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XFree86 4.0.1 Review 74

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
Fawking DSL writes: "BSD Today reviews the new features, supported cards, and installation of XFree86 version 4.0.1." The article starts off by saying that XF864.0 "Shocked The World" which I find mind numbingly amusing, but it's a good review.
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XFree86 4.0.1 Review More

XFree86 4.0.1 Review

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  • 4.0 + nVidia 0.93 works fine for me too. But DPMS didn't work with 4.0 + xfree nvidia driver, and it does not work with nVidia 0.93 either. Also, DGA doesn't seem to work with Vmware. Those are the only things I miss from 3.3.x - performance is _much_ better (2d, nevermind 3d), and stability ain't much worse either. Does anyone know when/how dpms and dga will be supported?

  • Re:Cool! (Score:1)

    by nd ( 20186 )
    http://dri.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]

    Matrox DRI support requires 2.3 (or 2.4) development kernels.
  • Yaeh, a G400 pretty much rules. The duel monitor support is also pretty neat!

  • Antialiasing of fonts was invented because screens had fairly low resolution and so fonts looked jagged compared to typefaces in the real world, like books and magazines.

    No, it was invented for images to look better. Antialising is not used just for fonts. Take a look at a web site with someone who didn't antialias their images, and it looks awful even at high resolutions. Granted, at a high enough resolution you wouldn't be able to tell, but we're talking about thousands of pixels per inch before you wouldn't be able to tell.

    Also, you seem to be under the impression that photographs are not "antialiased", but they are (although, it's not called that). One of the ways you can tell a fake photograph is that the edges of an image are too clean.

    it just makes the text look more hazy and less well defined, which puts more strain on the eyes.

    I know that some people feel this way, but you're by far in the minority.


    --

  • Re:Red Hat RPMs? (Score:4)

    by Fishstick ( 150821 ) on Saturday July 15, 2000 @11:18AM (#930667) Journal
    >How do Red Hat 6.2 users upgrade?

    I would recommend like this [debian.org]

    ;-) sorry, couldn't resist!

  • Anyway, if you are looking for the mysterious 0.94 drivers for the NVidia chipset, I found them on the bot on irc.openprojects.net #nvidia.

    My bot (iCE-DCC) also has files you simply cannot get anywhere else, including usually many inter-release "test" or "experimental" drivers which fix some bugs, and right now gcc pentium pro+ optimized 0.9-4.1 drivers. Again you can check it out in #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net

    -- iCEBaLM

  • The problem with fonts in X isn't so much the lack of antialiasing but the fact that X only understands bitmapped fonts. This often leads to pronounced jaggies when the requested font size and the available sizes differ. Currently, in order to use trye type fonts, you have to use an X font server that takes takes the fonts and makes bitmaps out of them, telling the X server that it can provide a different image for every font size it can think of. Even so, if the X server ends up needing a font size not explicitly listed by the true type font server, it will grab what it deems to be the closest size and scale the bitmap.

    The core X protocol is unable to understand anything but bitmapped fonts. I don't know how feasable a true type X extension would be.


    --Phil (I still haven't gotten my fonts working exactly as I'd like them.)

  • While it would be a Good Thing© for the end user to have NVIDIA to open their specs, it would very much be a Bad Thing© for them as a company.

    IIRC, NVIDIA has licenses that do not allow them to open up all the specs of their hardware. I'm sure they would love to open everything up if they could -- they could shift development efforts out of the house and score PR points with the Linux community. A while back, /. linked to a set of gaming benchmarks showing NVIDIA was well ahead of the pack in terms of X/OpenGL performance, including 3dfx which claims to be supportive of OSS.

    I think NVIDIA is committed to supporting OSS, but is simply unable to practice it themselves.

  • Did you actually *look* at the screen for this comparison?

    I run my 17" monitor in 1024x768; anything more, and you're begging for eyestrain. (I know, because I try to run 14-15" monitors at 1024x768, and that can get somewhat tiny... 800x600 is a reasonable compromise)

    Netscape's fonts look *horrible* under X, as do any word processing program you'd care to mention under Linux that doesn't do it's own anti-aliasing.

    Anti-aliasing is great for making anything look smoother. If the object in question is too small, or if you try to do it too much, yes, it might end up looking blurry. But that's a lot better than having it look, say, deformed or unreadable, like the output of a fax machine.

    In Windows, True Type fonts are very scalable, and tend to look better. But they also benefit from anti-aliasing, which is a built-in Windows feature. Hey, if you don't want it or need it, don't use it. But I'm telling you that fonts in X often look horrible without it. So, check it out for yourself before you spout off again. Please.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Did you actually *look* at the screen for this comparison?

    Arguably, this is because X ships with some of the most unaesthetic fonts I have ever seen. Mac and Windows fonts are much nicer, though I hate to admit it.
  • I've been running a dual monitor set up now under NT for a number of years. Been doing it for a long time at work, and more recently got set up at home to do the same. I've got to say, it is something I definitely miss when trying to work on someone else's PC.

    Thing of it is, when I upgraded my NT to this Matrox G400, I moved my old Voodoo3000 into my Linux box. I'm finding that I really love having all these virtual desktops under Linux, even with just one screen.

