf86-4 binary package created *by* users *for* users[*], rather than being created by employees to meet a marketing checklist. This is, afaik, the first to provide a smooth upgrade path, rather than forcing you to do a system reinstall like RH usually does. (I know there were some ugly issues with upgrades, esp. around app-default files.)
But bottom line, it's a big deal because now you can use Xf86-4 without giving up all the advantages of Debian!;-)
cheers
[*] I felt like a part of the Debian project long before I ever joined officially. I never came *close* to feeling like a part of RH!:-)
I've had absolutely no crashing problems with my xf86 4.0.1 but I had minor problems with 4.0, the specifics of which I don't recall.
The only problem I've had with 4.x is that they seem to have a horrible memory leak - I don't know if it's my G400 drivers (I've tried both the 'official' Matrox driver and the one that came with X), or some other component that interfaces with X, such as the gtk-engines...
I hope this will help some people out there, and in like, I hope there's someone out there that is able to help me.:) I've looked all over for what might be the cause. It's maddening to have to restart X due to memory problems every ~24 hours. (192 megs mem, w/ a 300m swap... and swap will get up to about 40 megs w/ just X, a couple Eterms, and a 'fresh' netscape running.)
-------
CAIMLAS
-- ~/ssh slashdot.org
ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Re:Experience with a Voodoo3 and X4.01 Woody
by
grammar+fascist
·
· Score: 1
ugdct-blam install ttygols.
It includes gluptrens.
That's what your statements must look like to a Microsoft user.;)
The 4.x X servers use a new style of configuration file. It's supposed to be automagically generated by running xf86cfg; however, this doesn't always work. Branden has written a tool to generate the config file, but it doesn't always work either. In lieu of this, it's probably a good idea to go to XFree86.org and brush up on the 4.0 series XF86Config file format before upgrading.
xf86config seems to work nicely, except that it generates/etc/X11/XF86Config instead of/etc/X11/XF86Config-4. And if you want any extra modules loaded, or you want to change some of the more obscure defaults, you'll still have to edit it.
Also, the new name for the config file is XF86Config-4 (I don't know if this is debian specific) instead of XF86Config.
If you have no XF86Config-4, then it looks at XF86Config. But (probably to support keeping 3.x on the system or something) the packages install XF86Config-4 by default.
Try to avoid emailing Branden at all costs. He's been less than friendly to me, and I know other people who have had similar experiences.
He's probably very busy;)
-----
--
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
Re:Any known problems?
by
The_Messenger
·
· Score: 1
No noticable differences? Then why bother upgrading?:-)
I doubt that 4.x will be as stable as 3.x for at least another 8 months, so I'm sticking with 3.3.6. The only thing that could make me switch is the addition of real (a la Windows/MacOS/XIG/commercial UNIX) font support.
---------///---------- All generalizations are false.
I would recommend using 4.0.1, which is what is in debian.
I find it very good, it even has a smaller footprint.
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
rekcufrehtom
·
· Score: 1
Outline fonts as the latest innovation to replace bitmap fonts? Oh my god, where have you been the last 10 years? Outside X, everyone has been using outline fonts for ages!
I'm running a GeForce DDR and don't have any of the problems you mention. I've played Q3, Solider of Fortune, etc. I've never had X lock up hard while playing a game, or testing my system using something like evas_test.
When the drivers first came out there were some issues with the origional TNT, but I don't know if any specific ones still exist. Try going on #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net. The nvidia developers hang out there often.
Re:Experience with a Voodoo3 and X4.01 Woody
by
quixotal
·
· Score: 2
apt-get install fttools
It includes mkttfdir.
Re:XFree86 Debs from additional apt source lines
by
ChadN
·
· Score: 1
After installing the Nvidia drivers, how do you compile or run applications that depend on GLUT (and GLU)? Does one have to download GLUT from sgi and compile it with the new drivers, or are there premade packages that will work?
--
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
That's odd, 1152x864x16 works fine on my S3 Virge card. Except that i apparently haven't gotten the tweaks right yet, the pixel corruption is a bit annoying.
-----
--
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
Re:XFree86 Debs from additional apt source lines
by
greenfly
·
· Score: 1
One problem, is if you want proper DGA 1.0 mouse support, for games like quake3, if so, you will need to compile X from cvs, or wait for 4.0.2 to come out.
standard distribution is binaries(at least last time i downloaded them), you just have to run the install shell script. and you don't have to download all the servers - just the one you need.
-- ound the message used repetitively over and over still nothing grows silen
It's nice to have debs, but there's really no reason you can't have 4.01 - just go to xfree86.org and download the generic binaries. I've been running them ever since they came out, and it has been rock-solid (I'm just using the stock nvidia TNT driver).
Re:Font anti-aliasing is NOT evil
by
arnald
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, I remember widespread confusion, and people suggested that you NEEDED "alpha transparancy" to do anti-aliasing - this is not true.
Yes! Go here and checkout how anti-aliased fonts are being implemented in the new X. From what I can see from the spec, we may end up with really nice fonts after all.
-- A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
Re:XFree86 Debs from additional apt source lines
by
Fluffy+the+Cat
·
· Score: 2
ya, we all have many old comps (or pieces of) lying around, but we don't expect them to be able to run gnome at 1600x1200 with enlightenment. when we talk about running linux on old computers we mean fileservers and firewalls. we set them up in console and we probably don't even install X....
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
Fervent
·
· Score: 2
How is Windows antialiasing "evil"? It sure looks pretty on my box.
That's one of the major reasons I stay away from X in the first place (besides the fact that my new Mobility chipset in my new laptop really isn't supported). It just doesn't look as "finished" as it does in Windows.
--
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I think that the debian packages (at least) are including some pre-realse work with this too. At least, it was noted in the changelog a while back that we were now 'including render extension'.
-- The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
What do cruft-encased UNIX old-timers get from preaching function over form? Does it make you feel 'leet? Humans are visual creatures. They appreciate things that look nice. Cars, magazines, furniture, people of the opposite gender (a bow to P.C;) computer cases, everything! Form should not take precedence over function, but form shouldn't be left out entirely either. If you leave out form, then you're blind. If you leave out function, you're an iMac. If you do both, then you are one of a rare breed of competent designers.
PS> Aliased fonts also cause headaches.
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Well, depends on the user. A lot of people just don't need multi-user. I, for example, do a lot of programming and I'm perfectly happy in BeOS. It offers me a lot more than Linux (I have access to most of the UNIX CLI tools and the nice BeOS API) and I can boot into Win2K when I need to use 3D Studio. Of course, it all depends on what you need to do. If you're just web-browsing and word-processing, then BeOS gives you the stability of a *NIX, without needing to be admined. If you need to do 3D rendering, then nothing other than Win2K (or NT) is going to satisfy you. If you need to run a server or need to do X development, then you probably have to run a *NIX. I'm just saying to use whatever feels right. However, don't be blind to the fact that BeOS can do a lot more than most people give it credit for.
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Only if they can persuade the X consortium that
aliasing on fonts looks bad. Otherwise its
going to be non-compliant. A problem with
design by committee.
What do cruft-encased UNIX old-timers get from preaching function over form?
Gee, I dunno, maybe because we like to use our computers to get things accomplished, instead of admiring them from across the room as objects d'art?
They appreciate things that look nice. Cars, magazines, furniture, people of the opposite gender (a bow to P.C;) computer cases, everything!
My car is a dirty green Toyota Tercel encrufted with bumper stickers, my furniture mostly second-hand, my boxen encased in plain beige (with various comic strips and the like plastered on, of course),and I don't judge printed matter by its cover. (Otherwise one would conclude that USA Today is a superior source of news to the New York Times.)
Now, in terms of persons of the appropriate gender, when it comes to sex form is a part of function. But in the other examples you site, some sophmoric designer's notion of form usually ends up getting in the way of using the damn thing - pretty chairs that are impossible to sit in, computer cases that impede repair and update,
PS& Aliased fonts also cause headaches.
Actually, I find that blurry "smoothed" fonts are more likely to hurt me, as my eyes try in vain to bring them into focus. OTOH, a lot of people here seem to be saying that they're most useful for small fonts, whereas my take is just to save myself the eyestrain either way and avoid small fonts completely. (Website and document designers who force them on me are, of course, idiots who should be strung up by their thumbs.)
-- Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog You cannot wash away blood with blood
Ok, they suck for playing games, but there are other uses for computers than playing games. Fact is the s3V's are cheap as dirt. And I don't mean that high quality top soil either. If you are using your computer for simulations or as some type of server than you don't need a zillion dollar card. S3V are fine for viewing basic plots or running netscape. You can use the money you save on the card to buy more ram or a faster cpu. Never had a problem with XSV 3.x when I was using them but I never tried under 4.0.
I dunno, I don't even put video cards in my servers - just give 'em ssh and make sure the serial port is listening in case you get in trouble - and you're ready to roll. I suppose you could use it as a multi-purpose machine, but to be honest - I don't see why you are running unstable on a server... and past that, I don't see why you wanted the latest and greatest if all you use it for is looking at plots and netscape. Personally, like I said, I leave X off servers and just display them on my desktop or laptop.
-- cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
XFree86 Debs from additional apt source lines
by
Yebyen
·
· Score: 5
I have been using the unofficial (phase2) debs of XFree86 4.0.1 for a while, and they are impressive. They actually work a lot better than compiling from source for me. In case it matters to anybody, the nv.o module even supports GeForce2GTS and other cards only supported in CVS as of now.
These debs seem fairly stable to me and are worth the download for most cards. Enjoy!
--
-- Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Re:XFree86 Debs from additional apt source lines
by
BLarg!
