Slashdot Mirror
XFree86 4.3.0 Released
Dunkalis writes "The latest version of XFree86, 4.3.0, has been released! Release notes here, mirrors here. Enhancements include drivers for newer Radeons, better PS/2 protocol detection, the XRandR extension, better font support, and more!" Source tarballs are available, or wait for your distribution to package them...
Previous: Introduction to the 4.x Release Series
Next: Drivers 2. Summary of new features in 4.3.0. 2.1. Video Driver Enhancements
- ATI Radeon 9x00 2D support added, and 3D support added for the
Radeon 8500, 9000, 9100, and M9. The 3D support for the Radeon
now includes hardware TCL.
- Support added to the i810 driver for Intel 845G, 852GM, 855GM
and 865G integrated graphics chipsets, including 2D, 3D (DRI)
and XVideo. Support for the 830M has been improved, and XVideo
support added.
- National Semiconductor SC1x00, GX1, and GX2 chipset support added
with the "nsc" driver.
- Support added for the NVIDIA nForce2 integrated graphics, GeForce 4,
and GeForce FX.
- Major SiS driver updates for some of the latest chipsets. Unfortunately
the SiS 3D driver has had to be disabled because no one has yet
taken up the challenge to port it to Mesa 4.x.
- The s3virge driver now has support for double scan modes on the DX
(with XVideo disabled).
- Updates to the savage driver, including fixing problems with the
TwisterK, and problems with incorrect memory size detection.
- 2D acceleration added for the Trident CyberBladeXP/Ai1 chipsets.
- Support for big endian architectures has been added to the C&T
driver.
- Various updates and bug fixes have been made to most other drivers.
2.2. Input Driver Enhancements- The mouse driver now has automatic protocol detection for PS/2 mice.
- Several new input drivers have been added, including tek4957,
jamstudio (js_x), fpit, palmax, and ur98 (Linux only).
2.3. X Server and Extension Updates- Support for the RandR extension has been partially integrated
into the XFree86 server, providing support for resizing the root
window at run-time.
- The Mesa version used for OpenGL 1.3 and DRI
driver support has been updated to 4.0.4.
- The XFree86 server's hot keys (including those for switching
modes and virtual terminals) can now be configured via XKB.
Previously they were hard coded. An X server configuration
option has been added to allow the VT switching hot keys to be
disabled.
2.4. Client and Library Updates- An Xcursor library providing support for alpha blended (ARGB)
and animated cursors. Two Xcursor themes are provided (redglass
and whiteglass), as well as the default "core" theme (the traditional
cursors).
- Xterm updated to patch level 173, including the following bugfixes:
- Modify xterm to invoke luit.
- Add simple session management client capabilities.
- Add a modifyCursorKeys resource to control how the shift- and
similar modifiers are used to make a cursor escape sequence.
- Check if the printerCommand resource string is empty,
and use this to allow the user to disable printer function.
- Sort the options list which is displayed in help- and
syntax-messages at runtime to simplify maintenance.
2.5. I18N and Font Updates- Fix two infinite loops (special cases of mouse hilite tracking,
DECUDK parsing).
- Make repainting of the 256-color example work properly.
- Modify parser tables to improve detection of malformed
control sequences, making xterm behave more like a real
DEC terminal.
- Fix a problem with the blinking cursor which occasionally caused
xterm to pause until a key was pressed.
- Fix improper parsing of multiple items in the ttyModes resource.
and the following improvements:- FreeType2 updated to version 2.1.1.
- The "freetype" X server font backend has undergone a partial rewrite.
The new version is based on FreeType 2, and handles TrueType
(including OpenType/TTF), OpenType/CFF and Type 1 fonts. The old
"type1" backend is now deprecated, and is only used for CIDFonts
by default.
- A new utility called "mkfontscale", which builds fonts.scale files,
has been added.
- The Xft library has undergone a major restructuring, and is now
split into fontconfig (which deals with font discovery and
configuration and is independent from X), and Xft itself (which
uses fontconfig and deals with font rasterisation and rendering.
The format of the Xft font configuration files has changed in
an incompatible manner.
- Support has been added to the Xft library to do rendering with the
core X11 protocol. This allows clients using this library to
render to X servers that don't have support for the RENDER extension.
- There has been a significant reworking of the XKB support to allow
multi-layout configurations. Multi-layout configurations provide
a flexible way of supporting multiple language layouts and switching
between them.
2.6. OS Support UpdatesA more complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGELOG that is part of the XFree86 source tree. It can also be viewed online at our CVSweb server.
Not true transparency yet (waiting on Keith Packard's tranparency server for 5,0), but cursors can be colored, shadowed, animated, and themed.