    The dual screen comes in really handy for apps like Photoshop, Imageready, Dreamweaver, Homesite, or darn near anything else that has a lot of floating tools. On the other hand, I've gotten quite used to dragging lots of opened browser windows to different desktops on Linux. Gnome and Sawfish handle this really nicely.

    I don't know if there's much of a point to this post, other than I believe that each kind of environment has it's pros and cons. I haven't seen a dual monitor set up for Linux yet. I'd have to imagine that dual head with virtual desktops would get pretty confusing real quick. Sounds like it'd be fun to play with if such a thing were possible though.
  • "This whole Us against Them mentality really has got to go."

    Kind of like the whole Open Source vs Closed Source mentality? :-)

    Ranessin
  • NVIDIA has said before that parts of their code is under licensing agreements with other companies and cannot be open sourced, for what it's worth.
  • While it would be a Good Thing© for the end user to have NVIDIA to open their specs, it would very much be a Bad Thing© for them as a company.

    I love how you say that with such certainty, especially since you have no knowledge of any "secrets" they're hiding. Opening specs is ALWAYS benificial to a company, as that makes their hardware usable on more systems, as third party coders can write the drivers, which cost the company absolutely nothing.

    IIRC, NVIDIA has licenses that do not allow them to open up all the specs of their hardware. I'm sure they would love to open everything up if they could -- they could shift development efforts out of the house and score PR points with the Linux community.

    Yeah, except they wont say who they have these phantom licenses with. The only two players they do name are SGI and VA Linux, both of which are extremely Pro-OSS and would have absolutely no problem letting nVidia open their code. The truth of the matter is nVidia is an old school company who is absolutely paranoid. They're in the lead right now and they want to keep it that way as long as possible, even giving a hint of how their hardware works fightens them beyond belief. "Oh but out competators could use that information to compete with us!" Yeah right.

    They're using the excuse of phantom third parties having licenses with them which prevent them from opening up specs, and in reality, they don't exist.

    I think NVIDIA is committed to supporting OSS, but is simply unable to practice it themselves.

    Think again...

    -- iCEBaLM
  • Uhh, I looked at it and the ATI has better color. Nvidia must be cutting corners for speed.

    That gets a 4; Interesting? Good grief - it should be -1 flamebait. Even if this was done with same model monitors and same settings, it is a completely useless statement.

    More often...revealing the bugs and needed work-arounds with the video card's implimentation Umm, any data to back this up? I don't recall reading about this before. Usually, when people make these statements, they provide a little evidence to go with it.
  • Thanks for the info. I didn't even consider source RPMs as a possibility. I shall be trying your solution tonight, i'll let you know how i get on :)
  • Besides, when there are only 5 or so 3D games for Linux, why bother worrying about it? Windows has game dominance for the forseeable future.
    And Linux won't get much more than 5 3D games unless we DO "bother worrying about it." If the hardware support (including drivers) is there, the games are a lot easier to sell, and thus will become more numerous. And the hardware support should improve dramatically if it's OSS. If you allow Windows to have dominance "for the forseeable future," allow that to be the excuse to not have good 3D in Linux, and are complacent with that, gaming in Linux will never even approach Windows in terms of the number of good gaming titles.
  • Well, what about the majority of the users who cannot keep up to date with all the technology. I myself have a linux workstation on a very old 800x600 monitor. If they were to remove antialiasing my stuff would look like crap. I think you need to look at the majority of users before you start screeming "Out of Date" or "Not useful"
  • Not recommended. I've tried them, and found that the upgrade to four can be much more difficult than updating to 3.0.5, the database isn't always converted to the new db3 formatt properly.
    treke

  • NVidia Support for XFree 4.0.1/Linux (Score:4)

    by G27 Radio ( 78394 ) on Saturday July 15, 2000 @10:21AM (#930682)
    For NVidia, although, this support didn't come easily. Several days after XFree86 4.0.1's release, reports of problems all over starting springing up-and all fingers were pointed at NVidia. It seemed that NVidia's 0.9-3 drivers were not up to par with the new XFree release and caused much commotion between NVidia users all over. A week and two patches later, NVidia support is finally up and going and a new series of drivers, 0.9-4 have been released, although not publicly on NVidia's website.

    The 0.93 drivers not being up to par is an understatement. If you have a TNT2 card you can expect the X server to segfault on startup. After installing the 0.94 drivers it started right up for my but I still occasionally get some corruption on the desktop--other than that they seem to work nicely.

    Anyway, if you are looking for the mysterious 0.94 drivers for the NVidia chipset, I found them on the bot on irc.openprojects.net #nvidia. Supposedly they're on fileplanet also, but I couldn't locate them there. Just figured I'd save the TNT2 users the hassle of waiting for NVidia to put them up on their site.

    numb

  • Yes, everyone has to turn the fonts into bitmaps at some point. X, however, only knows about bitmaps. Thus, when it needs to scale a font, it scales it like a bitmap, not like a vector image. This can lead to some rather nasty looking characters if the requested size is too different from the available sizes. As for truetype fonts, the truetype font server does a pretty good job of telling the X server that it has fonts in common sizes, but, because of the way the X font protocol works, the server now thinks that fonts are only available in those sizes. If it needs something else, it will take the closest size from the font server and then scale it as a bitmap to reach the ultimately desired size. A fully truetype-aware system would just take the truetype font, scale it as a vector image to the appropriate size, and then turn it into a bitmap for display.