·
· Score: 3
Apt-get mesag3, mesag-dev, glutg3, and glutg3-dev if you don't already have them. Then download the NVidia driver. Then you have to do a little work to get things to work together. Move/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a to/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a.debi an,/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so to/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so.debian ,/usr/lib/libGL.so to/usr/lib/libGL.so.debian, and/usr/lib/libGL.so.1 to/usr/lib/libGL.so.1.debian. After you rename those files you gotta telll dpkg to divert them. Do that with dpkg-divert --divert/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a.debi an/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a, dpkg-divert --divert/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so.debian/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so, dpkg-divert --divert/usr/lib/libGL.so.debian/usr/lib/libGL.so, dpkg-divert --divert/usr/lib/libGL.so.1.debian/usr/lib/libGL.so.1
After all that dirty work you should be able to install the NVidia GLX drivers by their instructions, and it will replace the libraries you moved with its own GL implementation. The idea here is that you can still develop OpenGL apps and you still have the GLU/GLUT libraries. Diverting those libraries will allow apt to update Mesa to newer versions without overwriting NVidia's implementation. After doing all that you shouldn't have any problem.
Re:XFree86 Debs from additional apt source lines
by
psychos
·
· Score: 3
Don't forget to get the XF ree 86 4.0 drivers from NVIDIA, even if you're not using 3d; they're faster for 2d stuff than the open-source drivers included with XFree86.
apt-get install xserver-xfree86 was all you needed to do;)
Now, I just need to make the 3D working well for my G400... that's was missing with debian, a working-with-no-recompiling lib for the 3D:)
Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
rekcufrehtom
·
· Score: 1
Because Windows has had it for 5 years.
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
arnald
·
· Score: 1
I complete agree with you - glad to see some sense on this topic at last!
(by the way I seem to remember some of the older ARM3s were at 25Mhz, could be wrong though... I had one put in my A3000 back in the day.)
-- arnald
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
rpozz
·
· Score: 1
Yes I know it's been around for a long time. It's been around since 1989 (ish), I was just making a point that using outlines is better than blending bitmaps.
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
rpozz
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, it can look/ok/, but it's not the best I've seen by a very long way. It's also pretty slow too, IIRC.
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
aleph+
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, Acorn's RiscOS screen font system was perhaps the best so far. It's all in the details. I remember Acorn documentation that made a big deal about the advanced hinting that they used. That meant that each font file included hints -- vertical and horizontal guidelines for each character which show where the important features of the character are. That way you could be consistent in allocating the same number of pixels to similar features in different chracters in the font. Evidently that improves the readability substantially.
Does anyone know to what extent modern font formats (TrueType and Adobe type 1) allow for hints in the font files? Do on screen rendering systems follow those hints?
Also does anyone else think that Microsoft's anti-aliasing policy is daft? Windows will automatically NOT anti-alias fonts smaller than 14 points. That seems ridiculous to me. Anti-aliasing is a technique that uses color depth as a substitute for resolution. Surely it is specifically at small font sizes, when you have a lower available resolution relative to the chracter height, that you most want anti-aliasing. In my experience this theory is born out in practice too -- small sized fonts are (IMHO) much more readable when anti-aliased. It's one of the main reasons that anti-aliasing is useful/important.
So, lets make anti-aliasing at least an option that you can turn on/off -- for example I want anti-aliased fonts always. Someone else could set to anti-alias only fonts larger, or smaller than a certain size.
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
Peter+Putzer
·
· Score: 1
Both TrueType and Adobe Type1 fonts already contain hints (well, they can at least).
Whether or not the renderer actually uses those is a different matter, of course.
At least the Type1 renderer donated to X11 by IBM ages ago isn't very good:(
--
--
KDE programmer and computer science student in Klagenfurt, Austria.
Re:Font anti-aliasing is evil
by
rpozz
·
· Score: 1
Windows anti-aliasing is evil. However, the few people who have used RISC OS know that it can look/very/ nice, especially if outline fonts are used, as opposed to bitmaps.
Although Acorn's anti-aliased font manager was written in assembler for speed at the time, this was when the host machines ran at 33Mhz. A carefully written anti-aliasing font manager for X (using outline fonts) could potentially look extremely nice.
Re:XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody
by
jrcamp
·
· Score: 1
Because it's true.
Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky
by
StandardDeviant
·
· Score: 3
This isn't a Debian issue (I'm using 4.0.1 on my mongrel RH workstation), but I have noticed recently that the X server will SIG 11 at odd times. I haven't pinned down the common thread yet, but it seems to happen at the point of initial start up of some programs (e.g. the AnyJ java ide thingy from www.netcomputing.de, which gets to the splash screen and _blammo_, X server dies). When I first installed X 4.0, it would SIG 11 when I right clicked on a variable in DDD. So anyway, my point is be cautious, as for all the improvments in XFree 4.x (and don't get me wrong, it is nicer, especially in the font managment realm), it still has some odd stability issues.
Re:Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky
by
Chris+Pimlott
·
· Score: 2
I feel I should add my own datapoint, I've been using X4 since 4.0 and I have not experienced a single random crash. (P300, Intel i740 chipset video card)
Re:Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky
by
dbarclay10
·
· Score: 3
You know, I had noticed that X died on me fairly often, but I found out that it was Java that was causing the problems. I didn't really care, though.
This was a few months ago. A few days ago, I got the Java2(1.3;) runtime from java.sun.com, and now all the crashes have stopped.
Dave 'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
--
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Re:Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky
by
Paul+Jakma
·
· Score: 1
so? XF4 is totally different code to 3.3.6. At least try running it clocked normally before complaining. Random SIGSEGVs are a classic sign of hardware problems.
see the same thing on linux-kernel lots of:
"latest kernel x.y.z crashes on my OC'd system. It can't be the OC'ing cause it's been running fine with older kernels"
and when they do go and try it with a normally clocked processor 99/100 times it then works fine.
so just go try it...
-- I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Re:Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky
by
fatphil
·
· Score: 1
You're not just suffering from the known SIG11 problems with AMD K6s are you? (I'm one).
Also, which video card do you have? For I know people who complain about ATIs. (I'm one).
Oh my goodness - my Advansys SCSI card craps out too - why does all hardware begining with an 'A' not work for me!
FatPhil
--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Re:Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky
by
Fross
·
· Score: 5
but I have noticed recently that the X server will SIG 11 at odd times.
You mean it'll start flaming CmdrTaco then throw all its toys out of the pram and storm off?:)
Fross
Re:Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky
by
redtux
·
· Score: 1
Just checked the page (on galeon)
No probles loading (tho galeon did crash when I got back to/. but restarted fine - no X crash)
So it may be a netscape prob
(using RH7 X4 etc)
-- Microsoft(tm) - a particular virulent virus that has infected most Pc's.
Re:Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky
by
mce
·
· Score: 1
Mine is clocked normally. As is its bus, and the
aging Matrox Millenium 1 I have in there. And yet
every now and then 4.0.1 will segfault on me. And it ain't random either: I looked at the core dumps with gdb, and it's always in the same place.
On the plus side, 4.0 pulled this routine on me on a daily basis (same stack trace), 4.0.1 does it every so many weeks.
Before anyone says I'm whining: I'm not. I'm only observing, and I submitted an "official" bug report. Back in August already. And about
May or June concerning 4.0.
Thanks, will do. I'm always in #debian anyways, it's worth a stop. I remember the issues with the TNT, so I read all the documentation on it, even specified my ram type manually. Issues still exist. Who knows..it's an older card, I don't expect a whole lot. I just wanted to inform people about the issues I have had, so that other TNT users might be prepared:)
David
So who among us held out?
by
John+Whitley
·
· Score: 4
We need a/. poll:
Did you "hold out" knolwedge of the XFree86 4 debs until you'd downloaded yours?
( ) Yes, bwahaha.
( ) No
( ) First post!
( ) What's a deb?
Re:So who among us held out?
by
Chris+Pimlott
·
· Score: 2
Don't forget
() What are you talking about, I've been using the 4.0 debs for weeks now
Re:So who among us held out?
by
Chris+Pimlott
·
· Score: 2
There are debs of 4.0.1 that someone has succesfully compiled on potato (from a slightly earlier version of the woody ones). Search the debian-x archives and you should be able to find it.
Re:So who among us held out?
by
jguthrie
·
· Score: 2
I routinely upgrade all of the computers that I have running Woody every few days. I first noticed this afternoon when, as a test of a new network card install (replacing an RTL-8139 with a 3Com-SOHO because the RTL-8139 drivers appear to be defective) I did a refresh and, lo and behold, there it was.
However, it would never have occured to me to submit it as news to/.. I mean, other than die-hard deb-heads, such as myself, who cares, and if you're a die-hard deb-head, then you already knew about it.
Re:So who among us held out?
by
gavinhall
·
· Score: 1
Posted by Kewlhandtek:
I will hold out. I have a banshee, everytime i have to update my xfree i have to use the SVGA server from linux.3dfx.com and it is an old version 3.3.5 and a RPM! Why haven't they added this driver to the newer xfree's? The one it comes does work but has lots of static in it. Anyone had that problem.......I solved it by using that driver.
Re:Font anti-aliasing is NOT evil
by
tjwhaynes
·
· Score: 3
Because Windows has had it for 5 years.
And RiscOS had it in 1987. Your point?
Windows implementation of Antialiasing (known as Font Smoothing in the Windows world) is a long way away from the ideal Nirvana of text presentation. Antialiasing is really a problem with small text sizes - all those serifs and lines close together get confused when you try to render a vector object onto a grid with too few sampling points. As Windows only smooths the larger font sizes by default, this makes it a little irrelevent for text viewing. Nyquist would tell you more.