A new utility, mkfontscale, is included with this version. This creates fonts.scale files. In the past, in order to install third party TTF fonts (such as MS corefonts), a utility called ttmkfontdir was often needed (except in distros like RedHat that took care in making everything "just work") to build the fonts.scale file. This program depended on Freetype 1.x libraries (which can't always coexist peacefully with freetype2), and was generally a PITA.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Did you have it build it's own freetype or did you build it against your own? Hint: read up on host.def in the config/cf directory.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
I run the nVidia drivers, and have no problem. Why would anyone not use the nVidia drivers under Linux. I have a dual head setup (not Xinerama). One is a Gforce 4 Ti4600, the other is a GF2. I can frag with my first and keep an eye on slashdot and my e-mail on the second.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Sorry, the shitty Radeon driver argument under Windows died like a year a go. Nice try.
XFree86 communicates with the local client over a Unix domain socket or a platform-specific transport (on SVR4 and Xenix, for example). In either case, there's no TCP involved.
It also uses shared memory to transmit images.
There have been some attempts to make XFree86 use a shared memory transport, but at least on Linux, it turned out that it's not worthwile. The kernel's Unix domain implementation turns out to be just as fast as any custom code that XFree86 could implement.
There is a workaround using XFree86 4.3 and a script I created. When combined the mouse fixes itself when switching machines for a second time. First you have to change the mouse type to auto from imps/2. Another workaround is to use ps/2 as the type, but then you lose your wheel. Then make this file, and make it excutable and setuid.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Time::HiRes qw(sleep);
open(OUT,">/dev/psaux");
print OUT "\xF5";
sleep 0.5;
print OUT "\xF3\xC8\xF3\x64\xF3\x50\xF2";
sleep 0.5;
print OUT "\xF4";
close OUT;
The above requires the Time:HiRes perl module and perl-setuid installed. You can likely remove the Time:HiRes requirement and sleeps, but not sure . Then you bind the script to the scroll lock key. I do this via sawfish, my window manager. But there are probably a dozen different ways to bind it. If you are switching between two Linux boxes both need the script and XFree86. I currently am switching between RedHat 8.0(4.2) and RedHat 8.1 beta3(4.3, phoebe3). The beta works right and the non beta doesn't. 4.2 does hae auto detection, but when I tried it and someone else tried it it said in the logs it couldn't detect the type.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
It is my understanding, based on reading of some xinerama docs, that xinerama does allow 3d acceleration, but only to the first monitor. Some drivers can supposedly handle it, if it is off the same card through Xinerama (or was planned.) NVidia's reportedly can, because the driver doesn't interact with Xinerama. The driver hides the interface from Xinerama, by claiming to be one screen at something like 1280x480 for example of two 640x640 monitors together.
(NVIDIA's supposedly can, but dispite being able to get almost everything else running I come across, a second monitor (TV) seems too difficult or something, even copying config files from people with the same setup. I think it just doesn't like me.)
Please note: this was a while back, and I am not sure of that. Please correct if wrong. I am pretty sure on the Nvidia stuff, not so sure on the Xinerama stuff.
This is a good thing(tm), however i'm using debian.
/*begin rant ;-)
we all know and love apt, but even in unstable we will have to wait for these cool new features. i guess one has to choose between bleeding edge and fairly secure/stable
*/
of course...i'm waiting for my favorite distro to realese them...duh...
-frozen
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream
This may not be your issue, but the Xft configuration file syntax has changed in a non-backwards-compatible way as of 4.3.0. This will lead to broken font behavior if you're not careful. Is it seeing all of your fonts? Are you still getting antialiasing? If not on either of those, you probably need to tweak your Xft config.
in the file ~/.Xresources, put a line like this:
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/icons/
Xcursor.theme: bleu_rainn
where bleu_rainn is the name of your cursor set you want to use.
Cursor sets are in
See the Gentoo Guide to USE Flags for more information.
Just to let you know, Dropline Systems will be releasing Dropline GNOME 2.2.1 on Saturday, March 1st. This will include XFree86 4.3 precompiled for Slackware Linux and Slackware-derived systems such as Vector Linux. Check it out at http://www.dropline.net/gnome.
If I understand your request correctly, yes it does. there's an fb driver, and it worked for me on my laptop.
Vote for global prefs bug
Check out beyond.us.linuxfromscratch.org, there's a great section for compiling XFree. (Use the CVS version of the guide).
Vote for global prefs bug
I'm running X 4.3.0 with the nvidia 4191 drivers, I had to redo 'make install' before they would work, but they work well now!
And just remember kiddies, that 4.2.99_902 and 4.3 break wine[x].
It is being worked on.
So, if you depend on wine[x], don't emerge, apt-get, rpm, XFree86 just yet.
thats what XRandR does. altought you cannot change color depth yet from what I understand.
GTA3 is like the Sims to me - MC Hawking
Alpha blended cursors, but not true transparency?
