Matrox Releases G series X config tool

Deven Phillips writes: "Matrox has released a GUI based configuration tool for Matrox cards. It has the ability to set up Dual-Head, TV out, and Digital Flat Panel configurations. It also configures all of the resolution modes for XFree86 4.0.[2|3]. I have tried it, and it works with or without the Matrox supplied drivers, but you can't switch on the fly with the XFree drivers."

Comments

Re:X replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

You see, X is sort of a holy icon to some people in the *nix community. No matter how bad it really is, you've better not complain or their wrath will land upon you. If you really have to say something bad about it, remember to balance this heinous act by hyping X's network transparency (which, of course, is useless to most desktop users). That and the obvious complexity of building a GUI are the main reasons the development of replacements is taking so long.

The Berlin project is the most promising one, although framebuffer-GTK could also turn out to be useful.

a couple of things

[Anonymous Coward]

1) The software licence is far from being GPL.
2) Where are the .debs?

Re:a couple of things

[phaze3000]

From the 'COPYING' file included with the powerdesk source .tar.gz:

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991

I'm glad to see Matrox actually 'get it'.

--

Re:Closed Source...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not completely correct. Firstly, none of X is licensed under the GPL, it's under the XFree license. With regard to the Matrox cards, I have a G400Max with Hardware 3d and everything, and I'm using the Xfree drivers. If you have the G450, you have to link binary only module at runtime to give 3d support.

This situation sucks - I've used Matrox cards for ages, and was less than pleased to see them releasing binary only rubbish. Sadly, NVidia are even worse. There seem to be very few graphics cards around that are fully supported by open source drivers - anyone got any suggestions...

Network transparency hype strikes again

[Anonymous Coward]

what about transparent network so you can see your apps in some other place?

Couldn't let that pass, could you?

Network transparency as it has been implemented in X is completely useless to most desktop users. In the age of dumb terminals and mainframes it might have been a boon, but now that every friggin' secretary and PHB has a spanking new Pentium IV oe 1.4 GHz Athlon PC on their desk, it's pretty much obsolete.

Rip the networking guts out of X and make it easier to integrate it into the kernel and you might have a winner. Get some graphics designers and GUI experts (from the industry, not from the academic world!) first to help you with the eye-candy and usability, though.

Re:Network transparency hype strikes again

[Anonymous Coward]

Great !! When will you start ? Maybe you'll see then that the network transparency isn't quite that useless at all, it just needs some getting used to it's tremendous powers (used it once and can't live without it no more). Also, your comments about 'graphics designers' and 'GUI experts': you do understand the difference between X and the windowmanager right ? But hey, don't believe me ... just get started !! I'm sure a lot of people would be really greatfull ...

Re:Network transparency hype strikes again

[Tet]

Oracle has a GUI installer

Yes, but I'd argue that's a flaw with Oracle. Not that it has one, but that it forces you to use it. As of 8i release 3, they no longer support a text install. That's fine, except I've just had to try and install it on some Sun servers that don't have X. They're servers (y'know -- the sort of machines on which Oracle is designed to run), so they don't have X installed. I can't just remotely display the installer on my desktop, because the server doesn't even have the X libraries installed. Nor should it. X rocks, and the network transparency is invaluable, but Oracle is making a huuuge mistake by insisting on it being there. I'm seriously thinking about switching to DB2 or Informix (both now owned by IBM).

Re:Network transparency hype strikes again

[crucini]

You are incorrect in asserting that increasingly powerful machines eliminate the need for network transparency. Some of the reasons I like X's network transparency:

1. There are still many applications available for commercial Unix and not for Linux. X lets me ssh into a Sun and run an app on my Linux desktop.
2. X lets me access the GUI apps on my workstation from anywhere in the company. If I'm visiting a colleague in a different building, I can easily show him the new program I just installed.
3. X enables xkibitz, an awesome program that lets multiple users all over the world share an xterm.
4. Oracle has a GUI installer. If not for X, I would have had to jump through flaming hoops to get permission to enter the data center, round up a keyboard, monitor and mouse, and sit on the floor in a freezing cold room every time I install Oracle on a server. Yes those physical discomforts could be remedied, and the reason they're not is that Unix servers rarely require physical TLC. Anyhow, X lets me do the install from the comfort of my cube.