Therefore an advanced font renderer will help the eye perceive the real shape of the text better by shading the text with different shades between the text by understanding what proportion of the curve of the letter lies inside the pixel. This is particularly important when you consider sub pixel alignment both horizontally and vertically - with large passages of text with real micro alignment, this makes a huge difference to the readability of the text - enough that helvetica in a 5 pixel high font is vageuly intelligible. Speaking as someone who tend to use a 6x13 font for most things on a 21 inch monitor, antialiasing of the text in Type1 or truetype vector formats would be a huge step forward.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
-- Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't
necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I used S3 virge with an old DVD decoder, and it was ALWAYS a pain to get it going on XFree86, everytime i installed (cos it was experimenting kind, back in the day) and it was gruelsome, and a miracle for it work with a single visit to the damn program
--
Istigkeit -"is-ness" being and becoming & i'dfiying it with the mathematical abstraction of the idea
Re:Font anti-aliasing is NOT evil
by
arnald
·
· Score: 1
This topic has come up several times on Slashdot recently - it's nice to see TWO readers in the same thread giving Acorn the credit they deserve for having had superb anti-aliasing for years.
I still can't believe X doesn't support font anti-aliasing... but there you go, no doubt the same people will jump down my throats saying "but you don't need it" as did the last time this came up on Slashdot.:-)
cheers
-- arnald
Re:Experience with a Voodoo3 and X4.01 Woody
by
Turmio
·
· Score: 1
> 2) You need to find ttmkfdir if you want to use Truetype fonts, mkfontdir doesn't do it. I don't know if there is a Debian package either.
There is a Debian package containing tool that'll do fonts.dir file for your, namely mkttfdir(1) which is part of the package fttools.
'apt-get source PACKAGENAME', edit the debian/rules (which is just a simple makefile), and then run dpkg-buildpackage.
Presto! You have brand-spankin' new.debs with your modifications.
Re:Read This Before Upgrading!
by
Turmio
·
· Score: 2
> 2. If you're planning on using a 3d accelerated graphics card i.e. (Rage 128, 3dfx, etc), you must have DRI support compiled into your kernel with the appropriate kernel module for your card. There is a new Mesa for XFree86 4.0.1 that has builtin support for DRI; however, there is a problem with this package. It does not include the libGLU(a subset of the Mesa library) static library or header files. This means that you must manually extract libGLU from the existing Woody Mesa package and copy it into/usr/local/lib/whatever if you plan on running 3d apps that depend on libGLU(almost all!). _Plase_ check your facts before posting.
See that? Thanks to the patch made by Craig Dunwoody, the latest phase2 package and the first package upload to woody contains the GLU library. Before that patch you had to do that ugly stuff you mentioned, though. But not anymore.
> 4. Try to avoid emailing Branden at all costs. He's been less than friendly to me, and I know other people who have had similar experiences. This is pretty natural reaction if you ask me. What would you feel if you'd receive a couple of dozens of mails daily all asking the same thing: when on earth are you going to do those XFree86 4.0 debs you lazy dog? But, for (sometimes) more intellectual conversation, there's an excellent mailing list available, debian-x@lists.debian.org . Folks over there, that includes Branden, are glad to help you with all the problems you may encounter regarding the XFree86 4.0 debs. Though be sure to crawl through the debian-x list archive before asking simple questions. It's pretty likely it has already been asked and answered. Especially if it has something to do with the 3rd-party 3D drivers.
Don't believe him/her. This only APPEARS to be true - there is no rule. It may happen that the stable distribution is a bit behind the latest developments, but do you want bleeding-edge software in a 'stable' distribution?
Re:Font anti-aliasing is NOT evil
by
AndyElf
·
· Score: 1
I still can't believe X doesn't support font anti-aliasing...
I have a feeling there used to be a VERY long thread a few months back on WHY it does not support it and whether it is simple to built it in. Good thing that at least it supports TT fonts by default...
No its not. I vote that all the users with decent hardware pissed at all the users with old hardware fork the kernel, X, and KDE and start a distro meant only for those who have the sense not to use 5 year old vidcards.
Matrox Millenium G200 8MB: $30 +4s/h on pricewatch.
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Anyone - help !
How can i start X4.0.1 on a Hercules Monochrome card ? There is no hga driver and the fbdev driver wants 8bpp or more. The plain vga driver only talks to vga devices.
And apt-get dist-upgrade uninstalled xserver-mono and xserver-fbdev which conflict with 4.0.1...
help meee!!!
--
-- 1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq
Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
The codename for next release is usually picked by the release manager, at the point when the frozen tree gets created. Considering "woody" hasn't been frozen yet, it's not known how the next unstable will be called.
-- Josip Rodin
Re:Font anti-aliasing is NOT evil
by
PhilA
·
· Score: 1
Possibly. Bear in mind that the example in question is a monospaced font for a start. And unfortunately truetype fonts vary wildly in the quality of their hinting. Unlike ps fonts (which have a stroke based hinting scheme), tt fonts have a small program included with them which is executed on a virtual machine in order to work out the hinting. Therefore the quality of the hinting for a postscript font is dependant mostly on the quality of the ps renderer, whilst the quality for a tt font can vary wildly between fonts, as it depends on how good the code is for each font.
I believe that part of the reason for MicroSoft's 'web fonts' on screen quality is down to the amount of work they put into the hinting code.
Font nuts usually use this as an argument as to why ps fonts are better than tt fonts.
Phil
ps. Note that none of the above affects the printed quality of fonts, only the rendering on the relative low-res computer displays we currently suffer before... --
That's funny, I've been trying to get my posts to format like that for ages. Much easier to read you know? That's why newpapers print in column format. You only have to scan stright up and down, not in back and forth, up and down zig zag pattern.
Guess I'll start using Lynx to post. Thanks for the hot tip.:)
A valid point in deed. But the fact that an upgrade of some program has now become available in the unstable developer branch of some linux-distribution doesn't really strike me as a story.
Then go to your preferences and make sure that "Debian" is selected for exclusion from the homepage. Voila; no more stories about Debian, "unstable developer release" or otherwise.
And for the record, "unstable developer branch" doesn't adequately describe what woody (2.3) is; Debian doesn't follow kernel-style numbering.
Issues? I didn't have much for issues. I was very impressed. The only thing that all out broke was Netscape. The package I was using depended on libxpm. apt-get install netscape fixed that.
The dextor configuration utility works incredibly well. I wish it was smart enough to add ZAxisMapping instead of Emulate3Buttons though.:)
After getting the new X up an running, I had my TNT2 working with nVidias drivers in no time. All in all, it took me about 1.5 hours to go from the old X to playing Quake 3 under Linux.
Debian, keep up the excellent work!
-- I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
I just downloaded this thing and normal AA rendering looks like crap afterwards
Re:Please: Article moderation NOW!
by
ghassanm
·
· Score: 1
Using the binaries from Xfree86 is kinda silly because then you won't be dealing with all the dependency issues. Packages specifically from the distrobution are important if you want to have a coherent setup that will be easily upgraded.
ok. maybe i dont know what im talking about. is this article the fact that x 4.0.1 has been made into deb packages? from the binaries that ive been using for a long time? or was it that it didnt work on deb? i dont get why this is an article.. i assume there is something im missing. ive been useing x 4.0.1 for quite a while. with nvidia drivers and all. if im missing something, can someone explain it to me?
--
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
little fast ins't this
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
whoa there cowboy them there debian folks are moving way to fast here. 4.0 just came out.. this is debian were talking about. 4.0 shouldn't be in debian untill atleast 2003 or later.
I just upgraded early this morning, ran xf86config, answered a few questions, tweaked my config, and ran GDM. It's been stable all day with no noticable differences.
I've installed the X 4.0 from source and the only problem so far was that I had to bring back some shared libs from X3.3 in order to succesfully compile KDE 2.
Apart from that, it rocks.
-- --
look, cheese ahoy!
Re:OT: What are they on?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3
and Buzz, and Bo, and Rex. The scheme is characters in `Toy Story.' (An exployee of Pixar was head of Debian at the first naming.)
As for what's next, I don't know either. Andy? Armymen?
(ragnarsedai)
thats exactly what i did. i had updated fri night and the matrox drivers were gone, x wouldn't start due to 'no valid configured device' or something similar. i searched through the available *xfree*4* packages and found and installed xserver-xfree86. which worked perfectly:)
Re:Read This Before Upgrading!
by
Hornsby
·
· Score: 1
I've had the dbe module loaded all along; however, strangely enough, reducing the color depth to 16bpp seems to resolve the problem. Weird.
-- A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
Re:Read This Before Upgrading!
by
jkc120
·
· Score: 3
The blinking could be a side effect of not loading the "dbe" module in "Section \"Modules\"";) Try adding a line Load "dbe" (double buffering extensions) in XF86Config. I've read a couple of places that this will fix the flickering issues in some applications.
In my opinion, the people who spend $34 on a video card which does not work any better for their desired purpose (running X at fairly high resolutions) than a cheap video card they already have, are the ones who are lacking sense.
S3 doesn't give out driver info anymore. So unless you can find someone who still has the specs from way back when, you're out of luck on getting drivers written.
How to build XF4 debs for potato
by
mbrubeck
·
· Score: 1
It's probably a good idea. To do this, just add that line in/etc/apt/sources.list
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
the type
apt-get upgrade
that should upgrade you to you completely, even getting the XFree86 4.0.1 debs. Of course, how fast this will go depends on the speed of your internet connection.
hmm i always wonder why there is need for distrospecific packages on this. just get the original install files from their website (www.xfree.org) and you're set. the installation is really easy, you just need to answer few questions, like do you want to backup some old files and so on.
-- ound the message used repetitively over and over still nothing grows silen
Why have packages at all then? Spend five times as long downloading the source for your os instead of binaries, then spend a couple weeks compiling all your code (or months if you have a slow processor). So efficient, why doesn't everyone do it this way.
Re:getting Quake3 runnig
by
bartimaeus
·
· Score: 1
I have a TNT card. I have installed the NVIDIA drivers (both) from the tar.gz packages.
Everything claims to have installed correctly. The kernel driver is certainly installed and running.
I have created a sym link in my quake3 directory to/usr/lib/libGL.so
Could someone take to the time to explain just what must be done to get quake3 working properly with X4.0.1 in Debian?
I have X4 installed properly, and I used a clean install to make sure there were no unnecessary Mesa libs lying about.