    As for X requesting appropriate sizes, that's not exactly how it works. The font server is expected to tell X what font sizes it can provide. X then does any further scaling of the fonts on its own. This works when your fonts are all bitmaps, but not with vector-based fonts.

    I'll have to take a look at XFree4, since you say it supports truetype fonts on its own. (I've been trying to be lazy and wait for the .debs, but I've also been told that it supports GL rendering into a window on the 3dfx chipset. Eventually the temptation will be too much...)


    --Phil (And today's auxiliary lesson is to check URLs before clicking.)
  • But what about us non-linux users?

    XFree86 4.0.1 introduced that neat binary module
    thingy, and here comes nvidia releasing part of
    their driver as a linux kernel module!

    I noticed this AFTER I ordered a TNT2... I was
    like, hey, it works with XFree86 4.0.1, I'll
    buy the thing... I'm running FreeBSD... is
    there any hope? Grrr.
  • Anyway, if you are looking for the mysterious 0.94 drivers for the NVidia chipset, I found them on the bot on irc.openprojects.net #nvidia. Supposedly they're on fileplanet also, but I couldn't locate them there. Just figured I'd save the TNT2 users the hassle of waiting for NVidia to put them up on their site.

    The folks at duke of url [thedukeofurl.org] have discussed 4.0.1 and the nvidia drivers, and they are mirroring the drivers. As of now, the drivers are linked right on their main page. I myself am using 4.0 and the .93 drivers and things are working great (except that the .93 driver or an interaction with xfree86 4.0 seems to break dpms power management) -- I'm in no hurry to upgrade right now.

    -schussat

  • NVIDIA 0.94 drivers are on NVIDIA's site (Score:4)

    by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Saturday July 15, 2000 @10:30AM (#930687)
    Right her e [nvidia.com].

    The NVIDIA Linux FAQ [nvidia.com] has been updated too. In particular, 0.94 Changes [nvidia.com]

  • Sorry, I misunderstood X font rendering model. Thanks for informing me.

    Ah, I see. I've noticed that fonts *do* look much better in XFree4 than do under 3, though.

    Would it be possible for some toolkits to do font rendering on their own using freetype instead of relying upon X? It may be slower, since you'd have to draw to drawables and blit them, but it would be more flexable than current systems.

    As for XFree4, I suppose you can get the Mandrake RPMs and use Alien on them.

    Personally, I spent seven hours compiling from source with pgcc. :)
  • Cool.. maybe I'll get an answer now. How do Red Hat 6.2 users upgrade? I saw Rawhide RPMs, but when I try using one of those I get this error:

    rpm -Uvh XFree86-4.0.1-0.30.i386.rpm
    only packages with major numbers <= 3 are supported by this version of RPM
    error: XFree86-4.0.1-0.30.i386.rpm cannot be installed

    So are there official RPMs anywhere? I get this same message when I try upgrading to RPM 4.0.
  • My guess is that in the rpm for xfree = 4 with a straight -U. So, you probably have to UNinstall 3 and then install 4.

    (be sure to back up your config for 3, it will be overwritten ;o))
  • dammit i used a greater than and a less than, and even though i said PLAIN TEXT they got eaten into tags!!

    In the RPM for xfree3 it is probably stated (more or less) that you can't upgrade to xfree bigger than 3 with a straight -U... So, you probably have to uninstall 3 and then install 4.

    blah
  • He's talking about font anti-aliasing, not graphics anti-aliasing, and there's a world of difference.

    Graphics anti-aliasing is photoshop/gimp anti-aliasing a graphic to remove jaggies. This is certainly a good thing, but it's only manipulating pixels in an image file.

    The other is the OS/window manager/whatever anti-aliasing all the text on the screen in real time. Again, this is not manipulating stored file data, only display-time screen pixels.

    Furthermore, he's right - at high-rez, anti-aliased fonts are harder to read. The oh-so-popular 8-point navigation text on many web sites turns into a gray mess if it's anti-aliased at 1600x1200.

    Sure, you're right too, but only about anti-aliased graphics, and I don't think anyone's going to argue that point.
  • Oh how very Anonymous Coward to reference a piece of news and not provide any information to back it up.

    Look at OpenBSD (http://www.openbsd.org/ [openbsd.org], it's only gone three years without a remote hole in the default install! And it's only gone two years without a localhost hole in the default install! Find me a Linux distro that matches that, and I'll pronounce you sir as a fucking genious.

  • He's talking about font anti-aliasing, not graphics anti-aliasing, and there's a world of difference.

    It's exactly the same technology. Algorithms don't know the difference between a graphic that happens to be in the shape of a font, and a graphic that happens to be some curvy logo.

    The oh-so-popular 8-point navigation text on many web sites turns into a gray mess if it's anti-aliased at 1600x1200.

    Are you talking about 8 points or 8 pixels? (points are resolution independent). At 8 pixels, you're right -- in most cases it shouldn't be antialiased, and in fact, Windows doesn't antialias below a certain pixel size.


    --

  • Excuse me, but NVidia released the X 3.3.x driverrs as full open source including GL drivers. IT's just their X4 drivers that are closed. If you want the source, go work with the 3.3.x source which is still available on their website. Start a CVS. Do whatever the fuck you want. But at least think about what NVidia has done before you spout off about OSS.