I've left out the whole "thin client" aspect, because it has been overhyped and may not always make sense. However I think that a really logical IT infrastructure would put an xterminal rather than a PC on the secretary's desk. Every PC is an ongoing cost center, and an invitation to store company documents on un-backed-up disk.

Re:Network transparency hype strikes again

[kilrogg]

X Networking is *by far* the most useful feature of X. At the company I work for (a chip maker), 90% of the employees absolutely need that feature. If XFree86 was to be drop from Linux, Linux would never make it here (mostly Suns and HPs now).

Just because you don't "get it", doesn't mean it's not a vital feature for some of us.

And as for the eye candy, most linux desktops are way nicer looking than the average ugly and boring windows9x desktops.With the release of XP, Microsoft is only now starting to catch up in that regard.

Re:Network transparency hype strikes again

[kilrogg]

So? Most programs such as Netscape or StarOffice are simply unusuable over 10 Mbit ethernet. Network transparency just doesn't cut it except in the case of very simple programs such as terminals and emacs.

It really depends on the toolkit being used. I believe Staroffice and Netscape both use a custom toolkit which are crap. Toolkits such as GTK or QT work much better. I've used very complex Gui programs (from my University days, Opnet comes to mind, something that I couln't dream to afford for my home machine) remotely over the Internet (1Mbit DSL or cable modem) and have gotten acceptable results.

And don't get me started on the horrendous non-standardised GUI. Every application has its own icons and so on.

This is a total non-issue, since when is providing a choice to developers a problem? Since when is competion bad? Linux is Freedom, unlike some other Oses there's no dictators here telling people what there GUIs must look like.

misread story title

[Anonymous Coward]

i glance a the title and see something about a G rated or X rated release of the matrix (go ahead, mod me down)

Re:Dual-license?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, just for fun, comment out lines 1485-1493 of the source code file callbacks.c - It's amazing how much that improves the compatibility of this software.

Re:What's the use of such software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Noone needs open-source color-depth-changer when they can edit XFConfig manualy

"Editing a configuration file" is a big no-no if you want ordinary people like your OS/GUI system.

It's the same problem with all Unices. I recently installed Sparc Solaris 8 on my Sun Blade and spent hours trying to figure out how to set the X resolution. I still don't know exactly how I finally managed to get it to 1280x1024.

Re:X replacement

[HeUnique]

And why replace it exactly?

Do you have any other enviroment which supports compatibility with X? stuff like Xlib, DGA(1,2), Xv, DRI, GLX (for Nvidia), the new Renderer and RandR perhaps? what about transparent network so you can see your apps in some other place? no, ha?

Yes, if you do remember XFree 3.3.x it was very sucky sucky shitty shitty - but since then - XFree 4.x came out, you can see all the extensions I mentioned above came mostly when XFree 4.x came out.

It's constantly being developed. Geniuses people like Mark Vojkovich and Keith Packard, as many other people are helping X to keep being develop to any modern graphical enviroment.

So no, I don't think Frame buffer, nor Berlin project could make it and replace X. I still belive that X is coming into maturity and it will give you in short time what others giving today (look at the latest Rendered and RandR extensions lately and see what I mean)

Re:Closed Source...

[HeUnique]

Yes, some of the stuff on the drivers are closed source - but only the part which gives you dual head, and the TV out stuff, and the Macrovision part is closed also..

They cannot release the source code since most of those parts are either belong to 3rd party, or NDA signature prevents from showing the code (E.G - Macrovision)...

You'll have to decide what you want - either some close parts of the driver and 95% opened under GPL - or totally not support?

I'll go with choise 1

Re:Resolution

[Wakko Warner]

No.

It sucks, but it's no better or worse than Windows.

--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

Re:Resolution

[Wakko Warner]

Amigas could have different resolutions and color depths in each of their workspaces back in the 80s, too. It's just one of those weird things that never caught on.

--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

Re:Resolution

[Trepidity]

Of course in windows you don't have to reboot to do that.

And I only reboot windows 98 maybe once a week. Win2k maybe once a month.

Re:Resolution

[Trepidity]

That's not very useful, as it only changes the physical monitor resolution, and does not correct the size of the desktop appropriately. When I change from a 800x600 desktop taking up my entire screen to a 1024x768 desktop, I don't want the new desktop taking up only a little box in the middle of the screen. And when I change back down to 640x480 I don't want it taking up twice the screen width so I have to scroll around.