For some reason, whenever I try to run Q3A, it kicks me back out to the gdm login screen.
As far as I can tell, everything is installed and working properly.
I have that same issue when running xmms's OpenGL visualization plugin. I can login from my other machines via ssh, but the keyboard/mouse/screen are locked up hard, even after killing the X process. I think it's the kernel module.
David
Unsupported cards
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
Now if only X4 were to get the other drivers ported to it. My crusty old s3trio64 (not virge, not trio3d) is not supported in X4 yet (not even in cvs), so I guess I'm SOL for now:)
Well. I just finished recovering from
the upgrade to XF4.0 using
apt-get update
apt-get dist-install
It was not an altogether smooth experience.
I did have the presence of mind to exit
from X before attempting it.
apt-get claimed that task-x-window-core
was being kept back. Now I am rather
new to debian and wasn't sure what exactly
was meant by a package being kept back,
but as I had already determined to take the
plunge I went forward.
This was perhaps, not the wisest move.
A great many things where installed and
removed. At the end of it all startx would
not cause X to run. It failed because it claimed
it couldn't open display 0:0.
So I paniced and began searching on google
with lynx for someway to take it all back.
I discovered several kluggy suggestions involving
diff file of the/var/lib/dpkg/status and
/var/lib/dpkg/status.yesterday.0 files, but
nothing that looked very promising. (As
an aside, if anyone knows a good way to role
debian back to yesterday please let me know,
it looks like this is something that should be
quite doable.)
So I revisited the task-x-window-core problem.
apt-get install task-x-windows-core
revealed that it could not install because it
couldn't install xutils.
apt-get install xutils
informed me that it would have to remove
task-gnome and a bunch of other things
that I really didn't want to have to give up.
Being desperate however I agreed.
xutils then installed fine.
apt-get install task-x-windows-core
then complained that it couldn't install because
it couldn't get xbase to install.
apt-get install xbase
went off without a hitch however. Then finally
apt-get install task-x-windows-core
worked. Things installed and dexter was invoked
to generate the configuration file.
Everything is mostly fine now.
Hopefully my description of my experience will
help some other poor bastard who is reading this
in lynx.
One final note. The above is purely from
memory (I wasn't keeping a very good record
at the time) and so there may be some slight
inaccuracies.
Actually, i just installed the source, and told dexter i had a matrox card, and it did everything. When i started up X the kernel auto-inserted the DRI module, and quake3 just magicaly worked(i've been using 3.3.6 with utah-glx).
I didn't have much luck with Debian... Redhat is nice, but moves too much stuff around IMHO.. Slackware was the very first distro of Linux I ever installed on any system, and it's still my favorite. I snagged XF4.0 a couple days ago and installed it, haven't had a problem yet.
-- End of lesson. You may press the button.
Re:What about potato?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
Don't you know about the "next major verson" rule about debian?
A version of a package can't be in debian stable until the next major version is released.
XFree 4.0 can't be in debian stable until 4.1 is released.
Ummm....What's the big deal here? RedHat 7.0 lets you use Xfree 4.0.1 or 3.3.6 and others use Xfree 4.0 as well.
Re:XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody
by
Mignon
·
· Score: 2
What's the big deal here? RedHat 7.0... and others use Xfree 4.0 as well.
Rob just likes to say "Woody." It's a phase. He'll grow out of it.
Re:XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody
by
FiDooDa
·
· Score: 4
Taco doesn't use Red Hat or the others, that's why
Re:XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody
by
LoneRanger
·
· Score: 1
All I really have to say here is "whoopty-friggin'-doo". I've been using XFree4.0(.1) since the day it (they) were released. Gimme a break. If you can't learn to compile, go back to the "other" OS.
Besides, you can't add -funroll-loops, -ffast-math, etc. with a deb...You'll get about a 20% speed increase if you use the right options.
But the fact that an upgrade of some program has now become available in the unstable developer branch of some linux-distribution doesn't really strike me as a story.
Do you think we should have had stories of when xfree 4.0 entered the unstable developer branch of redhat, mandrake, suse, and all the other major distributions as well?
Well, I've been running woody for a long time now, as well as using the XF4 debs since they were first introduced. Using the nv driver included with xf4, things are dandy. Using Nvidia's provided binary drivers is another story, completely. If you have an Nvidia card, and can live without 3d acceleration, stick with the XF4 provided driver. Unfortunately for us who like to play Quake3 and do various things which require 3d support (aka blender), you are stuck using Nvidia's drivers. Good luck...every time I use a OpenGL program, and exit, I have to completely exit X before I can run another OpenGL program. Oh...stability...maybe if you run a word processor...but when you are doing heavy 3-d work, things just die. Don't blame xfree86, blame Nvidia. No holy wars over open/closed models, I'm just letting people know.
David
PS - I have an Nvidia TNT...maybe GeForce cards don't have the same issues? I'm running the newest Nvidia binaries as well.
Heck, my firewall is a 486, and it definitely doesn't have X installed.
However the P-60 is currently running Slackware and it is running X. I use it to test out different junk, including X. I don't expect great performance or 1337 games of tuxracer but I do want it to function.
Because I couldn't find Slackware in my preferences. Am I missing something, or there's only Debian and Red Hat Software? Frankly, who cares if it's in w00dy?
-- How to contact me - http://www.pervalidus.net/contact.html
Before I potentially hose my system by upgrading, I would like to know the chance of the new deps working.
(after the libc upgrade I am being a little conservative...)
If you have matrox with utah-glx or Hercules mono DO NOT apt-get yet.
I did (having both cards) and:
- XF86_SVGA no longer works so: bye bye 3d...
- XF86_Mono and fbdev are gone and X4 doesn't seem to have ANY hercules suport at all
- xf86cfg DIES with SIGILL
- xf86config generates the same'ol fscked up config-file (now for 4.x versions)
- empty man pages... lots of them... had to "strings input/wacom.so" driver to get some hints.
however - for 2d X4.0.1 on my g400 is smoother...
--
-- 1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq
Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
The only problems I've had so far is that once in a great while, switching from X to a console locks my keyboard -- I have to telnet in and reboot the system. Other than that minor issue, X has only crashed on me once, seemingly caused by a screensaver (I forget which one).
Funny. Minor issue because you have telnetd running. But you still have to reboot. I really don't see why it's a minor issue.
-- How to contact me - http://www.pervalidus.net/contact.html
Re:S3 Virge - only works for me in 256 colour
by
burgess
·
· Score: 1
i've installed the v4 xfree86 with apt, and can only get the screen to display in 256 colours. any higher bpp gives me a scrambled screen (windows are mapped three or four times across the screen horizontally, small lines out their left hand sides). played with most of the s3virge options but couldn't fix it... has anyone else dealt with this?
card is a Genesis S3ViRGE (86C325 chipset). worked fine with v3.3.6 but i have a second which i'd like to get going too;)
cheers,
c
ps. if you have helpful comments, CC me too please!
Notice he said "exclude" from your preferences, not "include", so your whole point is moot. Chech both the RedHat Software and Debian options and you'll not be notified of news concerning these systems.
Set your threshold level to -1, and you'll get plenty of Slackware news from experts, on an any thread that vaguely mentions something about the good distributions. --
-- Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
I've been running XF 4.0.1 for quite a while under RH 6.0 with a Voodoo3 3000 PCI video card. The only problems I've had so far is that once in a great while, switching from X to a console locks my keyboard -- I have to telnet in and reboot the system. Other than that minor issue, X has only crashed on me once, seemingly caused by a screensaver (I forget which one).
Where I have found lots of bugs is when running multiple displays. For experimentational purposes, I booted my Windows box (two PCI Voodoo3 cards) with my Linux drive. Surprisingly it does work (after quite a bit of tweaking (and cursing)), but they have a ways to go on that.
Once X does multiple displays properly, and a decent browser is released, there'll be nothing keeping Windows on my main box...;)
I don't know about you but I'd bet that a lot of slashdot readers and linux users in general like to have a few machines kicking around. I know I do -- if I can make a working machine out of the parts bin I'm a happy camper. Lots of "parts bin" style machines are going to have 5 yr old + video cards. My desktop machine may have a Geforce in it, but one of my testbeds (crappy old socket-5 P-60) has an S3 chipset integrated into the mobo. The day that machine has to go in the pile with the PS/2 model 40 and the '386 is not gonna be a happy one for me.
The problem is that the driver scheme is completely revised in XFree86 4, thus meaning that drivers effectively need to be rewritten.
Consider it granted that the existing code base will be very useful for reference, and possibly even code fragments, when writing the new drivers. That does not deny that the drivers need to be created afresh.
Drivers get written based on two things:
Developers wanting to do so, and
Developers being encouraged to want to do so .
It's not S3 that "sucks," and, it should be noted, by the way, under S3 driver support that it's only the S3V that is supported; my S3 968 board is not supported , with no plans for that to be upcoming.
To the contrary, it's closer to being you that suck. If you want S3V supported, then you should either be looking at the code, or doing something like sending a donation to XFree86 along with encouragement that they improve S3V support.
A 4MB S3V card is likely worth $10 these days; that is just not going to warrant a lot of work at this time when they're only available as surplus, and when efforts are concentrating more on supporting 3D hardware which an S3V "325" is just incapable of coping with well.
-- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re:Font anti-aliasing is NOT evil
by
spongman
·
· Score: 2
The "Nirvana of text presentation" is not achievable on today's monitors. Windows does as good a job as I've seen anywhere at making fonts readable at both large and small point sizes.
Antialiasing at small point sizes is unhelpful on most display technologies as all it does it makes the text blurry - try it, it looks crap. That's why they don't do it.
The font renderer in RiscOS was OK, but it didn't handle things like asymetric sub-pixel alignment very well - it just relied on the antialising to 'blurr' our the errors at small point sizes.
For a good example of the difference between a good font rendere and a god-awful one, use notepad and AcrobatReader side-by-side with various fonts and sizes. Check by zooming the pixels, too.
