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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."
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)
Hetz (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
Hetz (Heunique)
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
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
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
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
People's lack of knowledge is disturbing.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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.
Monkey sense
Damn, you're bitter. But then, I'd be bitter if I hitched my wagon to BeOS, too.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.