I can do this in Windows from the taskbar, with no reboots or anything. Why can't I do it in X?

And I better not even start on changing color depths without restarting.

Matrox

[Kev Vance]

I tried playing around with this yesterday. It's a pretty good utility. Beats xvidtune, anyway.

I am still very disappointed with Matrox's G450 drivers, though. It trashes the framebuffer at non-24bpp modes, it breaks the overlay on 24bpp, and TV out doesn't work at all! They've really fallen behind from the days when they released a thick G200 specs manual and John Carmack was hacking the GLX code :P

Re:Matrox

[Kazin]

Exactly what I've been thinking. I've never really been a Matrox fan - in fact I've avoided them for a long time due to their arrogance when people first wanted Millenium drivers for XFree86.

Now that they've embraced Linux, that's changed. But their drivers still aren't up to the quality that some others are. I had a TNT1 before I put my G450 in (only for dual head really, I needed the PCI slot the 2nd video card was in...), and I had no problems with GL and games. Now, I try to run Unreal Tournament, or any other GL programs, and at least I get segmentation faults, at most, complete system lockups.

Thanks for the slick utility Matrox. But maybe you should put a little more effort into supporting the features people really want, like *working* GL, and TV out.

- kazin

Re:*STILL* no G450 TV Out

[Adnans]

I own(ed) a G400 dual head TV Out capable card but recently switched to a Geforce2 MX400. The quality of the MX400 is much better than the G400 (not surprising since the G400 is almost 2 years old). The MX400 also has the added benefit of hardware OpenGL and RENDER support on the TV-out as opposed to the G400.

• Konqueror TV. Finally browsing on a TV becomes viable. At 800x600 text is very reasonable and the screen is big enough for most webpages.
• Quake III. This really rocks!! If Loki keeps pumping out games there won't be need for a separate console, at least not in my house.
  
  

-adnans

Re:nvidia sucks

[Adnans]

manufacturers should and the hardware will probably have a longer usefull life. (long term support)

Heh, this is exactly the reason why I bought an NVidia card, believe it or not. I waited almost 2 years for Matrox to come out with quality 3D drivers for their hardware, but that still has not happened. The lasest mga DRI drivers are still flaky for me. However, I've had nothing but rock solid performance from the (closed source) NVidia drivers. The kernel parts of the NVidia driver are open source so upgrading to a new kernel requires a simple recompile of the NVdriver sources (running CVS 2.4.5-xfs right now, cutting edge). And if NVidia sucks, so does Matrox, since parts of their drivers are closed closed source too. IMHO right now NVidia provides the best video card support for Linux on x86 hardware and by hiring Mark Vojkovich and paying him to work on XFree it proves (to me) they are quite serious about Linux/XFree86.

My platform of choice is Linux/x86 (AMD), at least for the next year, and that's exactly the useful lifetime of my video hardware.

BTW, upgrading kernels is not a hassle at all. I have a nice script that is run after every kernel compile, pulls in the external modules effortlessly (bttv2, nvidia, alsa)

-adnans

Re:Resolution GAAAHH! (short rant)

[Adnans]

The RandR extension, which just made it into XFRee86 CVS will allow for just that. However applications must be modified slightly to take advantage of the Resize and Rotate extension. Actually they only need to respond to the X event that notifies the app that the root window has changed size (and possibly color depth). This shouldn't be too hard for well written apps. And chances are good that once support for this makes it into populair toolkits, applications written against them will get support for free (think RENDER). Don't expect widespread support untill XFree 4.1+ makes it into distro's though...

-adnans

Why is this an *extension*

[spitzak]

I have a lot of problems with the designs being done to X. There is no reason for this to be an "extension". All that needs to be done is send a XConfigureNotify event to the desktop window with the new size, and let the window manager do whatever it wants with this.

I'm sure they are all worried about "what about old window managers that don't expect an XConfigureNotify event for the desktop?". Well my response is: "SO WHAT?". I really expect that they will ignore it, and your windows will end up unmoved and thus positioned off the screen. If the window manager crashes, well then it was written like crap and you should not be using it anyway.

This paranoia about changing anything without making an "extension" is really killing any possibility of X being worthwhile. We should be having anti-aliased fonts BY DEFAULT, not with an "extension", and I really care absolutly ZERO that this breaks programs that use Xor to draw fonts (it doesn't anyway, just turn it off if Xor is being used). It is disgusting that you need to use elaborate interfaces and an "extension" to draw images using shared memory, why the hell does it not select the fastest possible transfer for me automatically? Why haven't we jettisoned colormaps and switched to true-color emulation on all displays?