I tried XFree86 4.x a few days ago, and found that it barely worked with my 4MB S3 Virge card. I was able to get only 800x600 at 15-bit. XFree86 3.x worked flawlessly at 16-bit and 1152x864.
And don't tell me S3 sucks. It's not an excuse. Even if it does suck, supporting it fully in one version but barely supporting it at all in the next version is a very big step downhill.
Anyways my point is, if you're using an S3 Virge video card, you probably shouldn't even bother until XFree86 4.x is considered "stable".
Re:S3 Virge - only works for me in 8bpp & 15bpp
by
burgess
·
· Score: 1
actually, it works fine in 15bpp (how many colours is that, anyway?). dexter didn't include this in my XFree86Config-4 but when i copied the 16bpp entry and made the appropriate changes it worked fine.
16bpp and 24bpp are still horizontally scrambled, but at least i don't get those cool netscape colourflashes any more.
I was having stability problems with the pre release2 debs of XFree4. It was giving me a SiG15/SIG11 often. I finally found out it was running WindowMaker (or one of the dock apps, not sure which) that was doing it. I went back to gnome/enlightenment and haven't crashed yet. The debs seem pretty darn stable imho. I was getting impatient with Branden for the slowness, but I must say the updates were good and often for the pre-v2 packages and I'm glad they're stable as a result of his patience and time/effort.
Before upgrading, I am just wondering if this will break quake3 (voodoo 3 3500 vid card) and if not, what packages are needed (I have rpm->debs of the linux.3dfx.com drivers ATM) to make it run.
Please also recognize that there are some problems w/NVidia's drivers in SMP systems. On my system, some GL app's crash - some much harder than others. Still can't get quake2 to run for more than 30 seconds w/out crashing. Trying a single CPU kernel makes the problems go away, but that is not the solution I was looking for.
--
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
Re:Font anti-aliasing is NOT evil
by
PhilA
·
· Score: 1
Antialiasing at small point sizes is unhelpful on most display technologies as all it does it makes the text blurry - try it, it looks crap. That's why they don't do it.
I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned you're so completely wrong its not even funny.Maybe its just a personal preference thing, but I'll happily sacrifice a little 'blurring' if it means I get more readable text plus the ability to actually read text rendered at very small point sizes.
Like Toby (above) {Hi Toby!} I've seen and used the Acorn font renderer and the difference it made to readability and perhaps more importantly useability was outstanding.
Keith Packers example page at
http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/render/compare.html
has some good textual examples. Note that yes, clearly a hand drawn bitmap font at a particular font size will be fine, but having true antialiased vector fonts gives you so much more flexibility and readability that you don't want to go back.
just my 2p:)
Phil --
--
nosig
Read This Before Upgrading!
by
Hornsby
·
· Score: 5
After using the apt repository on Branden's(the Debian X Maintainer) website to have XFree86 4.0.1 on two of my desktop machines, I have a few words of advice.
1. The 4.x X servers use a new style of configuration file. It's supposed to be automagically generated by running xf86cfg; however, this doesn't always work. Branden has written a tool to generate the config file, but it doesn't always work either. In lieu of this, it's probably a good idea to go to XFree86.org and brush up on the 4.0 series XF86Config file format before upgrading. Also, the new name for the config file is XF86Config-4 (I don't know if this is debian specific) instead of XF86Config.
2. If you're planning on using a 3d accelerated graphics card i.e. (Rage 128, 3dfx, etc), you must have DRI support compiled into your kernel with the appropriate kernel module for your card. There is a new Mesa for XFree86 4.0.1 that has builtin support for DRI; however, there is a problem with this package. It does not include the libGLU(a subset of the Mesa library) static library or header files. This means that you must manually extract libGLU from the existing Woody Mesa package and copy it into/usr/local/lib/whatever if you plan on running 3d apps that depend on libGLU(almost all!).
3. There are still serious issues with 3d acceleration on the Rage 128 cards and 3dfx cards. If I run tuxracer(or any GL app) with certain WindowMaker apps running(from inside of Blackbox), I get constant blinking inside of the 3d application. The solution(for now) is to shut down any WM applet that refreshes constantly. Don't even try to use 3d acceleration inside of enlightenment(horrible blinking).
4. Try to avoid emailing Branden at all costs. He's been less than friendly to me, and I know other people who have had similar experiences.
Other than that, the new X is really nice and noticably faster than the 3.3 series. Enjoy it.
-- A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
Experience with a Voodoo3 and X4.01 Woody
by
Outlyer
·
· Score: 4
Well, I upgraded to X4 yesterday via apt, and the packager did an amazing job. First of all, there is a nice dialog-style configuration tool called Dexter which builds a config file easily. However, there are a couple of caveats:
(1) If you're using DRI with a Voodoo3, you need to modify your XF86Config-4 to use a default depth of 16... maybe it's obvious to some people, I didn't make the conclusion instantly. (Voodoo3's only support 3D in 16-bit color)
(2) You need to find ttmkfdir if you want to use Truetype fonts, mkfontdir doesn't do it. I don't know if there is a Debian package either.
(3) Voodoo3 support is buggy, I don't know if it's the Glide, the DRI modules, or X itself, but some things (like a few xmms plugins) crashed my box HARD, as in, I needed a hard reboot.
Anyway, those issues aside, this is a remarkably well-packaged version of X4, and most people will have little or no trouble with a smooth upgrade via apt. Much props to Branden for packaging them so well.
If you do upgrade, believe me, there is a noticeable speed increase, and Tuxracer is playable:) Don't forget to build that 2.4-test10 kernel too.
-- -----------------
"I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused
-------------------
I'm the first to admit xf4 conveys a lot of improvements, but I still don't find it stable enough to recommend it to anyone. 4.0.0 works pretty well on my Toshiba laptop & my K6-2/Riva TNT, but 4.0.1 is just horrible. I had some 'random' lockups (of the whole system, that is), X crashes on me when I switch to a login console and the nVidia drivers just don't seem to care to clean up when an OpenGL program exits.
I'm looking forward to 4.0.2;-|
Slashdot Mirror
I;ve been using the phase2 ones for a while now with no problems at all.
Just make sure your card is supported, and it should work well. The config files are different, but it uses a dialog setup tool that works ok.
Its actually a really nice config file, so if there are any problems you shoud be ok.
I currently rebuilt my system (testing, wanted to be super clean after) and i stayed at x3.when x4 came into woody (yesterday i believe) the problems started.
i needed to reboot my box do to hardware issues. nothing serious. then when i when to start X i found my backspace and delete werent working (guys on irc had a riot with my typing, mad props to #clan_gun :) ) the keyboard maps for X were gone.
so i wanted to look at the problem, noticed x3 and x4 installed on my box ( first time i used dselect in a while). i thought to my self "what a great time to upgrade to x4" i removed x3 and added the extra x4 that was missing. shut down X when to restart, startx was missing.
i removed EVERYTHING x related and reinstalled x4 debs. now everything seems fine.
now. nvidia GLX drivers, i had test10, compiled with warnings about a INC and DEC pionter not right. and insmod NVdriver gave me "unknown symbol xxINCxx() and xxxDECxxx() downgraded to test7, module compiled fine.
removed mesa conficts and restarted X couldnt start X.... su segfaulted. reboot worked
ran blender system locked (harshly) manually needed to run fsck. /var/lib/dpkg/available was missing touched it and continued
changed xf86config-4 back to nv from nvidia x wouldnt restart. removed x4 installed x4 everything khosher ( i am sure i only needed to remove /usr/X11/lib/modules/extension/*glx* but i reinstalled anyways)
now everything works minus closed source nvidia glx.
not fscking with anything else :)
-rev
normally i am not this lame, just wanted to share with others incase they ran into similar problems.
by the way I seem to remember some of the older ARM3s were at 25Mhz, could be wrong though... I had one put in my A3000 back in the day.
You're right -- My A310 had a 25Mhz ARM3 in it. It got donated to a school eventually. sob
Phil--
nosig
You're right -- My A310 had a 25Mhz ARM3 in it. It got donated to a school eventually. sob
I know, replying to my own post, but before the pedants get to me, I should point out that this was a heavily upgraded A310 :)
Phil--
nosig
If you are running a Windoze box (especially on a laptop) download this demo for an example of the advanced rendering tjwhaynes is talking of. Render demo
-b
This is a fairly big move for debian. Debian developers are devoted to producing *stable* packages (unlike a certain other distro). I've seen using debian XF4 debs forever, and have seen them mature into what they currently are, which is, to say the least, very imperssive. Plus, people are always happy to see when something new is implemented into their favorite distro (*high 5 to all the unstable debian users out there ;)
/dev/null as I don't check that email address.
P.S. All flames go to
What's wrong with Windows' font antialiasing (other than the fact that it doesn't work all the time? :)
My journal has hot
Hee hee! The Corporate lackies of OSDN Inc. post yet another less-than-trivial announcement for Debian LinuxOS. I think that they can't handle The One True OS(tm).
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Anti-aliasing definitely looks good on 14-pt fonts, but personally I never use them; I'd like to see how things look at 10-pt and below.
Well, lets see -- this is the first major xf86-4 binary package created *by* users *for* users[*], rather than being created by employees to meet a marketing checklist. This is, afaik, the first to provide a smooth upgrade path, rather than forcing you to do a system reinstall like RH usually does. (I know there were some ugly issues with upgrades, esp. around app-default files.)
;-)
:-)
But bottom line, it's a big deal because now you can use Xf86-4 without giving up all the advantages of Debian!
cheers
[*] I felt like a part of the Debian project long before I ever joined officially. I never came *close* to feeling like a part of RH!
The only problem I've had with 4.x is that they seem to have a horrible memory leak - I don't know if it's my G400 drivers (I've tried both the 'official' Matrox driver and the one that came with X), or some other component that interfaces with X, such as the gtk-engines...
