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New X-Free86 Snapshot Available
bento writes "There is a new snapshot(3.9.16) of
XFree86 available. It now supports nVidia, i740, 3dfx Banshee, and the Voodoo3. " You can
all wipe the drool of your chins: its gonna be awhile before this morphs into XF86 v4.0, but its cool to see/touch and compile progress.
Update: 08/31 10:32 by CT : here are the release notes if you crave more data.
If you measure performance as well as you spell it's no wonder you haven't yet realized the huge benefit of using XFree86's X Server.
I bet the relative programming skills of both groups is about the same. The Xig folks get paid to do what they are doing, the majority of the XFree86 guys work on it in their spare time. This is changing but full time dedicated commercial software can still be tough to beat.
Umm. There is no 3.4.x... 3.3.x is, however, available.
Have you benchmarked 3.9.15 or 3.9.16? Obviously you haven't. Even 3.9.15 is faster than accel-X 5.0
Accel-X 5.0 does not outperform XFree86 3.9.16.
At least on the G200/G400 they are about the
same. If you add some of the additional options
like "OverclockMem" and "PciRetry" it's faster
than Accelerated-X. And believe me, Accel-X
IS overclocking the hardware already. I've
dumped the registers while running Accel-X. The
"OverclockMem" option in the new XFree86 matrox
driver uses the clock values dumped from Accel-X.
There are some XFree86 3.9.15 benchmarks:
http://www.rarcoa.com/~thebard/X11-perf-stats.epl
Use Debian and stop complaining...
From what I have heard they have optimized the code for situations where the server and the client runs on the same machine (more shared memory perhaps?) I use AcceleratedX myself (for the last three years) and I am very pleased with it (simple to install/setup and fast, at least on Matrox-XX)
and it is incredible. It is even the libc5 version for Slackware. It gets true color uses all 16 MB oF RAM and even though it is beta it has not crashed once. Visit 3dfx's web site and look under the drivers section to get the scoop on where to find the X server for their cards.
If you look at Rawhide you'll see that it has XFree86 3.3.3.4.
there, there, that's OK, someday support for your brand-new hardware and all its capabilities will be there.
you can always comfort yourself in the knowledge that you can *use* your card with *some* version of XFree, and you're not stuck in 8bpp and pokey acceleration.
come to think of it, screw you =) I can't afford hardware that good. I don't feel sorry at all! =P
I do. You are running only gtk programs and Windows emulator, aren't you?
Does anybody know, if the Diamond Fire Gl 1 Card will be supported in X-Free86 4.0??
True colour from a voodoo3? .....
Try disabling java/javascript to click links :/
Stick to the dists. The other windows weenies who jump on the linux bandwagon because it's l33t aren't right on the bleeding edge either. So just wait until slakware comes out with a release that incorporates support for it, you'll be much better off.
It must be because of what you're smoking
AH development group, just like everyone says.
I have had persistent problems getting the Dell CPi laptops at work to switch back and forth between overhead projectors and the LCD correctly. A common problem (in all the X's I've tried that worked at all) is that the screen shifts by about %25 when you go the to the overhead. Repeatedly cycling between the external monitor and the LCD causes it to get sicker and sicker til it freezes or crashes.
Demos of project software on linux laptops have gone a long way toward making linux prevasive here, so this is important if we are going to abandon Windows and Powerpoint entirely at somepoint. (Presentations written and given using StarOffice created a lot of interest.)
Anyway, this doesn't seem to be a focus of any of the changelog stuff. Is anyone working on this ? Has anyone sent email to xfree86 about it besides me ?
As it's going to be a while before 4.0 comes out, will other cards (notably g[24]00 via glx) become part of 4.0? I don't remeber seeing anything specific on the glx pages/list, but then, it doesn't really matter to me (I got it to work and it wasn't that hard to do).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
The Voodoo3 can do 32-bit color in 2D. It is only limited to 16-bit color textures in 3D. I'm happily running X at 1280x1024 in 32-bit color as I type this.
:0.0
:)
XFree86_3DFX-SVGA-3.3.3-5
[debecker@sycorax ~]$ xdpyinfo
name of display:
version number: 11.0
vendor string: The XFree86 Project, Inc; VMWare; Daryll Strauss
...
screen #0:
dimensions: 1280x1024 pixels (433x347 millimeters)
resolution: 75x75 dots per inch
depths (1): 24
root window id: 0x26
depth of root window: 24 planes
...
visual:
visual id: 0x22
class: TrueColor
depth: 24 planes
...
Oh, and Q3test for Linux absolutely rocks at 1024x768 on this system
The topic says it all. I am stuck using the G400 options. 300Mhz ram dac vs 360, 16MBs ram vs 32, single head vs two.. sigh...
-- You can be a geeklord too
Oh, c'mon! That's why there are mirrors. I'm grabbing mine off ftp.rge.com.