    Ahh yes, the nicely obfuscated and useless 3.3.x drivers, how useful. Those drivers were slow as hell, didn't use any advanced fuctions of the cards, and are generally useless, so why even bother with them?

    Sure, we don't know why X4 drivers arent OSS yet. Don't worry about it. You probably don't even on an Nvidia card, much less know enough about it to think that you could do a better job programming drivers for it than its creators could.

    Yet? You're saying yet as if there is any hope that they WILL be in the future. I'm telling you there isn't. The only part of the drivers which has any hope in hell of being open is the XF86 4 XAA driver module, the GL/GLX implimentation and the kernel driver (except for the kernel interface) will always be closed. And if you want to talk to me about how my TNT doesn't exist you're quite welcome to come by #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net and say that to me with a straight face.

    Yes, I do belive the community could write better drivers then nVidia for the simple fact that these drivers share too much code with the windows ones, and nVidia has almost zero experience coding for Linux. Hell the windows drivers don't even honor monitor definition file set modes! I have to use a third party program to switch the sync polarities at run time to even use windows.

    Nvidia is not an old-school company. Microsoft is an old-school company. Nvidia is making drivers for Linux, aren't they? Closed source is not old-school, otherwise few people would be still doing things that way.

    nVidia is an old school company, their suits follow the old school "keep it to yourself" system of information handleing.

    Nvidia does not need to open up precise specs just so that their card can be used on Linux. They wouldn't have had to do that for any other OS. The linux community, in "requiring" companies to OSS their drivers and programs, is effectifly turning away potential suppliers.

    No, they don't have to open up specs so the cards can be used in linux, they can just let 2 or 3 developers code half-assed drivers which lockup and crash when you look funny at them. Do you know that switching to a virtual console while in X with the current drivers will lock up your system? Do you know that for many monitors you cannot specify modelines because the drivers think they know best by autoprobing? Do you know that there is even a report that running "tar" without parameters in X while using the latest drivers will result in a system reboot? These drivers suck, not because the developers are incompetant, but because there arent enough of them and they're inexperienced when it comes to writing for X.

    Besides, when there are only 5 or so 3D games for Linux, why bother worrying about it? Windows has game dominance for the forseeable future.

    What an obvious troll. There are many more than 5, MANY more. And it's not just about games, its about blender, xmms plugins, q3radiant, and other little niceities you'd like to use because you bought this super duper 3D card. Not to mention Linux gaming wont get any better if there aren't viable 3D accellerator options available.

    (I have a TNT2 and dual boot between Debian and 98 on a regular basis. So I know to a good extent what I am talking about.)

    I really don't think you do.

    -- iCEBaLM
  • Maybe because some of their technology is copyrighted by another company and they don't have permission to release it?
  • Anti-aliasing is great for games and graphics displayed at fairly low resolutions, but on the modern desktop of a contemporary OS it is unneeded and impacts system performance negatively.

    Hardly-- back in 1990 I had an Acorn A3000 with an 8MHz ARM2 processor and 2MB of memory that managed to anti-alias all its on-screen fonts without any trouble, since it was very good at cacheing commonly-used characters as bitmaps. If it's slowing Windows down, I'd guess that's because MS did it wrong :-)

  • X will be around for a while to come, and there are a few reasons I'll outline below.

    Be realistic. So the x86 port of OS X comes out (No, it probably won't). Why won't it? Because Apple have too much to lose in terms of hardware sales, if people could run OS X on a $1000 PC instead of a $2000 Mac, would they really choose the Mac?

    Secondly, X isn't tied to one platform. (By platform I mean hardware and software platform). It runs on Alphas, Sparcs, SGI boxes, Intel, PPCs, you name it. And on those platforms, (hardware), it runs on several software platforms running on those hardware platforms. So an OS X port for Intel comes out. Even if all the Intel UNIX users switced over to OS X, X Window System would still be more than alive and kicking on dozens of other platforms.

    In other words, we should be commending the authors of this new implementation of X11, because without it, UNIX would have no standard GUI. Like it or not, (and you should, because it areas that it really counts, X11 is way ahead of other systems, ever tried multiple remote sessions on a Win 98 or NT box? Oh, sure....let's buy the Citrix WinFrame software or Microsoft's new ultra-expensive Terminal Server, both of which are overpriced and don't perform as well as stock X). X is here to stay for quite a while to come, and improvements are welcome. Congratulations, XFree86 Team!

  • Cool! (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    I'm getting a new computer soon, so I want to run this along with the best-supported, coolest 3D card... that I can afford. :)

    Maybe $150 or so; I've been thinking of getting a Matrox G400. Anyone want to test those new drivers for me, or have any recommendations?

    Also, anyone know if/when we'll ever get real Truetype font integration and font antialiasing? I understand it doesn't really fit into the font resources, but it really needs to be done.

    And is the OpenGL/threading stuff better? I saw some comments that threads were fixed up, but I want to see what the Wine project says about this, since they had some issues with it before.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

  • I suggest the whole Alien series, Alien I, Alien II, Alien III, Alien IV, and maybe by the time the compile is over they'll release Alien V.

  • Yes, true, but the Lucidux fonts that ship with XFree 4.0.x are good. Besides, you can use those o-so-nice Windows fonts under X just fine.
  • Btw, nice homepage link. Netscape read 200mb before I had the sense to stop it. :)

    XFree4 supports Truetype fonts by itself without having to resort to that kludge anyway...

