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Debian

XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody 165

Posted by CmdrTaco from the let-the-games-begin dept.
sammy!! writes "Debian unstable now has XFree86 4.0, so use apt-get or dselect and start downloading the new packages!" There are still a ton of issues with it, but I've been using the XF86 debs for several months on my desktop, with no significant problems.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody More

XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody

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  • I;ve been using the phase2 ones for a while now with no problems at all.

    Just make sure your card is supported, and it should work well. The config files are different, but it uses a dialog setup tool that works ok.

    Its actually a really nice config file, so if there are any problems you shoud be ok.

  • some minor issues. (Score:3)

    by Rev. DeFiLEZ ( 203323 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @02:39PM (#648800) Homepage
    i have been using the phase1 (starting at v12) debs and also apt-getting the phase2.

    I currently rebuilt my system (testing, wanted to be super clean after) and i stayed at x3.when x4 came into woody (yesterday i believe) the problems started.

    i needed to reboot my box do to hardware issues. nothing serious. then when i when to start X i found my backspace and delete werent working (guys on irc had a riot with my typing, mad props to #clan_gun :) ) the keyboard maps for X were gone.

    so i wanted to look at the problem, noticed x3 and x4 installed on my box ( first time i used dselect in a while). i thought to my self "what a great time to upgrade to x4" i removed x3 and added the extra x4 that was missing. shut down X when to restart, startx was missing.

    i removed EVERYTHING x related and reinstalled x4 debs. now everything seems fine.

    now. nvidia GLX drivers, i had test10, compiled with warnings about a INC and DEC pionter not right. and insmod NVdriver gave me "unknown symbol xxINCxx() and xxxDECxxx() downgraded to test7, module compiled fine.

    removed mesa conficts and restarted X couldnt start X.... su segfaulted. reboot worked

    ran blender system locked (harshly) manually needed to run fsck. /var/lib/dpkg/available was missing touched it and continued

    changed xf86config-4 back to nv from nvidia x wouldnt restart. removed x4 installed x4 everything khosher ( i am sure i only needed to remove /usr/X11/lib/modules/extension/*glx* but i reinstalled anyways)

    now everything works minus closed source nvidia glx.

    not fscking with anything else :)

    -rev

    normally i am not this lame, just wanted to share with others incase they ran into similar problems.

  • by the way I seem to remember some of the older ARM3s were at 25Mhz, could be wrong though... I had one put in my A3000 back in the day.

    You're right -- My A310 had a 25Mhz ARM3 in it. It got donated to a school eventually. sob

    Phil
    --

  • You're right -- My A310 had a 25Mhz ARM3 in it. It got donated to a school eventually. sob

    I know, replying to my own post, but before the pedants get to me, I should point out that this was a heavily upgraded A310 :)

    Phil
    --
  • If you are running a Windoze box (especially on a laptop) download this demo for an example of the advanced rendering tjwhaynes is talking of. Render demo [grc.com]

    -b
  • This is a fairly big move for debian. Debian developers are devoted to producing *stable* packages (unlike a certain other distro). I've seen using debian XF4 debs forever, and have seen them mature into what they currently are, which is, to say the least, very imperssive. Plus, people are always happy to see when something new is implemented into their favorite distro (*high 5 to all the unstable debian users out there ;)

    P.S. All flames go to /dev/null as I don't check that email address.
  • What's wrong with Windows' font antialiasing (other than the fact that it doesn't work all the time? :)
  • Hee hee! The Corporate lackies of OSDN Inc. post yet another less-than-trivial announcement for Debian LinuxOS. I think that they can't handle The One True OS(tm).
  • Anti-aliasing definitely looks good on 14-pt fonts, but personally I never use them; I'd like to see how things look at 10-pt and below.
  • Well, lets see -- this is the first major xf86-4 binary package created *by* users *for* users[*], rather than being created by employees to meet a marketing checklist. This is, afaik, the first to provide a smooth upgrade path, rather than forcing you to do a system reinstall like RH usually does. (I know there were some ugly issues with upgrades, esp. around app-default files.)

    But bottom line, it's a big deal because now you can use Xf86-4 without giving up all the advantages of Debian! ;-)

    cheers

    [*] I felt like a part of the Debian project long before I ever joined officially. I never came *close* to feeling like a part of RH! :-)
  • I've had absolutely no crashing problems with my xf86 4.0.1 but I had minor problems with 4.0, the specifics of which I don't recall.

    The only problem I've had with 4.x is that they seem to have a horrible memory leak - I don't know if it's my G400 drivers (I've tried both the 'official' Matrox driver and the one that came with X), or some other component that interfaces with X, such as the gtk-engines...

    I hope this will help some people out there, and in like, I hope there's someone out there that is able to help me. :) I've looked all over for what might be the cause. It's maddening to have to restart X due to memory problems every ~24 hours. (192 megs mem, w/ a 300m swap... and swap will get up to about 40 megs w/ just X, a couple Eterms, and a 'fresh' netscape running.)