This is big news for all XFree users. It deserves more attention than simply a listing next to the nth update of some nifty little gnome applet.
If you're an XFree developer, you're able to get releases that the rest of aren't. Quit complaining that you can't get the general distribution because you're too lazy to use mirrors.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Just press enter to close the window.. You don't have to use the mouse, you know.. :)
Amiga - Back for the future!
Athena widgets are the only easy to use widget set that is guaranteed to be on any X installation. So it forms a nice lowest common denominator.
m l
The standard X clients tend to use Xaw, even xterm. If you can't stand the look and feel of standard Xaw and find Xaw3d is less than exciting, then try neXtaw - the NeXT look and feel grafted onto Xaw.
Simply compile neXtaw and symlink the Xaw libs to it. It's available from http://windowmaker.mezaway.org/toolkits/nextaw.ht
Chris
Chris Wareham
-BAPper
Most of the XFree86 distributions I've seen come with a readme that says, more or less:
make World
Failing that (if you really want to do it the hard way), xmkmf -a will execute 'make Makefiles', which should produce your Makefiles for you.
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
Anybody know when support for ATI's Rage Fury will be added?
We're going to win this war because we can reconfigure our officers. (Apologies to Iliad)
--
QDMerge 0.21!
how to invest, a novice's guide
I'm actualy building a copy of linux on /dev/hda5 on my workstation,but its going slow
Hey, I have been using redhat for about 2 years, and Redhat 6 has made me sick. It makes me feel as if its not real, and friends of mine in germany feel realy sick about suse 6.2, i mean how do you accidently compile your own kenrel.
If anybody out there, feels the same way, we can be found in #linux on XWorld.
but seriously, if you try to make something user friendly, your genna alianate a few users, hey, i admit it, i love gnome, and i like some of the kde/qt stuff, but i dont like the feeling i get from redhat 6. Hell, they even got rid of xgal, i like xgal!
well, cya, i know im genna get flamed over this one, but i dont realy even care.
Anyone know what's the respective timeline of XF86 4.0's scheduled release, versus the next RH dist?
If 4.0's not going into 6.1, there's really no point in getting 6.1 in the first place. Might as well wait for 6.2.
--
i'm for XFree[0-9A-Za-z]?\s4
;-)
naaah... but... why not?
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
I wonder why AcceleratedX consistently outperforms XFree sometimes by factor 2 to 1. Is this related to having better access to hardware specs or simply having better programmers ?
That about sez it all. - I'm happy because this fixes a bug in support for the ATI Rage LT Pro which caused random crashes in X - was damn annoying.
Anyway, on with downloading and testing the new server.
ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/snapshots/3.9.16/
My experience with X's Voodoo3 support has been little discouraging. I really love the VESA framebuffer -console, but that allways produces some weird shit on the screen (mouse cursor to be more specific. Some times the cursor totally disapears, sometimes it's just a black square, sometimes (I could go on and on)... Also, if I've used windows before I start linux (with loadlin), I get similar problems. I don't know if 3.9.x has these problems, but 3.4.x sure does.
I don't know if this will help you but these are
/usr/X11R6 /usr/X11R6/old
/usr/X11R6/old/lib/libXt.so.6.0 /usr/X11R6/lib/
the steps that I took to get it to compile on my system (gcc-2.91.66).
Make a backup of your old stuff
cp -a
Copy the xc/config/cf/xf86site.def to
xc/config/cf/host.def
Append the lines:
#define DefaultCCOptions -Wall
#define DefaultGcc2i386Opt -O2
#define LibraryCDebugFlags -O2
to the host.def to override the -ansi -pedantic flags which prevent it from being compiled on Redhat 6.0.
Then build/compile Xfree
make World >& world.log
make install >& install.log
make install.man >& man.log
After completion make sure you copy your old libXt.so.6.0 to the new location so that Netscape
will work properly.
cp
Like I said....that worked for me...unsure if it will work for you.
I don't know if this will help you but these are
/usr/X11R6 /usr/X11R6/old
/usr/X11R6/old/lib/libXt.so.6.0 /usr/X11R6/lib/
the steps that I took to get it to compile on my system (gcc-2.91.66).
Make a backup of your old stuff
cp -a
Copy the xc/config/cf/xf86site.def to
xc/config/cf/host.def
Append the lines:
#define DefaultCCOptions -Wall
#define DefaultGcc2i386Opt -O2
#define LibraryCDebugFlags -O2
to the host.def to override the -ansi -pedantic flags which prevent it from being compiled on Redhat 6.0.
Then build/compile Xfree
make World >& world.log
make install >& install.log
make install.man >& man.log
After completion make sure you copy your old libXt.so.6.0 to the new location so that Netscape
will work properly.
cp
Like I said....that worked for me...unsure if it will work for you.
What ever happend to the most glorious saying within the open source movement? (see subject)
-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
"Some work on adding WYSIWYG capabilities to the Xaw text widget."