    Under what situations would X scale bitmap versions of fonts instead of useing a truetype font rendered at that size?

    Again, there is absolutely nothing different about this --- all OSs must render their fonts to bitmaps before displaying them, because displays are bitmap, raster devices!

    Assuming X servers can't ask for sizes any more granular than a single pixel, what prevents truetype (and Type1) font code from providing fonts for every pixel size?
  • Really?! Perfect timing, I was going to go buy a second video card to run my second monitor on in less than 30 minutes. Can you get it working in Xineram mode, where can I find working drivers? Will I be able to use 3d still?
    treke

  • Nvidia still covering up mistakes? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When closed-source/specs video manufactors have gotten around to openning up the programming specs for their cards, there usually isn't any "trade secrets" that wheren't already known by the video card industry. It is more often that openning up the specs ends up revealing the bugs and needed work-arounds with the video card's implimentation. So, I think this begs the question, if Nvidia thinks they are such hot stuff, why do they feel the need to continue to cover up their flaws? For Nvidia to have been over backwords to continue to keep their latest video cards only usuable via closed-source drivers seems to indicate me that the flaws in their latest stuff must be so embarassing that they feel that can't even speak publically about it. But what exactly is this massive flaw that got them scared of the peer-review that commonly takes place in the open source community? I think I have an idea. After taking a look at Nvidia and ATI side-by-side on the same monitor, I have decided that Nvidia is cutting corners on doing true-color to accomplish faster speeds. While the Nvidia, when supposibly in 24 bit color mode, does produce more colors than in high color mode (16 bit), it doesn't appear to be the full color depth produced by an ATI in true color mode. Of course, I can't test this theory by examining the drivers to see if some color bits are stripped in the driver because Nvidia is continuing to keep that covered in the cloud of closed-source. But until Nvidia is willing to accept peer-review to back up their claim of supporting true color, I'm going to continue to recommend ATI to clients.

  • Why Care about Font Antialiasing??? (Score:4)

    by Sir_Winston ( 107378 ) on Saturday July 15, 2000 @11:36AM (#930705)
    Okay, here's a point of view that's been rarely expressed here, but here goes: font antialiasing is a crufty outdated process which isn't really very useful on today's monitors.

    Antialiasing of fonts was invented because screens had fairly low resolution and so fonts looked jagged compared to typefaces in the real world, like books and magazines. Also, unlike black typeface on white paper, computer programs and Web pages used some interesting background and font colors, which could be visually jarring in their contrast. Solution: Blend the edges of fonts into the surrounding background color, and the fonts were more pleasing to the eye both because jaggies got eliminated and because the color gradient made the color transition between font and background less jarring.

    Fast forward to today, and 15 inch monitors capable of 1024 by 768 are the minimal norm, and 17 inch monitors capable of 1600 by 1200 are fast becoming commonplace. So, the problem with jaggies is no longer a problem at all. The problem with visually jarring combinations of color is no longer a problem, either, because people are as used to Web and application colors as they are to standard black-on-white printing.

    Font antialiasing becomes useless unless you're going to be running at very low resolutions. Otherwise, it just makes the text look more hazy and less well defined, which puts more strain on the eyes. It also impacts system performance: I noticed a significant speed boost in Explorer responsiveness when turning anti-aliasing off in Win98 on a K6-2 400. Anti-aliasing is great for games and graphics displayed at fairly low resolutions, but on the modern desktop of a contemporary OS it is unneeded and impacts system performance negatively.
  • Nope, still won't work quiet right. The Rawhide RPM's you're trying just won't install on anything but Rawhide, as far as i can tell.

    You've got as far as the RPM version error message. I got as far as actually trying the Rawhide rpm binary with the Xfree4.0.1 RPM's...and there are a load of failed depencies that not even --nodeps will fix.

    I've also tried the straight XFree4.0.1 binary tarballs with their installer, and it will, sortof, work. The biggest problem i had was that xdm didn't work with the new version of X, which meant i lost my graphical login. Which sucked.

    But provided you don't use xdm (The graphical login), you should be able to uninstall the XFree3.3.x RPM's and then install the XFree4.0.1 binaries from a tarball.

    Or, do as i plan to do, and change to a decent distro ;)
  • Netscape's fonts look *horrible* under X, as do any word processing program you'd care to mention under Linux that doesn't do it's own anti-aliasing.
    That's not my experience at all. Postscript fonts usually look pretty crap, as do scaled bitmaps, but TrueType fonts look just fine under X. This is due to TrueType's superior hinting -- IMO anti-aliasing is rarely necessary or even desirable. Anti-aliased text can be very hard on the eyes.

    X's font handling is pretty fucked up, but poking around in the FontPath section of your XF86Config can make a world of difference. I just wish the distros did a better job of setting this up.

  • I've gone ahead and tested your claims and your right. For high resolution screens it is pointless to use font antialiasing. I also noticed a slight performance increase in my Windows machine. Personally, I hate to read text from a computer screen so if I have any serious reading I usually print it out on the company laser printer here. However, any less strain we can place on our eyes would be certainly much appreciated.