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • ugdct-blam install ttygols.

    It includes gluptrens.

    That's what your statements must look like to a Microsoft user. ;)
  • The funny thing is, your run-of-the-mill TTF font in Windows still looks way better than the third picture from that example.
  • The 4.x X servers use a new style of configuration file. It's supposed to be automagically generated by running xf86cfg; however, this doesn't always work. Branden has written a tool to generate the config file, but it doesn't always work either. In lieu of this, it's probably a good idea to go to XFree86.org and brush up on the 4.0 series XF86Config file format before upgrading.

    xf86config seems to work nicely, except that it generates /etc/X11/XF86Config instead of /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. And if you want any extra modules loaded, or you want to change some of the more obscure defaults, you'll still have to edit it.

    Also, the new name for the config file is XF86Config-4 (I don't know if this is debian specific) instead of XF86Config.

    If you have no XF86Config-4, then it looks at XF86Config. But (probably to support keeping 3.x on the system or something) the packages install XF86Config-4 by default.

    Try to avoid emailing Branden at all costs. He's been less than friendly to me, and I know other people who have had similar experiences.

    He's probably very busy ;)

    -----

  • No noticable differences? Then why bother upgrading? :-)

    I doubt that 4.x will be as stable as 3.x for at least another 8 months, so I'm sticking with 3.3.6. The only thing that could make me switch is the addition of real (a la Windows/MacOS/XIG/commercial UNIX) font support.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • Re:some minor issues. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 01:02:29 +0100
    From: FORT David
    To: "linux-nvidia@lists.surfsouth.com"
    Subject: [Patch]compiling NV 0.95 with 2.4.0test10,
    avoid unresolved symbol while loading module

    Everything's in the subject, fix mem_map_inc_count which has been removed recently from kernel headers. It works like a charm @ home.

    --- nv.c.orig Sat Aug 26 02:48:38 2000
    +++ nv.c Fri Nov 3 00:57:25 2000
    @@ -95,6 +95,9 @@
    #define NV_PAGE_ALIGN(addr) ( ((addr) + PAGE_SIZE - 1) / PAGE_SIZE)
    #define NV_MASK_OFFSET(addr) ( (addr) & (PAGE_SIZE - 1) )

    +#define mem_map_inc_count(p) atomic_inc( &(p->count) )
    +#define mem_map_dec_count(p) atomic_dec( &(p->count) )
    +
    /*
    * Our main lock for everything.
    */

    ---
    The moral of this story: Subscribe to lists instead of bitching and moaning.

  • I would recommend using 4.0.1, which is what is in debian.

    I find it very good, it even has a smaller footprint.
  • Outline fonts as the latest innovation to replace bitmap fonts? Oh my god, where have you been the last 10 years? Outside X, everyone has been using outline fonts for ages!
  • I'm running a GeForce DDR and don't have any of the problems you mention. I've played Q3, Solider of Fortune, etc. I've never had X lock up hard while playing a game, or testing my system using something like evas_test.

    When the drivers first came out there were some issues with the origional TNT, but I don't know if any specific ones still exist. Try going on #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net. The nvidia developers hang out there often.
  • apt-get install fttools

    It includes mkttfdir.
  • After installing the Nvidia drivers, how do you compile or run applications that depend on GLUT (and GLU)? Does one have to download GLUT from sgi and compile it with the new drivers, or are there premade packages that will work?
  • That's odd, 1152x864x16 works fine on my S3 Virge card. Except that i apparently haven't gotten the tweaks right yet, the pixel corruption is a bit annoying.

    -----

  • One problem, is if you want proper DGA 1.0 mouse support, for games like quake3, if so, you will need to compile X from cvs, or wait for 4.0.2 to come out.

  • standard distribution is binaries(at least last time i downloaded them), you just have to run the install shell script. and you don't have to download all the servers - just the one you need.

  • It's nice to have debs, but there's really no reason you can't have 4.01 - just go to xfree86.org and download the generic binaries. I've been running them ever since they came out, and it has been rock-solid (I'm just using the stock nvidia TNT driver).
  • Yeah, I remember widespread confusion, and people suggested that you NEEDED "alpha transparancy" to do anti-aliasing - this is not true.

  • Re:Anti-Aliasing? (Score:4)

    by Hornsby ( 63501 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @07:27PM (#648825) Homepage
    Yes! Go here [xfree86.org] and checkout how anti-aliased fonts are being implemented in the new X. From what I can see from the spec, we may end up with really nice fonts after all.
  • The Debian packages are X from CVS.
  • Don't forget to checkout Debian's mailing-list archives if you have problems:

    Debian-devel:
    http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0011/msg00282 .html [debian.org] (brief helpful message)

    Debian-x:
    http://lists.debian.org/debia n-x -0011/threads.html [debian.org] (lots of interesting threads here)

  • You can do that in one step using dpkg --divert --rename.