I hope this will help some people out there, and in like, I hope there's someone out there that is able to help me. :) I've looked all over for what might be the cause. It's maddening to have to restart X due to memory problems every ~24 hours. (192 megs mem, w/ a 300m swap... and swap will get up to about 40 megs w/ just X, a couple Eterms, and a 'fresh' netscape running.)
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
ugdct-blam install ttygols.
;)
It includes gluptrens.
That's what your statements must look like to a Microsoft user.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
The funny thing is, your run-of-the-mill TTF font in Windows still looks way better than the third picture from that example.
xf86config seems to work nicely, except that it generates /etc/X11/XF86Config instead of /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. And if you want any extra modules loaded, or you want to change some of the more obscure defaults, you'll still have to edit it.
Also, the new name for the config file is XF86Config-4 (I don't know if this is debian specific) instead of XF86Config.
If you have no XF86Config-4, then it looks at XF86Config. But (probably to support keeping 3.x on the system or something) the packages install XF86Config-4 by default.
Try to avoid emailing Branden at all costs. He's been less than friendly to me, and I know other people who have had similar experiences.
He's probably very busy ;)
-----
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
I doubt that 4.x will be as stable as 3.x for at least another 8 months, so I'm sticking with 3.3.6. The only thing that could make me switch is the addition of real (a la Windows/MacOS/XIG/commercial UNIX) font support.
---------///----------
All generalizations are false.
--
I like to watch.
I would recommend using 4.0.1, which is what is in debian.
I find it very good, it even has a smaller footprint.
Outline fonts as the latest innovation to replace bitmap fonts? Oh my god, where have you been the last 10 years? Outside X, everyone has been using outline fonts for ages!
I'm running a GeForce DDR and don't have any of the problems you mention. I've played Q3, Solider of Fortune, etc. I've never had X lock up hard while playing a game, or testing my system using something like evas_test.
When the drivers first came out there were some issues with the origional TNT, but I don't know if any specific ones still exist. Try going on #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net. The nvidia developers hang out there often.
apt-get install fttools
It includes mkttfdir.
After installing the Nvidia drivers, how do you compile or run applications that depend on GLUT (and GLU)? Does one have to download GLUT from sgi and compile it with the new drivers, or are there premade packages that will work?
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
-----
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
One problem, is if you want proper DGA 1.0 mouse support, for games like quake3, if so, you will need to compile X from cvs, or wait for 4.0.2 to come out.
standard distribution is binaries(at least last time i downloaded them), you just have to run the install shell script. and you don't have to download all the servers - just the one you need.
ound the message used repetitively over and over still nothing grows silen
It's nice to have debs, but there's really no reason you can't have 4.01 - just go to xfree86.org and download the generic binaries. I've been running them ever since they came out, and it has been rock-solid (I'm just using the stock nvidia TNT driver).
Yeah, I remember widespread confusion, and people suggested that you NEEDED "alpha transparancy" to do anti-aliasing - this is not true.
arnald
Yes! Go here and checkout how anti-aliased fonts are being implemented in the new X. From what I can see from the spec, we may end up with really nice fonts after all.
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
The Debian packages are X from CVS.
Don't forget to checkout Debian's mailing-list archives if you have problems:
2 .html (brief helpful message)
Debian-devel:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0011/msg0028
Debian-x:
http://lists.debian.org/debia n-x -0011/threads.html (lots of interesting threads here)
You can do that in one step using dpkg --divert --rename.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
ya, we all have many old comps (or pieces of) lying around, but we don't expect them to be able to run gnome at 1600x1200 with enlightenment. when we talk about running linux on old computers we mean fileservers and firewalls. we set them up in console and we probably don't even install X....
That's one of the major reasons I stay away from X in the first place (besides the fact that my new Mobility chipset in my new laptop really isn't supported). It just doesn't look as "finished" as it does in Windows.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Is there any hope for anti-aliasing in XF4.0?
-Gavin
Ok, they suck for playing games, but there are other uses for computers than playing games. Fact is the s3V's are cheap as dirt. And I don't mean that high quality top soil either. If you are using your computer for simulations or as some type of server than you don't need a zillion dollar card. S3V are fine for viewing basic plots or running netscape. You can use the money you save on the card to buy more ram or a faster cpu. Never had a problem with XSV 3.x when I was using them but I never tried under 4.0.
These debs seem fairly stable to me and are worth the download for most cards. Enjoy!
--
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
apt-get install xserver-xfree86 was all you needed to do ;)
:)
Now, I just need to make the 3D working well for my G400... that's was missing with debian, a working-with-no-recompiling lib for the 3D
Because Windows has had it for 5 years.
(So, would this mean XFree4 is sporting a woody?)
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Because it's true.
This isn't a Debian issue (I'm using 4.0.1 on my mongrel RH workstation), but I have noticed recently that the X server will SIG 11 at odd times. I haven't pinned down the common thread yet, but it seems to happen at the point of initial start up of some programs (e.g. the AnyJ java ide thingy from www.netcomputing.de, which gets to the splash screen and _blammo_, X server dies). When I first installed X 4.0, it would SIG 11 when I right clicked on a variable in DDD. So anyway, my point is be cautious, as for all the improvments in XFree 4.x (and don't get me wrong, it is nicer, especially in the font managment realm), it still has some odd stability issues.
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Thanks, will do. I'm always in #debian anyways, it's worth a stop. I remember the issues with the TNT, so I read all the documentation on it, even specified my ram type manually. Issues still exist. Who knows..it's an older card, I don't expect a whole lot. I just wanted to inform people about the issues I have had, so that other TNT users might be prepared :)
David
We need a /. poll:
Did you "hold out" knolwedge of the XFree86 4 debs until you'd downloaded yours?
( ) Yes, bwahaha.
( ) No
( ) First post!
( ) What's a deb?
Because Windows has had it for 5 years.
And RiscOS had it in 1987. Your point?
Windows implementation of Antialiasing (known as Font Smoothing in the Windows world) is a long way away from the ideal Nirvana of text presentation. Antialiasing is really a problem with small text sizes - all those serifs and lines close together get confused when you try to render a vector object onto a grid with too few sampling points. As Windows only smooths the larger font sizes by default, this makes it a little irrelevent for text viewing. Nyquist would tell you more.
Therefore an advanced font renderer will help the eye perceive the real shape of the text better by shading the text with different shades between the text by understanding what proportion of the curve of the letter lies inside the pixel. This is particularly important when you consider sub pixel alignment both horizontally and vertically - with large passages of text with real micro alignment, this makes a huge difference to the readability of the text - enough that helvetica in a 5 pixel high font is vageuly intelligible. Speaking as someone who tend to use a 6x13 font for most things on a 21 inch monitor, antialiasing of the text in Type1 or truetype vector formats would be a huge step forward.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I used S3 virge with an old DVD decoder, and it was ALWAYS a pain to get it going on XFree86, everytime i installed (cos it was experimenting kind, back in the day) and it was gruelsome, and a miracle for it work with a single visit to the damn program
Istigkeit -"is-ness" being and becoming & i'dfiying it with the mathematical abstraction of the idea
This topic has come up several times on Slashdot recently - it's nice to see TWO readers in the same thread giving Acorn the credit they deserve for having had superb anti-aliasing for years.
:-)
I still can't believe X doesn't support font anti-aliasing... but there you go, no doubt the same people will jump down my throats saying "but you don't need it" as did the last time this came up on Slashdot.
cheers
arnald
> 2) You need to find ttmkfdir if you want to use Truetype fonts, mkfontdir doesn't do it. I don't know if there is a Debian package either.
There is a Debian package containing tool that'll do fonts.dir file for your, namely mkttfdir(1) which is part of the package fttools.
Who says you can't?
.debs with your modifications.
'apt-get source PACKAGENAME', edit the debian/rules (which is just a simple makefile), and then run dpkg-buildpackage.
Presto! You have brand-spankin' new
> 2. If you're planning on using a 3d accelerated graphics card i.e. (Rage 128, 3dfx, etc), you must have DRI support compiled into your kernel with the appropriate kernel module for your card. There is a new Mesa for XFree86 4.0.1 that has builtin support for DRI; however, there is a problem with this package. It does not include the libGLU(a subset of the Mesa library) static library or header files. This means that you must manually extract libGLU from the existing Woody Mesa package and copy it into /usr/local/lib/whatever if you plan on running 3d apps that depend on libGLU(almost all!).
/usr/lib/libGLU.so.1.3
_Plase_ check your facts before posting.
~ $ dpkg -S libGLU.so.1
xlibmesa3:
See that? Thanks to the patch made by Craig Dunwoody, the latest phase2 package and the first package upload to woody contains the GLU library. Before that patch you had to do that ugly stuff you mentioned, though. But not anymore.
> 4. Try to avoid emailing Branden at all costs. He's been less than friendly to me, and I know other people who have had similar experiences.
This is pretty natural reaction if you ask me. What would you feel if you'd receive a couple of dozens of mails daily all asking the same thing: when on earth are you going to do those XFree86 4.0 debs you lazy dog? But, for (sometimes) more intellectual conversation, there's an excellent mailing list available, debian-x@lists.debian.org . Folks over there, that includes Branden, are glad to help you with all the problems you may encounter regarding the XFree86 4.0 debs. Though be sure to crawl through the debian-x list archive before asking simple questions. It's pretty likely it has already been asked and answered. Especially if it has something to do with the 3rd-party 3D drivers.
Hope that helped.
This is NOT true.
Don't believe him/her. This only APPEARS to be true - there is no rule. It may happen that the stable distribution is a bit behind the latest developments, but do you want bleeding-edge software in a 'stable' distribution?
I have a feeling there used to be a VERY long thread a few months back on WHY it does not support it and whether it is simple to built it in. Good thing that at least it supports TT fonts by default...
--AP
No its not. I vote that all the users with decent hardware pissed at all the users with old hardware fork the kernel, X, and KDE and start a distro meant only for those who have the sense not to use 5 year old vidcards.