The much-hated MicroSoft did the equivalent of all of these, and did them in ways so that old programs not only continued to work, but actually could take advantage of these changes. It is pretty pathetic that the X design commitee cannot even match MicroSoft's lame attempts!

Re:I'm easy to please

[spitzak]

What software is this? Do you have the source code? It seems hard to believe that some other company has compiled the source code for Linux and not removed the colormap dependency, since no Linux XFree86 driver supports multiple visuals.

Unfortunately for you, hardware support for 8-bit colormaps is going away very fast, and interest in supporting or emulating it is nearly zero since it prevents all the cool 3-D stuff and antialiasing from working. I recommend you get into that code and try to patch out whatever requires it asap.

My guess is the big problem is that it stores colors in a byte inside structures in the program. What you need to do is make a 256-entry lookup table from that byte to an actual X pixel, make a macro wrapper that you then need to put around all uses of color in the program that does the lookup through the table. You also need to fix the code that calls XAllocColor so that it instead allocates a new entry in the table, puts the result of XAllocColor there, and returns that table index.

If your program is using bit-fiddling to draw overlays, well you really need to seriously consider rewriting it. This typically will bypass any hardware acceleration and I have also seen signs that (due to the fact that it is never tested) it often does not work on X servers. The easiest way to get "overlays" is to use a pixmap "backbuffer" and draw the main image there. Copy it to the screen to "erase the overlay" and draw on the main window to "draw the overlay".

I know this is a pain, but I really recommend you fix your program if at all possible.

PS: if they are using this program on Windows, they already fixed it, so see what was done to the code there.

Re:Resolution

[abelsson]

Contrary to what some people are saying, you can change resolutions on the fly. Just hit Alt-[+|-] and it will change amongst the resolutions you have set up. Quite simple. Just make sure you have the resolutions/depths set that you want when configuring.

What you dont mention is that this feature is next to worthless because it doesnt change the desktop size, merely the monitor resolution.

The only practical use for it is if you want to zoom in on a specific part of the screen.

-henrik

Re:Resolution

[Fluffy the Cat]

I can do this in Windows from the taskbar, with no reboots or anything. Why can't I do it in X?

Because up until recently, there was no way for the X server to notify the clients (which include the window manager) that the resolution had changed.

Re:Resolution

[SpinyNorman]

Exactly. Maybe non-Matrox cards don't work this way, but ctrl +/- on a Matrox card just gives you a different resolution virtual screen of the same size that you can pan around with the cursor keys. It's cool and useful, but not the same thing as changing to a full screen desktop at a different resolution.

Owns!

[CAIMLAS]

Dude, this totally owns me! Lately I've just been too freaking lazy to mess with getting dualhead action working on my G400, since the monitors I have are quite tempermental, and I really don't want to do constant X restarting while trying to get something working sufficiently.

Rock on Matrox.

-------
CAIMLAS

Re:Resolution

[CAIMLAS]

Um, actually, no. That's not correct.

I don't have an example to show you, but it's actually possible to change desktop size in the same manner. You just need to set the resolution to the same size as the desktop. Not sure of the specifics, but it's something like, for examble, "32bit" "1024x768" "1024x768". As long as the two resolutions are the same, you should be fine.

-------
CAIMLAS

Re:Resolution GAAAHH! (short rant)

[CAIMLAS]

Take a look at my previous comment (by going to my user ID). If you need something more specific, mail me and I'll send you my X config file as soon as I get around to it. Things are hectic for me at this time in life.

-------
CAIMLAS

Re:Resolution

[CAIMLAS]

Contrary to what some people are saying, you can change resolutions on the fly. Just hit Alt-[+|-] and it will change amongst the resolutions you have set up. Quite simple. Just make sure you have the resolutions/depths set that you want when configuring.

People's lack of knowledge is disturbing.

-------
CAIMLAS

Could be bad.

[be-fan]

Oh oh. Another place where we will lose central configuration ability. Unlike Windows, X has no central architecture for GUI based configuration plug-ins. This means we should start to prepare for a boat-load of vendor-specific configuration program. Yet another reason I'm dreading moving to Linux...