Are they on crack? Who cares about Xaw anymore?
This may be a little offtopic, but is xfree86 like linux 2.0.36, and uncompilable with gcc 2.95 and pgcc? I've tried compiling them, and they start, but immediately crash after loading netscape (signal 11). I've seen that mandrake has successfully compiled xfree86 with pgcc, and I was wondering if there was a trick to doing it. Thanks.
sounds like a good idea. of course, that idea could also be extended to cover basically the whole thing (or, rather, in someone's more realistic view, only the parts that lack/take more time & effort) so that the XFree86 project could have a panel that designated the individual projects that were developed by groups, and then they could just put the finished pieces together into a nice, finished product. hmm.. smart idea of yours!
Insert mind here.
I don't see why they have to keep telling us so many warnings about how unstable this is. It's harder to get these snapshots up and running then the newest experimental kernel. Everyone knows that this is pre-release. its not going to burn your computer nor format your hardrive. However there have been experimental kernels which have caused file corruprtion, security flaws, etc...
Yet they make it sound soo... extremelly dangerous to use these X-severs. I know that it's unstable but so is cvs enlightenment and I choose to use it anyway.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
call me a moronic simpleton if you like, but how does one get this to compile? I dloaded 3.9.15 and tried imake and xmkmf with as many options as i could. What ever i did it wouldnt recurse and do all the makefiles. Surely i dont have to cd to each dir and do imake in every one??
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Hopefully not much bigger than 3.3.1?
The module system sounds particularly hopeful, since it sounds as if modules are not loaded until needed, speeding startup and reducing memeory usage. I don't think I've ever used pex, and I don't even know what xie is.
Does anyone know why there are *two* truetype backends?
More importantly will it support the New GeForce 256 from Nvidia!! This card kicks ass, and if you havent then DO check it out!
Could someone post a link to download 3.4? I can't seem to find it on their FTP site... TIA
Looks like someone forgot something.
Is it just me, or when you try to view the release notes from xfree86's ftp and you get the window telling you to try a different server, the window that pops up (in netscape), is too large to see and impossible to close. That's what I get for using Windows I guess.
Wow, what a great idea. Let's make stable, new technology inacessable to the masses so some stuck up prick can get a few Kbps more bandwidth. Sure, make things hard to compile so people use Windows and proprietary software out of frustration. What an amazing community spirit you have...
Because thats the only way I could get my new box up and running with X support.
I had to download XSVGA.tgz and copy it into the right dir, and now my Roadster 3D card works!! woo hoo!!
K]ÏMWý©±Îï$ [½5>VÎG Û 1 ر/M îåMA$ÚT
What are the prospects for NV10 drivers? Anybody hear buzz on that? (For 4.0 that is)
Impossible = A fun challenge
!/bin/bash ;)
#Modify with filenames as necessary...
#
# YMMV
find *.gz -exec tar -zxvf {} \;
cd xc
less README; less INSTALL
echo "You should know enough to compile this now,"
echo "but be sure to BACK UP your"
echo "/usr/X11R6 directory before going"
echo "any further."
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
That would make sense if XFree3.9 were stable technology. However, it's not. It's a prerelease snapshot, not a stable version. Using XFree3.9 is like using Linux2.3. Not a Good Idea. And so if the whole world decides to play with it and ends up stopping actual XFree developers from getting the source tree so they can work on it (admittedly, the guy could wait a bit, but I can understand his frustration), that does cause something of a problem for those who actually are working on getting it to the masses who scream for free software and scream for it now, now, now.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Just remove -ansi -pedantic from config/cf/xfree86.cf
(atleast if you have glibc 2.1).
The problem is in that it also #defines
_GNU_SOURCE, which causes the glibc header
files to have lots fun stuff that's not ANSI
compliant.
Also, before upgrading you should know that
it seems to still be in a very experimental state,
I'm seeing funnyness like nothing happening after clicking a link in netscape.
Version 3.4 of XFree86 already supports the 3dfx Banshee and Voodoo3's. It works quite well on my machine. :)
Jane Curtin: Damn it! It's not just for x86 anymore!
(You may be too young to catch the Saturday Night Live reference.)
And what happens when everyone starts using 'IA32' and 'IA64'?
Maybe version 4.0 should be called, 'XF4'.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
--
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
HAL9000
Try Here.
I noticed there are many improvements to the xterm program provided with X. This is good news; the terminal emulation provided by most X terminal programs is pretty poor. Unfortunately, all this effort will have to be duplicated for the terminal emulators in the Gnome and KDE desktop environments. I wonder if most of the emulation details couldn't be put into a toolkit independant library and shared between these projects.
Well, its more of a preliminaty examination. You wouldn't let a crop duster pilot fly and f14 without giving him a test first. Same as you wanta make sure only the people who can handle the negative effects of installing the newest software will be installing it. You don't want it to crash average joes computer and have him cursing x86 and never using it again do you?