    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
    www.npsis.com [npsis.com]

  • Re:Red Hat RPMs? (Score:4)

    by treke ( 62626 ) on Saturday July 15, 2000 @11:50AM (#930709)

    Steps to upgrade XFree86 from rawhide

    1. Get rpm 3.0.5 from ftp.rpm.org( DO NOT get 4 it is screwed up)
    2. Get the Source RPM for XFree86 from rawhide. The binaries depend on much newer packages.
    3. Rebuild the source with rpm --rebuild
    4. Go see a movie
    5. Use rpm -U to upgrade, you can usually ignore
    6. Configure

    This worked for XFree86 4.0, I'm on step 4 right now :). Remember, the rawhide packages are sometimes broken, if it doesnt work, try again in a few days.
    treke

  • This is a lame argument guys. I for one want the feature available, whether or not I'm going to use it all the time. In fact, I want drop shadows and transparency/translucency built in as well. whether or not I'm going to use it. You can bring up feature creep and bloatware, but I could just counter with modularity...

    Oh, wait! osX will do all this and more! maybe X can finally die in peace. I will switch to osX as soon s the x86 port is ready. then this question is doubly moot.

    But what I really want to know is why would someone take the time to be so skeptical/critical of a feature unless they 1)wanted to avoid doing the work or 2)wanted to appear real real smart or 3) was trolling all yo asses??

    Oh, I know this will just appear inflammatory, so let me try a different tact: It is very easy to tear anything down, how bout contributing some positive and encouraging effort instead of skeptical rants on this message board?
  • Being a big Glide user, i was disappointed at the fact that you can't use Glide with 4.0.1 (You can, but it's buggy as shit! usually crashes after one glide app).

    Does anyone know if there is anything in the works to get stable glide support in addition to DRI in the new releases?


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • Don't quote me on this, but I *believe* that Daryll Strauss has been working on getting Glide apps working under the DRI in his spare time from working on the Voodoo 4/5 drivers. I heard that we'll be seeing something soon.

    Ranessin
  • NVIDIA have publically stated that they cannot open their source because they use a third party AGP driver implementation which they do not have a license to release to the public. This code is responsible for a great deal of their performance.

    They could spend lots of time and money to get rid of this code, just for the sake of being Open Source, but it doesn't make business sense at this time since they already have a kick ass driver. Not to mention that they would probably get immediately sued by the AGP driver company the instant they "came up with a new implementation" and stopped paying royalties or whatever.

    Tech companies that can't/don't go OSS are not automatically the Anti-Christ. They are free to choose whatever makes economic/business sense for their company, just like you have the freedom to publish everything under the GPL.


  • after becomming aquianted w/the new configuration setup it was fairly simple (even to do Multihead w/two different cards).

    xinerama is sweet stuff. Forget virtual desktops... Once you taste multihead w/xinerama you'll never go back :)

    I would say that the easy config is the biggest shocker :)
  • I have a g400, and I really like it, it's 2d signal quality is far better than my riva tnt based asus card. The geforce is probably much better in 3d, but the 3d of the g400 is rather good, and it has dual head on a single card. It works well with linux, freebsd, openbsd, beos 5 etc. But I can't get it to work with plan 9...
    I am trying to set up the g400 with xfree 4 dual head, but I haven't succeeded, and I can't find any clear documentation on that (any tips anyone?). Single head works well with xfree 4 with mandrake linux.
  • NVIDIA have publically stated that they cannot open their source because they use a third party AGP driver implementation which they do not have a license to release to the public. This code is responsible for a great deal of their performance.

    HAHAHAH! Thats the funniest thing I've ever heard! God. Show me where they state this because if this is the only reason they're keeping them closed then they could open the drivers tomorrow.

    1. Their "third party AGP implimentation", if this is really true, and I highly doubt it, doesn't even WORK on most AGP chipsets! It only really works on intel chipsets. So NVidia is getting ripped off.

    2. The open part of the kernel module was modified by an open source coder to add support for kernel AGPGART instead of using the internal NVidia AGP routines. It isn't as fast on chipsets which the NVidia AGP implimentation works with, but god, it works on a LOT more chipsets, and its not that slow, maybe about 5 FPS loss in Q3, big deal.

    They could spend lots of time and money to get rid of this code, just for the sake of being Open Source, but it doesn't make business sense at this time since they already have a kick ass driver. Not to mention that they would probably get immediately sued by the AGP driver company the instant they "came up with a new implementation" and stopped paying royalties or whatever.

    Hah, like I said AGPGART support is already there, clear the old one out and switch to that, the actual implimentation is in the kernel, wouldn't have to put it in the driver itself, would cost almost 0 dollars, and there is no chance of suing. Kick ass driver, rofl. Have you even used them?

    -- iCEBaLM
  • Probably not as much as our new "governor"...

    -JD [jdueck.org] (A Minnesotan)
  • Have you read that license? It's not terribly different from a 3-clause BSD license.
  • Give up :) It really isn't supported yet. Matrox will eventually be releasing drives. Word on the street says that dual heaf performance kindof sucks.
    treke
  • It is well known that the license used for Apache was modeled after the BSD license, because the ASF saw the GPL as "too restrictive". In arguments between the BSD license and GPL, the Apache license is often brought to bear as a prime example of BSD-esq licensing.

    What the author is saying is that the majority of successful Open Source software in the business world is under a BSD-style license, not the GPL.