That's what transparency is. Transparency is normally implemented using alpha blending. An alpha value of 1.0 is a fully opaque surface. An alpha value of 0.0 is a fully transparent surface. This can easily be done on a per-pixel level either by using a separate alpha map or by using a alpha channel on the main image.
Normally a 32-bit, RGBA image is used. This gives you normal 24-bit color, with 8-bits per channel for Red, Green and Blue. The extra space is an 8-bit alpha channel giving you 256 different levels of translucency.
I guess I'm just confused as to how you can have alpha blending, but not "transparency," as they are the same.
Justin Dubs
There's support for DVI flat panels now so long as you POST on that head, as well as real acceleration on all the modern nvidia cards. Looks like no more grabbing and rebuilding the non-free kernel-invasive nvidia stuff. :)
Keep up the great work, guys.
Since yesterday? You mean you got a head start yesterday. You'll still be emerging it when Debian Stable gets it. ;)
Bah. I emerged rsync at 12:00 today, and then niced an "emerge -u --deep world" shortly after that. On my dell 8200 laptop (1.6ghz), by 4:00 I had a shiney new X, mozilla 1.3_beta, and a whole bunch of other neat stuff.
It's not for someone with a p266 who wants to stay bleeding edge (bad idea anyway), but I see debian users complaing all the time (scroll up) about how it's gonna take forever for this stuff to even get into the unstable branch.
give gentoo a shot, portage rocks
In correct textbook English, you default to the masculine form. Way back in the mideval times, when English was Germanic, the Church came in and huge parts of Latin got folded in over the years (including defaulting to the masculine).
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
I bought a Gigabyte Maya (Radeon 9000 Pro) recently, to replace my aging TNT2 M64, and overall, I'm pleased with it...it's much faster and has better features than a GF4 MX440, which is what I was actually looking for, but the drivers have definitely been a problem.
I had my first XP Blue screen within 5 minutes - and the error message clearly showed the crash was in the ATI driver. It's not crashed since, but it still happened.
I've also noticed artifacts and weirdness in a number of places.
Overall, I'm happy with the card, but I think that If I was going to spend the money on a high end card, I'd be looking at an nVidia, not an ATI, even though the 9700 has an edge over the GF FX.
I've never had a problem with the GF2Go in my laptop, and my girlfriend's never had a problem with the GF2MX in her machine.
Advanced users are users too!
1) Get the latest XFree86 binaries excepting the config package (I tried with sources but had more luck with binaries). /usr/X11R6 to /usr/X11R6.debian /usr/X11R6 /usr/X11R6 to /usr/X11.4.3.0 /usr/X11R6.4.3.0 /usr/X11R6
2) Rename
3) untar the binaries into
4) Rename
5) ln -s
6) Restart X.
I've been using this for six months now (due to the latest gatos drivers eternally needing a version of X that wasn't in debian). The good news with doing this is it's relatively easy to unfsck if things don't work. It sounds as though they've changed the font server configs so you may have problems with this in the latest version (I haven't done this yet).
I'd recommend changing the link back to the .debian dir before doing a apt-get upgrade or things may get really pear shaped in a hurry.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
They suck with a rather slow system (TNT2 / Celeron dual 333 / 512 MB). Once every while the cpu-load becomes 100% and X hangs for a couple of seconds.
:))
(but Tux-racer runs fine
Just informational.. I've been running an XFree86 4.3.0 beta on my OS X desktop for a while now and it is MUCH more responsive than 4.2 .. I can run KDE in full screen mode and it is actually usable. With 4.2, it was slower than using VNC over a T1. So, for all those who wished apple would have included a full screen mode in its X11 betas, 4.3.0 is what you're looking for. I believe the changes they incorporated were actually from Apple anyway (they released the source back).
Cheers,
-JD-
Another flame from an uninformed troll...
For the record, my OpenGL is faster on Linux than it was in Windows. My framerates in Wolf3D easily top those of Windows.
I've run recent versions of XF86 on old 486 or p90 notebooks using Blackbox or Windowmaker. It's fast as hell. But KDE or Gnome 2 require a reasonably modern machine (as Windows 2000/XP does).
No klunk or lag here. I suppose that you just aren't ready for Linux. Don't worry. It will be user friendly enough for you soon.
Run your VCs in a framebuffer that is the same rez as X, preferably run X in a fb to.
X sucks in a FB, as does VCs in my not so humbe oppinion, But that would make it almost instant.
The biggest delay on switching X->VC is the rez change.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
XRandR changes the virtual desktop size, hence no more ctrl-atl-[+/-] to get a 800x600 window on an1024X768 desktop
GTA3 is like the Sims to me - MC Hawking
Having said that, the cooker has been tracking XFree86 CVS for a while now, and many many people do use the cooker, so many people have been hammering on CVS builds.
Now that XFree86 is final, us cooker people will hammer on it for a bit to find the last few wrinkles before it goes into Mandrake's next release.
Many eyeballs, or something like that...
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"