Re:Resolution

[be-fan]

Umm, Win2K doesn't require reboots anymore for networking, and only some hardware actually requires rebooting (mostly stuff that requires a reboot in Linux too.) There goes that arguement.

Of course, its all moot. BeOS has been able to have different resolutions/color depths in each of its 32 workspaces for ages now, but that doesn't count, does it?

Re:X replacement

[be-fan]

Umm, X is bigger than all the servers and related support libraries in BeOS! And it doesn't even have a MediaKit! Or a TCP/IP stack. Or a memory manager. Yikes! Also, stripped down X is more or less useless on the desktop, where all the (bloated) features are needed to make it feature competitive with other windowing environments. Besides, QNX Photon does everything X does, and is less than a meg in size. Eat that.

Re:wish ATI wasn't hopeless

[be-fan]

Wow. You're a dumbass. The Voodoo1 doesn't even DO 2D. Secondly, if you used a *real* 3D OS, you'd find the Win2K drivers are rock solid.

Re:wish ATI wasn't hopeless

[be-fan]

What the hell? I like BeOS! Is that a crime? Does that mean I'm a rabid Mac user out to destroy everything else? Hell, I even mention that Win2K is the *real* OS for 3D. How is that promoting BeOS? Or do Linux zealots think that all closed source OSs are interchangable?

PS> Dislaimer: Not all Mac users are rabid. Not all Linux users are zealots. Not all BeOS users are bitter.

Re:Resolution

[be-fan]

Yea, and a lot of drivers require recompiling the kernel. Few drivers are distributed in binary form, and even when they are, they are usually specific to a particular (usually several months old) kernel version.

Re:X replacement

[be-fan]

Does that have DRI? Does that have all the extensions? Is that fully competitive with Windows2K in terms of features in addition to having network transparency? If so, why the hell is the X distribution 20MB of code?

Re:Closed Source... - That's fine

[gabrieltss]

Yes part of the source is not open. BIG DEAL! At least Matrox is stepping up to the plate to support linux. This just ROCKS! I have a Matrox G400 Dual head and the release of this tool and the drivers shows good faith by Matrox to support their hardware under Linux. Some Open Source Purists might complain, but really how many people out there really care if they have the source foe these things. They just want their hardware to work and an easy way to configure it. That is one way you will get more windows users to linux. Ease of Use.
BTW: anyone that has Matrox hardware and likes this move by Matrox should definately email them and thank them (I already did). It will reinforce them to want to continue to support Linux.

Re:Resolution

[Nailer]

Umm, Win2K doesn't require reboots anymore for networking

No. Windows 2000 doesn't require rebooting for changing one's IP address it. Requires rebooting for every other optionsin Control Panel -> Network.

Re:*STILL* no G450 TV Out

[Coolfish]

Don't count on Matrox to produce specs or drivers.. Read all about how Matrox completly screwed a vast chunk of its G400/RRG/MARVEL users and Win2k. Check out the Desktop video forums on www.matroxusers.com. Quite a few people on there, myself included, have out right stated that they will never buy a Matrox product again, quite simply because of their horrible driver support.

Get bent, Matrox!!

nvidia sucks

[bug1]

But no drivers in the kernel, because nvidia chooses to agree to non disclosure agreements with their partners. Why get a geoforce card and then have to deal with the extra hassle of binary only drivers for the lifetime of the card. Buy hardware from a company that supports free software as all *hardware* manufacturers should and the hardware will probably have a longer usefull life. (long term support)

Re:Resolution

[bug1]

You can change your resolution in X by doing just what you say, however you have to have your Config file setup so it knows about the other resolutions.

*STILL* no G450 TV Out

[Jakdaw]

Small print at the bottom:

1 TV output support is currently limited to G400 board level products only. Please consult the Matrox website for details www.matrox.com/mga

Does anyone know why there's no G450 TV out? I can't seem to find any links to any work being done to resolve this. Is it that Matrox won't give out the specs or just that noone is willing to write the drivers? What other options now are there for TV out under linux? G400 aren't really available new anymore, Geforce2MX drivers for TV out appear to support only a small subset of MX cards and look very beta (but promising :). Anyone know better??

Re:Resolution

[RoninM]

Modules exist for exactly this reason and have been around for quite a while in Linux. You're only technically right. I don't know the numbers for sure (any more than you do), but I can say from personal experience that none of my recent hardware purchases have required me to recompile the kernel and hence reboot.