    (This being /., Im going to get flamed for saying I like the BSD license better, so I guess I won't ;)
  • The only way the RPMs from rawhide will install is if the rawhide SRPMs are rebuilt on a RedHat 6.x system using RPM 4.0. Once that's been done, XFree86 4.0.1 installs without any of the dependency problems that installing the binary RPMs straight from the ftp site would have.

  • Here's how I did it (Score:4)

    by kenada ( 86285 ) on Saturday July 15, 2000 @01:52PM (#930722)
    I hate to reply to myself, but my previous post wasn't very helpful. Here's how I installed XFree86 4.0.1 from the RPMs in rawhide. YMMV
    1. Install RPM 4.0.
      1. Download the RPM 4.0 tarball ( ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/test/rpm-4. 0.tar.gz [rpm.org] ).
      2. Download db3, the database format used by RPM 4.0 ( ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/ test/db3-3.1.14-0.2.6x.src.rpm [rpm.org] ).
      3. Build ( rpm --rebuild db3-3.1.14-0.2.6x.src.rpm ) and install ( ls /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/db3-* | xargs rpm -ihv ) db3. Build ( rpm -tb rpm-4.0.tar.gz ) and install ( ls /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/RedHat/RPMS/i386/rpm-* | xargs rpm -ihv ) RPM 4.0.
      4. Convert the RPM database to the format used by RPM 4.0 ( rpm --rebuilddb ).
      5. Moving the old database files ( /var/lib/rpm/*.rpm ) out of /var/lib/rpm is necessary to prevent RPM 4.0 from segfaulting.
    2. Update initscripts, modutils and chkconfig to be compatible with those expected by the rawhide distribution of XFree86 4.0.1.
      1. Download the updated packages.
      2. initscripts 5.27 ( ftp://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/redhat/ rawhide/SRPMS/SRPMS/initsc ripts-5.27-1.src.rpm [sourceforge.net] )
      3. modutils 2.3.11 ( ftp://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/redhat/ rawhide/SRPMS/SRPMS/modutil s-2.3.11-7.src.rpm [sourceforge.net] )
      4. chkconfig 1.2.1 ( ftp://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/redhat/ rawhide/SRPMS/SRPMS/chkconf ig-1.2.1-1.src.rpm [sourceforge.net] )
      5. Build and install the updated packages.
      6. rpm --rebuild initscripts-5.27-1.src.rpm ; rpm -ihv /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/initscripts-5.27-1.i386. rpm
      7. rpm --rebuild modutils-2.3.11-7.src.rpm ; rpm -ihv /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/modutils-2.3.11-7.i386.r pm
      8. rpm --rebuild chkconfig-1.2.1-1.src.rpm ; rpm -ihv /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/chkconfig-1.2.1-1.i386.r pm
    3. Build and install XFree86 4.0.1.
      1. Download XFree86 4.0.1 ( ftp://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/redhat/ rawhide/SRPMS/SRPMS/XFree8 6-4.0.1-0.30.src.rpm [sourceforge.net] ).
      2. Build XFree86 4.0.1 ( CFLAGS='-I/usr/src/redhat/BUILD/XFree86-4.0.1/xc/e xport/include' LDFLAGS='-I/usr/src/redhat/BUILD/XFree86-4.0.1/exp ort/lib' rpm --rebuild XFree86-4.0.1-0.30.src.rpm ) and install the desired XFree86 4.0.1 RPMs located in /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/XFree86-*. Set CFLAGS and LDFLAGS is needed else the build will complain about being inable to find some parts of xlib, which should only an issue when building on a system without XFree86 installed.
    I haven't really had any problems except for warnings in the USB portion of rc.sysinit, which can be commented out. Some files were renamed or were moved around as well (i.e., conf.modules becomes modules.conf and the init scripts are moved from /etc/rc.d to /etc). Another problem is the HelixGNOME installer doesn't play nicely with the new RPM database and tries to update packages.rpm instead of Packages, which is probably a good thing since it doesn't seem to be aware of db3.
  • but ... wasnt this posted before? Maybe I am going crazy, but I could have sworn seeing that link before on /.

    oh well..

  • Have you read the Cluetrain manifesto, lately? What is good for the consumer eventually winds up being good for the manufacturer. They scratch our backs, and many more of us scratch theirs.

    This whole Us against Them mentality really has got to go.

  • actually i hate to say it but the AC is right about apache. http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/archive.pik e?list=1&date=2000-05-01&msg=20000504210 806.C15107@vuurwerk.nl

    the openbsd statements are a lie. if you enabled DHCP in openbsd 2.7 theres a rootkittable hole. just though you should know. the default install doesnt seem to enable any network services...and any OS without networking is hacker proof...
  • Okay, here's a point of view that's been rarely expressed here, but here goes: font antialiasing is a crufty outdated process which isn't really very useful on today's monitors.

    Not even close to truth. Whatever performance hit you might take from anti-aliasing fonts, it is absolutely worth it. I'm running an NT Workstation next to this Linux box I'm typing this on now, and there is a marked difference in the font quality that is quite visible. Both are on 17" monitors running 1152x864. And yes, I can quite easily tell when AA is turned off on the NT side, even with true type fonts being used.