Matrox Millenium G200 8MB: $30 +4s/h on pricewatch.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Anyone - help ! ...
How can i start X4.0.1 on a Hercules Monochrome card ? There is no hga driver and the fbdev driver wants 8bpp or more. The plain vga driver only talks to vga devices.
And apt-get dist-upgrade uninstalled xserver-mono and xserver-fbdev which conflict with 4.0.1
help meee!!!
--
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
The codename for next release is usually picked by the release manager, at the point when the frozen tree gets created. Considering "woody" hasn't been frozen yet, it's not known how the next unstable will be called.
-- Josip Rodin
Possibly. Bear in mind that the example in question is a monospaced font for a start. And unfortunately truetype fonts vary wildly in the quality of their hinting. Unlike ps fonts (which have a stroke based hinting scheme), tt fonts have a small program included with them which is executed on a virtual machine in order to work out the hinting. Therefore the quality of the hinting for a postscript font is dependant mostly on the quality of the ps renderer, whilst the quality for a tt font can vary wildly between fonts, as it depends on how good the code is for each font.
I believe that part of the reason for MicroSoft's 'web fonts' on screen quality is down to the amount of work they put into the hinting code.
Font nuts usually use this as an argument as to why ps fonts are better than tt fonts.
Phil
ps. Note that none of the above affects the printed quality of fonts, only the rendering on the relative low-res computer displays we currently suffer before...
--
nosig
That's funny, I've been trying to get my posts to format like that for ages. Much easier to read you know? That's why newpapers print in column format. You only have to scan stright up and down, not in back and forth, up and down zig zag pattern.
:)
Guess I'll start using Lynx to post. Thanks for the hot tip.
Its news because not too many distros have started using xfree 4, and because Taco is a card carring Debian nazi.
I hope you got your undies in a knot over the stories of Red Hat including gcc 2.9.6 in thier last release.
A valid point in deed. But the fact that an upgrade of some program has now become available in the unstable developer branch of some linux-distribution doesn't really strike me as a story.
Then go to your preferences and make sure that "Debian" is selected for exclusion from the homepage. Voila; no more stories about Debian, "unstable developer release" or otherwise.
And for the record, "unstable developer branch" doesn't adequately describe what woody (2.3) is; Debian doesn't follow kernel-style numbering.
Jay (=
There are still a ton of issues with it.
:)
Issues? I didn't have much for issues. I was very impressed. The only thing that all out broke was Netscape. The package I was using depended on libxpm. apt-get install netscape fixed that.
The dextor configuration utility works incredibly well. I wish it was smart enough to add ZAxisMapping instead of Emulate3Buttons though.
After getting the new X up an running, I had my TNT2 working with nVidias drivers in no time. All in all, it took me about 1.5 hours to go from the old X to playing Quake 3 under Linux.
Debian, keep up the excellent work!
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
I just downloaded this thing and normal AA rendering looks like crap afterwards
Using the binaries from Xfree86 is kinda silly because then you won't be dealing with all the dependency issues. Packages specifically from the distrobution are important if you want to have a coherent setup that will be easily upgraded.
Umm, if you run at a high resolution on anything less than a Matrox card you deserve the eyestrain.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
ok. maybe i dont know what im talking about. is this article the fact that x 4.0.1 has been made into deb packages? from the binaries that ive been using for a long time? or was it that it didnt work on deb? i dont get why this is an article.. i assume there is something im missing. ive been useing x 4.0.1 for quite a while. with nvidia drivers and all. if im missing something, can someone explain it to me?
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
whoa there cowboy them there debian folks are moving way to fast here. 4.0 just came out.. this is debian were talking about. 4.0 shouldn't be in debian untill atleast 2003 or later.
I just upgraded early this morning, ran xf86config, answered a few questions, tweaked my config, and ran GDM. It's been stable all day with no noticable differences.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
I've installed the X 4.0 from source and the only problem so far was that I had to bring back some shared libs from X3.3 in order to succesfully compile KDE 2.
Apart from that, it rocks.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
and Buzz, and Bo, and Rex. The scheme is characters in `Toy Story.' (An exployee of Pixar was head of Debian at the first naming.) As for what's next, I don't know either. Andy? Armymen? (ragnarsedai)
I did that a long time ago - it makes no difference :)
David
They're characters from Toy Story.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
What do you have to do to get GPM working again?
I agree, Windows does it wrong, but you can achieve PROPER anti-aliasing without alpha transparency.
cf. RiscOS 3.7 or greater (if memory serves) for font blending against a variable coloured background - not an alpha channel in sight.
arnald
thats exactly what i did. i had updated fri night and the matrox drivers were gone, x wouldn't start due to 'no valid configured device' or something similar. i searched through the available *xfree*4* packages and found and installed xserver-xfree86. which worked perfectly :)
I've had the dbe module loaded all along; however, strangely enough, reducing the color depth to 16bpp seems to resolve the problem. Weird.
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
The blinking could be a side effect of not loading the "dbe" module in "Section \"Modules\"" ;) Try adding a line Load "dbe" (double buffering extensions) in XF86Config. I've read a couple of places that this will fix the flickering issues in some applications.
"I drank what?" -Socrates
In my opinion, the people who spend $34 on a video card which does not work any better for their desired purpose (running X at fairly high resolutions) than a cheap video card they already have, are the ones who are lacking sense.
S3 doesn't give out driver info anymore. So unless you can find someone who still has the specs from way back when, you're out of luck on getting drivers written.
Kenny MacDonald posted some precompiled packages for potato/i386. They are apt-able from this address.
It's probably a good idea. To do this, just add that line in /etc/apt/sources.list
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
the type
apt-get upgrade
that should upgrade you to you completely, even getting the XFree86 4.0.1 debs. Of course, how fast this will go depends on the speed of your internet connection.
good luck again!
hmm i always wonder why there is need for distrospecific packages on this. just get the original install files from their website (www.xfree.org) and you're set. the installation is really easy, you just need to answer few questions, like do you want to backup some old files and so on.
ound the message used repetitively over and over still nothing grows silen
I have a TNT card. I have installed the NVIDIA drivers (both) from the tar.gz packages.
/usr/lib/libGL.so
Everything claims to have installed correctly. The kernel driver is certainly installed and running. I have created a sym link in my quake3 directory to
Is there anything else I should do?
Thanks for you help.
Could someone take to the time to explain just what must be done to get quake3 working properly with X4.0.1 in Debian? I have X4 installed properly, and I used a clean install to make sure there were no unnecessary Mesa libs lying about. For some reason, whenever I try to run Q3A, it kicks me back out to the gdm login screen. As far as I can tell, everything is installed and working properly.
4.* is not nearly in good enough shape for shipping
Sorry to break it to you, but there aren't going to be any official XFree86 4.0 Potato debs. See this for details.
Dodger_
I have that same issue when running xmms's OpenGL visualization plugin. I can login from my other machines via ssh, but the keyboard/mouse/screen are locked up hard, even after killing the X process. I think it's the kernel module.
David
Now if only X4 were to get the other drivers ported to it. My crusty old s3trio64 (not virge, not trio3d) is not supported in X4 yet (not even in cvs), so I guess I'm SOL for now :)
Well. I just finished recovering from
/var/lib/dpkg/status and
the upgrade to XF4.0 using
apt-get update
apt-get dist-install
It was not an altogether smooth experience.
I did have the presence of mind to exit
from X before attempting it.
apt-get claimed that task-x-window-core
was being kept back. Now I am rather
new to debian and wasn't sure what exactly
was meant by a package being kept back,
but as I had already determined to take the
plunge I went forward.
This was perhaps, not the wisest move.
A great many things where installed and
removed. At the end of it all startx would
not cause X to run. It failed because it claimed
it couldn't open display 0:0.
So I paniced and began searching on google
with lynx for someway to take it all back.
I discovered several kluggy suggestions involving
diff file of the
/var/lib/dpkg/status.yesterday.0 files, but
nothing that looked very promising. (As
an aside, if anyone knows a good way to role
debian back to yesterday please let me know,
it looks like this is something that should be
quite doable.)
So I revisited the task-x-window-core problem.
apt-get install task-x-windows-core
revealed that it could not install because it
couldn't install xutils.
apt-get install xutils
informed me that it would have to remove
task-gnome and a bunch of other things
that I really didn't want to have to give up.
Being desperate however I agreed.
xutils then installed fine.
apt-get install task-x-windows-core
then complained that it couldn't install because
it couldn't get xbase to install.
apt-get install xbase
went off without a hitch however. Then finally
apt-get install task-x-windows-core
worked. Things installed and dexter was invoked
to generate the configuration file.
Everything is mostly fine now.
Hopefully my description of my experience will
help some other poor bastard who is reading this
in lynx.
One final note. The above is purely from
memory (I wasn't keeping a very good record
at the time) and so there may be some slight
inaccuracies.
I didn't have much luck with Debian... Redhat is nice, but moves too much stuff around IMHO.. Slackware was the very first distro of Linux I ever installed on any system, and it's still my favorite. I snagged XF4.0 a couple days ago and installed it, haven't had a problem yet.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Don't you know about the "next major verson" rule about debian?
A version of a package can't be in debian stable until the next major version is released. XFree 4.0 can't be in debian stable until 4.1 is released.
Been there, done that. I read the docs buddy :) Any ideas *not* covered in the docs that I can try?
David
Ummm....What's the big deal here? RedHat 7.0 lets you use Xfree 4.0.1 or 3.3.6 and others use Xfree 4.0 as well.
Detonator3 drivers work under linux now??? I thought you had to use the drivers under the linux box...hrm...
David
But lets not waste any more Slashdot bandwidth. Lets to go comp.os.joto.his.tastes.only and rail about the cruel injustice of it all.