Debian packages available...

[physicman]

A friend of mine has done a .deb package; it can be found at:

http://home.tiscalinet.be/lololuy/dists/unstable/c ontrib/binary-i386/mgapdesk-1.00_5beta-1_i386.deb

Hope it can help..

Oh no

[dirtman]

After that Ballmer interview, I do not want to see anything "innovotive".

I'm sure if they (people at Matrox) had seen the interview, they would obviously cancel this inn*vative configuration tool project.

--
dirtman

Mother nature is a bitch.

Re:Resolution

[binford2k]

Dude, the only thing that *requires* a reboot in Linux is upgrading the kernel. Nothing else. Period.

Re:X replacement

[Drone-X]

According to this interview at powerlinux.org the Berlin aims to be more than just an X replacement, it forces the Model View Controller paradigm onto the application, which makes it harder for many applications to be ported to Berlin. This I think will hold Berlin from replacing X (we all know how hackers don't like being forced a paradigm upon :).

As for the framebuffer-GTK, this is really neat but will only fill a niche I think. You see, the framebuffer means that it will not be possible to use the special functions found on todays cards without building special support for all cards. A new windowing environment with its own drivers would have to be build upon it to support that.

Also, X is not that bloated as people think and can be stripped down a lot. Remember that X is being used on Linux handhelds, and it's not like the developers didn't have a choice. Further it must be noted that X recently had a lot of sweet additions like Mesa3D, anti-alliasing and soon a RandR extension according to another post.

Re:Matrox drivers

[luugi]

There are the same speed. The matrox driver are based on the Xfree86 code.

Re:My Sad Experience

[luugi]

I'm really happy to see this. You see if the software was closed source you would have to wait for a patch. Now people could dive in the code and fix the problem themselves and send patches to Matrox.

Hurray for open source!

It works, but where are my modelines?

[campgod]

Wow. I'm glad we bought the G450's (and we're running redhat 7.x which is what Matrox developed on). This GUI tool worked without a hitch. Nothing to compile -- just sorta did what it was supposed to. (Though the Matrox mga_hal.o worked a lot better than the default or non-existent HAL). One weird thing is that there are no modelines in my XFConfig? Where are they?

Re:Resolution GAAAHH! (short rant)

[Zzootnik]

Ok This is one of my "GRRRRRR!!! WHY can't X DO this!" Rant-o-matic topics, so I'll try to keep it short.

I'm fairly new to linux, but I think I've tried looking through EVERY config file and how to I could find, and STILL haven't come up with a way to change both Screen Resolution and Desktop resolution at the same time...

And God loves Linux, but That really pisses me off- as that's something I'd LIKE to do now and then...Meanwhile Wundoze just has a neat and tidy little icon in the system tray that does it...
Yeah-yeah-yeah...don't tell me...Time to learn programming...
I think Mandrake had some strange utility that would do it, but I switched over to SuSE a while back and have been missing it sorely...(Of course now I can't even remember what it was!)

end of line.

Re:Gun advocates

[drDugan]

hmmm, where did you learn probability? not in school I guess.

multiplying probabilities the way you have assumes that A and B are independant random variables. Clearly they are not. ... and because they are not independant is precisely why your arguemnt is so wrong.

Furthermore, reducing human behavior to random variables is is pretty weak. There is really no chance at all involved in whether someone has a gun. They don't randomly appear in your pocket. You buy them, load them, and carry them, knowing full well you now have a gun.

try this:

• Criminals use guns for bad things.
  
• Criminals don't follow laws
  
• So lets make a LAW that prevents everyone from owning guns.
  

I wonder who will be most affected by that law? the criminals, or the law abiding folk?

don't get me wrong. I'm really not a gun advocate. I;ve owned a handgun and a shotgun, but I'd like to see more rational controls on access to guns. You do a disservice to the debate by presenting such blather.

Re:wish ATI wasn't hopeless

[acceleriter]

It's not a crime at all. I was just pointing up in what I thought might be a gentle way that your post seems to be a bit hostile.

Yes, we both know that Voodoo 1 is only 3D. But the AC could have been speaking about Voodoo Rush, or just have made some less egregious error than it looked like. Even if he were just plain wrong, that probably could have been handled without calling him "dumbass."

Re:wish ATI wasn't hopeless

[acceleriter]

Damn, you're bitter. But then, I'd be bitter if I hitched my wagon to BeOS, too.