    In trying to see if Linux could act as my primary desktop I've tried using Abiword and StarOffice to simply write up a document. Every time I try I get about a paragraph into it, then realizing I can't read what I'm writing! I'd rather use a CLI based word processor than one in X, because at least there the text is readable.

    Even with TrueType fonts there is a marked difference in visual quality as the size of the font grows. Might explain why the Mac only supports font smoothing for large type fonts. Even still, NT actually presents far clearer fonts than Mac as well, primarily for support for font smoothing down to small fonts.

    If Microsoft ever figures out how to move that new font rendering technology of theirs to CRT support, it will raise the bar on visual quality quite a bit. If you haven't seen what they've done with this, you might want to go check it out. Smooth, crisp, clean fonts with no anti-aliasing involved. Only working on LCD based screens at this point though.

    Bottom line, some day down the road Linux may work out to be my primary desktop. Aside from missing a few key apps, one of the biggest show stoppers for me is the readability of the fonts. I hope that either a future version of X corrects this, or X gets replaced by something that can. Heck, I'd love to see Linux one up Windows by working in things like kerning and tracking of fonts at the OS level. That'd be an awsome display, and a compelling reason for folks doing print work to seriously consider Linux.
  • First of all, I meant "yet" in the context that "we don't know why yet". I don't care if they are ever OSS or not, which is perfectly obvious from my post.

    You still don't understand "old-school". Old-school, as a commonly used term, implies an older method of thinking. Open Source is actually as old a method of thinking as far as computers are concerned as closed source is... look at the gnu page and you will see that examples are listed somewhere of "hackers" sharing code, games, etc. on large timeshare systems.

    I use X4.0.1 and the current drivers, while slow, don't give me any weird problems on switch to console. That might be TNT1 specific, I think older non-3d drivers did that too.

    Sure, Linux gaming won't get much better if there aren't good 3d drivers available. Oh wait, look, I can flamebait you by saying Blender isn't open source (or is it? not sure :). But I don't really need to. Blender is a decent 3D app save for it's really obfuscated interface.

    But what is really missing from Linux is a proper media HAL, like DirectX. There should be a /dev/opengl driver which links to Mesa or whatever you use. There should be a /dev/3dsound (or at least /dev/back-speakers :) and there should be a /dev/joystick with force feedback and all those other things. And those will be a long time coming.

    And yes, I do dualboot between Debian and Windows. That is a troll on your part. Why would I say that if I didn't? By saying that, I effectifly tell you that yes, I do like Linux. Yes, I do like the GPL. But no,, I don't care too much if some things I use are GPL'd or not. It doesn't bug me to see that I can't edit the source code, becuase even if I had it, I still wouldn't be able to.

  • Actually.. Yes. That by-default anti- zealotry is really quite ridiculous.
  • You could also get binary rpms for 4.0 which is in rpm3 format from rpm.org.
  • Numlock key which actually works. Like it was in 3.3.

  • Re:Cool! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    " I want to run this along with the best-supported, coolest 3D card... "

    "Maybe $150 or so"

    the two are self exclusionary =)

  • http:// www.securityfocus.com/vdb/keyword.html?index=vuldb &query=openbsd [securityfocus.com]

    Not that I mean to belittle OpenBSD, it's a great system and while it is true that OpenBSD's dedication to security and stability is unmatched by most other OSes, just saying "There are no exploits in OpenBSD" doesn't make it true. In fact, it's a logical fallacy -- you can't prove a negative. And you can't patch a bug you don't know about.

    So the approach is right, but OpenBSD needs to drop this whole holier-than-though attitude. (Or should that be holeless-er?)

  • Actually, it is supported. I have the dual-head version too, and it's not bad at all.
    "If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
  • OK, Where to get the drivers?
    Google doesnt show any free drivers, just announcements for vaporware closed-source, payware drivers.

    I'm not interested in buying a $250 X package to support a $250 card.
  • Warning, just complaining about my experience below

    I rpm-3.0.5 from ftp.rpm.org's (get it from the test directory). I got bash2, which I also needed. I then tried to get the Xfree86-4.0.1 rpms from rawhide, but they required a new glib and other junk. So I got the source rpm overnight.

    I tried to rebuild, but that messed up when Mesa thought I had ggi, but i didn't have recent enough version, and I forgot about it. Ok, so I clean ggi traces from my system, manually, since I lost the source with uninstall makefiles. So I try rebuilding all of XF86 again, which takes forever, and when It seems to be done, finding dependices and such, it just quits, no rpms spit out. Damn. I hate when that happens.

    Anybody built rpms for i386 - i686. I am sick of this, and I have no idea what to do. I guess I could just stick to the tdfx drivers from 3dfx, but they don't have old dga mouse support, and the older stuff doesn't have acceleration in windows.
  • NVidia really need to get there act together.

    Where I can understand their reasons for wanting closed source drivers. The problems occuring with new versions of XF86 and with performance of various configurations just go to hilight the problems of being closed source in an open source world. You just can't keep up, because you are out of the loop.

    As someone involved in the purchasing of computers, this is bad news for NVidia because as far as I like their cards and drivers enough to have one to play around. I can't recommend them for bulk purchases of new machines as they are just too difficult to keep configured and upto date.

    This means that NVidia sell only 1 card where they could have sold more. Which is a shame as they have played an important part in the graphics card industry over recent years.

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