XFree 4.0.3 Released

XFree 4.0.3 is out. New features include (among other): Better ATI Radeon chip support, Anti Aliasing improvments (and supported on more chipsets), Geforce 3 support added (2D), as well as other fixes. Matrox G400/G450 users will be delighted to hear that the 3D has been improved. Enjoy.

Comments

gcc 2.95.3

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we're announcing minor revisions of major software, thought I'd let you know gcc-2.95.3 was released yesterday - First update in 1.5 years.

gcc.gnu.org

Re:G450 and XFree86

[Arrowhead]

It's really very simple, but the Matrox support forum and people choose to make things complicated.

The only thing you really need is to recompile the stock XFree86 mga driver with the binary-only HALlib available. The instructions on the Matrox forum choose to say that that means you should reinstall all of X, from source, nuking everything your distro put in /usr/X11R6.

Of course, just going to the mga driver directory, hacking at it until you get two .o files and only moving mga_drv.o and mga_hal_drv.o to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers is all that's needed.

My simplified instructions:

• Get the Matrox beta source stuff that contains HALlib
• Get XFRee86 source (4.0.3 should work I guess)
• Do not replace the whole mga directory from XFree86 with the Matrox one. Instead, unpack Matrox's source and copy HALlib to xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/drivers/mga. Then follow the rest of the Matrox README file, but you can save an awful lot of time if you break out of the "make World" step and instead just go directly to the matrox driver directory and build only that.
• Copy the abovementioned driver files to your existing installation (possibly reading up on dpkg-divert first so mga_drv.o won't get overwritten on a minor upgrade)

G450 and XFree86

[joneshenry]

According to the Matrox driver status notes the G450 is prominent in its absence. According to the DRI User Guide "MGAHALlib.a is a binary library Matrox has provided for use under Linux to expose functionality for which they can not provide documentation. (For example TV-Out requires MacroVision be enabled on the output.)" and "Currently the MGAHAL library is required for the G450 to work." A simple search of what remains of deja.com reveals many posts from people struggling to get their G450 cards to work with XFree86. Matrox has binary drivers, beta, unsupported, for XFree86 4.0.2 and Linux at their site.

Can someone shed more light on the status of the G450 and XFree86 support?

4.0.3 is a bugfix release

[Caballero]

4.0.3 is a bugfix release. XFree is now being more careful about bugfix releases versus feature releases. XFree 4.1 will be the next big feature release and you'll see a lot of improvements in 3D support as well as things like the RENDER extension.

XFree86 4.0.3

[image]

The biggest problem with people mistaking Slashdot for Freshmeat is that there is rarely enough information given for a good software announcement. That said:

XFree86 is a freely redistributable implementation of the X Window System that runs on UNIX(R) and UNIX-like operating systems.

Author:

The XFree86 Project <XFree86 at XFree86 dot org>

Homepage:

http://www.xfree86.org/

Tar/GZ:

ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.0.3/

Changelog:

http://www.xfree86.org/4.0.3/RELNOTES.html

Trove categories:

Old Appindex :: X11 :: System

Summary of updates in 4.0.3.

Some temporary file-related security vulnerabilities are fixed.
Screen corruption problems and palette saving problems with some Neomagic chips are fixed.
'XFree86 -configure' problems are fixed in some drivers (including sis and i810).
A problem with some plain S3 ViRGE cards is fixed.
Some Xaw incompatibilities with Xaw6 are fixed.
Some XKB files are updated.
Some trident driver updates, including fixing acceleration for the Cyber9388.
A palette saving problem in the vgahw module is fixed.
Support for the wsmouse protocol is added for OpenBSD/i386.
A load problem with the sis driver module, and some depth 24 problems are fixed.
Support for the "PD" variant of the ATI Rage 128 is added.
Support for GNU Hurd is updated.
Some TrueType font problems are fixed.
The mga driver doesn't attempt to drive the G450 if the "mga_hal" module isn't available.
A problem with bold font simulation in xterm is fixed.
The (DPS) stub files created by pswrap are now compatible with the Adobe version.
Some glint driver problems are fixed.
Support for building on OpenBSD-current, and multi-thread support for OpenBSD are provided.
A problem with the ThinkingMousePS/2 protocol is fixed in the mouse driver.
Support for the Render extension with Xinerama is added.
A DGA-related server crash is fixed.
Some Chips & Technologies driver bugs are fixed.
Some tseng driver bugs are fixed.
Some Alpha platform updates are included.
Support for the GeForce3 is added to the nv driver.
Misc build-related issues are fixed.
Various documentation updates, including a reworked XFree86(1) manual page.

nVidia's really on the ball

[Osty]

nVidia released new XFree86 drivers for their line of chipsets, including the GeForce 3, on March 15th. They should work with any XFree86 4.0.x, so you needn't be upgrading just for GeForce 3 support, especially since these drivers include 3D, while 4.0.3's are 2D-only.

Get your redhot drivers here.

Re:Better Radeon Support?

[barneyfoo]

I think you're confused. the modules/drivers/ directory contains the 2D (along with other various X functions) drivers.

For dri, look in the modules/dri/

here are the contents of mine:

gamma_dri.so
i810_dri.so
mga_dri.so
r128_dri.so
radeon_dri.so
sis_dri.so
tdfx_dri.so

Btw, this was compiled from CVS a week ago (pre 4.0.3).

Re:voodoo5 5500

[LiteForce]

Your comment says a lot about supporting open-source, doesn't it ?

I purchased a Voodoo5 5500 not because I saw 3Dfx commercials (I'm in the U.K. and we don't get them); but because they allowed Daryll Strauss (who implemented Glide for Linux) to open-source his code and 3Dfx provided XFree86 developers with full documentation for the whole Voodoo range.

Which is more than nVidia have done; and which is why you will find full and comprehensive support for *all* Voodoo cards in XFree86 4.0x - and that is more than you get with nVidia; who are always a full XFree86 release behind with their 'closed-source' drivers!

I got rid of my TNT2 when I found out that nVidia couldn't even be bothered to support the XRender extension with their 0.9.5 driver release and nobody at nVidia would reply to my e-mails asking if/when it would be supported. The XFree86 2D-only support provided support for XRender but then I couldn't use the 3D acceleration of the TNT2 for anything.

Indeed, my computer doesn't crash now while playing Unreal Tournament using OpenGL with the Voodoo5 - why ? - because nVidia's drivers don't fully support SMP and freely admit in the driver README file that it can cause random lockups on SMP machines.

Add to that the number of problems people have been experiencing with these drivers, enough to add comments to the Freshmeat project page here.

If I am going to experience random lockups while using my machine; then I might as well be running Windows :-P

P.S. No, j00 d0n't 0wn a11 u5 3Dfx u53r5, nVidia does (seeing as though they bought out 3Dfx), so get yer facts straight!

Scientology makes X seg fault...

[telekon]

Every time I try to read illicit scientologist texts, X seg faults. They got to the CVS tree. I bet 4.0.3 is just a patch to remove all that scientology code. Or maybe 4.0.3 will make yr monitor explode when you say bad things about scientology...

I think it's the first one. The scientologists won't let XFree 4.0.3 into the tree for Woody.

dds:~#apt-get install scientology
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Lists...Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
free-speech libfree-speech0 reason freedom task-individual-thought
The following additional packages will be installed:
fear uncertainty doubt libfud11 libfud-dev harrassment task-intimidation-core
0 packages upgraded, 13 newly installed, 17 removed, and 6 not upgraded
Need to get 234GB of archives. After unpacking you will be brainwashed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]