X replacement

[2ms]

Do you happen to know anything about the status of any potential replacements? I always hear about how much X sucks. I would think that replacing it would be a big priority if it sucks so much. Are there replacements in the works that are taking a long time, or does nobody want to work on a replacement yet because it wouldn't be worth the effort/investment yet, or what?

Re:X replacement

[damiam]

Do you happen to know anything about the status of any potential replacements? I always hear about how much X sucks. I would think that replacing it would be a big priority if it sucks so much. Are there replacements in the works that are taking a long time, or does nobody want to work on a replacement yet because it wouldn't be worth the effort/investment yet, or what?

There's the Berlin project and the Y Window System, but neither is currently ready for general use.

wish ATI wasn't hopeless

[2ms]

The Radeon would be a damn fine card for linux if it wasn't for the fact that it's made by ATI so it will probably never get good drivers. Although Nvidia 2d is crap, the Radeon seems to have achieved (at least very near to) parity with Matrox in 2d. Also, ATI's dual-monitor stuff is supposedly somewhere inbetween Nvidia's and Matrox's in capability. If only ATI would write decent drivers, then linux users would be able to get cards that are good for both gaming and 2d rather than having to pick between the two. Knowing ATI, though, I guess this is just wasteful dreaming.

My Sad Experience

[omnirealm]

Yoo-hoo!

wget (everything)
killall X
cp mga_drv.o /gobabygo!!!/
startx
rpm -ivh mga_PDESK_YEAH!!!
mgapdesk
Matrox PowerDesk: Configuration file (/etc/X11/XF86Config-4) opened.
Matrox PowerDesk: Configuration file parsed.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

It just had to be too good to be true...

Re:My Sad Experience

[omnirealm]

I downloaded the source and did some follow-up on this:

...
Matrox PowerDesk: Configuration file parsed.
Calling replaceString(&(conf->conf_layout_lst->lay_identif ie r), "Matrox PowerDesk configured.");...
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Apparently, the call to replaceString is broken. If it depends on a library version I don't have installed, then the configure script fails to catch this. This occurs around line 217 in mgaXconfig.c. If I comment-out that line, the next thing that segfaults is "gtk_widget_show(wdgWinCentral);" around line 1500 in callbacks.c. I tried installing the latest "stable" binaries of GTK+ 1.2.8 and gLIB 1.2.8, but this had no effect.

Has anyone had a similar problem with this?

I'm easy to please

[eXtro]

All I want is the ability to run 8 bit applications that require a pseudo-color display without resorting to booting in 8 bit mode. Some of my applications don't do 24 bit colour and won't run unless they can find an 8 bit or 8 bit pseudo-color display.

Matrox seems to have this, so I bought a G450 but it doesn't really work. It works for a little while then scrambles the screen with psychedelics.

Re:I'm easy to please

[eXtro]

Stupid 2 minute wait between submissions. I forgot to add that this problem is preventing us from rolling out linux to our circuit designers and system electrical people. If Matrox would resolve the problem it'd mean a few hundred linux seats in a pretty high profile part of the company as well as a few hundred Matrox boards.

Closed Source...

[dalutong]

I would like everyone to know that, however cool it is that the PowerDesk tool is GPL'd, the drivers are still only partially GPL'd. Some of the basic functions of the drivers are GPL'd, but most of the advanced functions are not. You can, i hear, not compile the advanced features in and be using all GPL'd drivers, but I may have heard wrong.

just my 2 bits...

Millennium (a premature eulogy)

[Paul the Bold]

It's stories like these that make the rumors of Linux being dead on the desktop sound hollow. It's apps like these that can really mainstream Linux, and I am proud to own Matrox products. Just add one more to the list of Linux supporting hardware vendors (Adaptec, Znyx, Transmeta, ..., Matrox).

By the way, did anyone happen to notice if there were plans to include support for the Millennium series of cards?

I like it

[mansoft]

That confirms what we already knew. Matrox has a kind ok compromise with Linux (not only that tool, just see how compatible they hw is). I hope that makes more people be interested in Linux. And of course, Matrox will sell more cards, which is what they surely want ;)

Resolution

[damiam]

Can it change resolution on the fly too? Or is that impossible in X?

Matrox drivers

[patrick74]

Does anyone know what the differences are between the XFree86 driver and the Matrox one, which one is faster?