Well, I've been running woody for a long time now, as well as using the XF4 debs since they were first introduced. Using the nv driver included with xf4, things are dandy. Using Nvidia's provided binary drivers is another story, completely. If you have an Nvidia card, and can live without 3d acceleration, stick with the XF4 provided driver. Unfortunately for us who like to play Quake3 and do various things which require 3d support (aka blender), you are stuck using Nvidia's drivers. Good luck...every time I use a OpenGL program, and exit, I have to completely exit X before I can run another OpenGL program. Oh...stability...maybe if you run a word processor...but when you are doing heavy 3-d work, things just die. Don't blame xfree86, blame Nvidia. No holy wars over open/closed models, I'm just letting people know. David PS - I have an Nvidia TNT...maybe GeForce cards don't have the same issues? I'm running the newest Nvidia binaries as well.
Heck, my firewall is a 486, and it definitely doesn't have X installed.
However the P-60 is currently running Slackware and it is running X. I use it to test out different junk, including X. I don't expect great performance or 1337 games of tuxracer but I do want it to function.
first of all, make sure that you have the following line in your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main
then run "apt-get update"
then run "apt-get install xserver-xfree86"
That should get everything you need since it should find all dependencies. Good luck! Post again if you have any problems.
Because I couldn't find Slackware in my preferences. Am I missing something, or there's only Debian and Red Hat Software? Frankly, who cares if it's in w00dy?
How to contact me - http://www.pervalidus.net/contact.html
Before I potentially hose my system by upgrading, I would like to know the chance of the new deps working.
(after the libc upgrade I am being a little conservative...)
Funny. Minor issue because you have telnetd running. But you still have to reboot. I really don't see why it's a minor issue.
How to contact me - http://www.pervalidus.net/contact.html
i've installed the v4 xfree86 with apt, and can only get the screen to display in 256 colours. any higher bpp gives me a scrambled screen (windows are mapped three or four times across the screen horizontally, small lines out their left hand sides). played with most of the s3virge options but couldn't fix it ... has anyone else dealt with this?
;)
card is a Genesis S3ViRGE (86C325 chipset). worked fine with v3.3.6 but i have a second which i'd like to get going too
cheers,
c
ps. if you have helpful comments, CC me too please!
Apparently you don't.
But if you're not interested in Debian news, why haven't you excluded Debian in you preferences?
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Slink, Potato, Woody, ...
In the IQ test of "which word comes next" I'd fail.
My guess would be "plectrum" or "orifice", can't decide which.
FatPhil
(again with all due respect)
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Please announce this too: KDE 2.0 is now included in slackware-current.
How to contact me - http://www.pervalidus.net/contact.html
I don't know about you but I'd bet that a lot of slashdot readers and linux users in general like to have a few machines kicking around. I know I do -- if I can make a working machine out of the parts bin I'm a happy camper. Lots of "parts bin" style machines are going to have 5 yr old + video cards. My desktop machine may have a Geforce in it, but one of my testbeds (crappy old socket-5 P-60) has an S3 chipset integrated into the mobo. The day that machine has to go in the pile with the PS/2 model 40 and the '386 is not gonna be a happy one for me.
Consider it granted that the existing code base will be very useful for reference, and possibly even code fragments, when writing the new drivers. That does not deny that the drivers need to be created afresh.
Drivers get written based on two things:
It's not S3 that "sucks," and, it should be noted, by the way, under S3 driver support that it's only the S3V that is supported; my S3 968 board is not supported , with no plans for that to be upcoming.
To the contrary, it's closer to being you that suck. If you want S3V supported, then you should either be looking at the code, or doing something like sending a donation to XFree86 along with encouragement that they improve S3V support.
A 4MB S3V card is likely worth $10 these days; that is just not going to warrant a lot of work at this time when they're only available as surplus, and when efforts are concentrating more on supporting 3D hardware which an S3V "325" is just incapable of coping with well.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Antialiasing at small point sizes is unhelpful on most display technologies as all it does it makes the text blurry - try it, it looks crap. That's why they don't do it.
The font renderer in RiscOS was OK, but it didn't handle things like asymetric sub-pixel alignment very well - it just relied on the antialising to 'blurr' our the errors at small point sizes.
For a good example of the difference between a good font rendere and a god-awful one, use notepad and AcrobatReader side-by-side with various fonts and sizes. Check by zooming the pixels, too.
I tried XFree86 4.x a few days ago, and found that it barely worked with my 4MB S3 Virge card. I was able to get only 800x600 at 15-bit. XFree86 3.x worked flawlessly at 16-bit and 1152x864.
And don't tell me S3 sucks. It's not an excuse. Even if it does suck, supporting it fully in one version but barely supporting it at all in the next version is a very big step downhill.
Anyways my point is, if you're using an S3 Virge video card, you probably shouldn't even bother until XFree86 4.x is considered "stable".
actually, it works fine in 15bpp (how many colours is that, anyway?). dexter didn't include this in my XFree86Config-4 but when i copied the 16bpp entry and made the appropriate changes it worked fine.
16bpp and 24bpp are still horizontally scrambled, but at least i don't get those cool netscape colourflashes any more.
I was having stability problems with the pre release2 debs of XFree4. It was giving me a SiG15/SIG11 often. I finally found out it was running WindowMaker (or one of the dock apps, not sure which) that was doing it. I went back to gnome/enlightenment and haven't crashed yet. The debs seem pretty darn stable imho. I was getting impatient with Branden for the slowness, but I must say the updates were good and often for the pre-v2 packages and I'm glad they're stable as a result of his patience and time/effort.
Thanks Branden!
"I drank what?" -Socrates
Before upgrading, I am just wondering if this will break quake3 (voodoo 3 3500 vid card) and if not, what packages are needed (I have rpm->debs of the linux.3dfx.com drivers ATM) to make it run.
TIA
Please also recognize that there are some problems w/NVidia's drivers in SMP systems. On my system, some GL app's crash - some much harder than others. Still can't get quake2 to run for more than 30 seconds w/out crashing. Trying a single CPU kernel makes the problems go away, but that is not the solution I was looking for.
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
Antialiasing at small point sizes is unhelpful on most display technologies as all it does it makes the text blurry - try it, it looks crap. That's why they don't do it.
I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned you're so completely wrong its not even funny.Maybe its just a personal preference thing, but I'll happily sacrifice a little 'blurring' if it means I get more readable text plus the ability to actually read text rendered at very small point sizes.
Like Toby (above) {Hi Toby!} I've seen and used the Acorn font renderer and the difference it made to readability and perhaps more importantly useability was outstanding.
Keith Packers example page at http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/render/compare.html
has some good textual examples. Note that yes, clearly a hand drawn bitmap font at a particular font size will be fine, but having true antialiased vector fonts gives you so much more flexibility and readability that you don't want to go back.
just my 2p :)
Phil--
nosig
After using the apt repository on Branden's(the Debian X Maintainer) website to have XFree86 4.0.1 on two of my desktop machines, I have a few words of advice.
/usr/local/lib/whatever if you plan on running 3d apps that depend on libGLU(almost all!).
1. The 4.x X servers use a new style of configuration file. It's supposed to be automagically generated by running xf86cfg; however, this doesn't always work. Branden has written a tool to generate the config file, but it doesn't always work either. In lieu of this, it's probably a good idea to go to XFree86.org and brush up on the 4.0 series XF86Config file format before upgrading. Also, the new name for the config file is XF86Config-4 (I don't know if this is debian specific) instead of XF86Config.
2. If you're planning on using a 3d accelerated graphics card i.e. (Rage 128, 3dfx, etc), you must have DRI support compiled into your kernel with the appropriate kernel module for your card. There is a new Mesa for XFree86 4.0.1 that has builtin support for DRI; however, there is a problem with this package. It does not include the libGLU(a subset of the Mesa library) static library or header files. This means that you must manually extract libGLU from the existing Woody Mesa package and copy it into
3. There are still serious issues with 3d acceleration on the Rage 128 cards and 3dfx cards. If I run tuxracer(or any GL app) with certain WindowMaker apps running(from inside of Blackbox), I get constant blinking inside of the 3d application. The solution(for now) is to shut down any WM applet that refreshes constantly. Don't even try to use 3d acceleration inside of enlightenment(horrible blinking).
4. Try to avoid emailing Branden at all costs. He's been less than friendly to me, and I know other people who have had similar experiences.
Other than that, the new X is really nice and noticably faster than the 3.3 series. Enjoy it.
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
Well, I upgraded to X4 yesterday via apt, and the packager did an amazing job. First of all, there is a nice dialog-style configuration tool called Dexter which builds a config file easily. However, there are a couple of caveats: :) Don't forget to build that 2.4-test10 kernel too.
(1) If you're using DRI with a Voodoo3, you need to modify your XF86Config-4 to use a default depth of 16... maybe it's obvious to some people, I didn't make the conclusion instantly.
(Voodoo3's only support 3D in 16-bit color)
(2) You need to find ttmkfdir if you want to use Truetype fonts, mkfontdir doesn't do it. I don't know if there is a Debian package either.
(3) Voodoo3 support is buggy, I don't know if it's the Glide, the DRI modules, or X itself, but some things (like a few xmms plugins) crashed my box HARD, as in, I needed a hard reboot.
Anyway, those issues aside, this is a remarkably well-packaged version of X4, and most people will have little or no trouble with a smooth upgrade via apt. Much props to Branden for packaging them so well.
If you do upgrade, believe me, there is a noticeable speed increase, and Tuxracer is playable
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
I'm the first to admit xf4 conveys a lot of improvements, but I still don't find it stable enough to recommend it to anyone. 4.0.0 works pretty well on my Toshiba laptop & my K6-2/Riva TNT, but 4.0.1 is just horrible. I had some 'random' lockups (of the whole system, that is), X crashes on me when I switch to a login console and the nVidia drivers just don't seem to care to clean up when an OpenGL program exits. I'm looking forward to 4.0.2 ;-|
Really, it would be nice to see the potato debs...