    --
    "Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"

  • ya, we all have many old comps (or pieces of) lying around, but we don't expect them to be able to run gnome at 1600x1200 with enlightenment. when we talk about running linux on old computers we mean fileservers and firewalls. we set them up in console and we probably don't even install X....
  • How is Windows antialiasing "evil"? It sure looks pretty on my box.

    That's one of the major reasons I stay away from X in the first place (besides the fact that my new Mobility chipset in my new laptop really isn't supported). It just doesn't look as "finished" as it does in Windows.


  • Is there any hope for anti-aliasing in XF4.0?
    -Gavin
  • Ok, they suck for playing games, but there are other uses for computers than playing games. Fact is the s3V's are cheap as dirt. And I don't mean that high quality top soil either. If you are using your computer for simulations or as some type of server than you don't need a zillion dollar card. S3V are fine for viewing basic plots or running netscape. You can use the money you save on the card to buy more ram or a faster cpu. Never had a problem with XSV 3.x when I was using them but I never tried under 4.0.

  • XFree86 Debs from additional apt source lines (Score:5)

    by Yebyen ( 59663 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @02:01PM (#648833) Homepage
    I have been using the unofficial (phase2) debs of XFree86 4.0.1 for a while, and they are impressive. They actually work a lot better than compiling from source for me. In case it matters to anybody, the nv.o module even supports GeForce2GTS and other cards only supported in CVS as of now.

    These debs seem fairly stable to me and are worth the download for most cards. Enjoy!

    --

  • apt-get install xserver-xfree86 was all you needed to do ;)

    Now, I just need to make the 3D working well for my G400... that's was missing with debian, a working-with-no-recompiling lib for the 3D :)
  • Because Windows has had it for 5 years.
  • the temptation to make really bad "woody" jokes is just way too much.

    (So, would this mean XFree4 is sporting a woody?)

    - A.P.

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • Because it's true.
  • Immediately? no. TTFs are now supported natively however, and I understand development is coming along for AA fonts in X. We all want them, I know.

    --

  • Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky (Score:3)

    by StandardDeviant ( 122674 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @02:04PM (#648839) Homepage Journal

    This isn't a Debian issue (I'm using 4.0.1 on my mongrel RH workstation), but I have noticed recently that the X server will SIG 11 at odd times. I haven't pinned down the common thread yet, but it seems to happen at the point of initial start up of some programs (e.g. the AnyJ java ide thingy from www.netcomputing.de [netcomputing.de], which gets to the splash screen and _blammo_, X server dies). When I first installed X 4.0, it would SIG 11 when I right clicked on a variable in DDD. So anyway, my point is be cautious, as for all the improvments in XFree 4.x (and don't get me wrong, it is nicer, especially in the font managment realm), it still has some odd stability issues.


    --

  • Thanks, will do. I'm always in #debian anyways, it's worth a stop. I remember the issues with the TNT, so I read all the documentation on it, even specified my ram type manually. Issues still exist. Who knows..it's an older card, I don't expect a whole lot. I just wanted to inform people about the issues I have had, so that other TNT users might be prepared :)

    David

  • So who among us held out? (Score:4)

    by John Whitley ( 6067 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @02:58PM (#648841) Homepage
    We need a /. poll:

    Did you "hold out" knolwedge of the XFree86 4 debs until you'd downloaded yours?

    ( ) Yes, bwahaha.
    ( ) No
    ( ) First post!
    ( ) What's a deb?

  • Re:Font anti-aliasing is NOT evil (Score:3)

    by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @03:00PM (#648842)

    Because Windows has had it for 5 years.

    And RiscOS had it in 1987. Your point?

    Windows implementation of Antialiasing (known as Font Smoothing in the Windows world) is a long way away from the ideal Nirvana of text presentation. Antialiasing is really a problem with small text sizes - all those serifs and lines close together get confused when you try to render a vector object onto a grid with too few sampling points. As Windows only smooths the larger font sizes by default, this makes it a little irrelevent for text viewing. Nyquist would tell you more.

    Therefore an advanced font renderer will help the eye perceive the real shape of the text better by shading the text with different shades between the text by understanding what proportion of the curve of the letter lies inside the pixel. This is particularly important when you consider sub pixel alignment both horizontally and vertically - with large passages of text with real micro alignment, this makes a huge difference to the readability of the text - enough that helvetica in a 5 pixel high font is vageuly intelligible. Speaking as someone who tend to use a 6x13 font for most things on a 21 inch monitor, antialiasing of the text in Type1 or truetype vector formats would be a huge step forward.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • Nope, riva TNT with a celeron 450 (i.e. 300a->450, and no I don't think the oc'ing is the problem, as this setup worked flawlessly with 3.3.6... :-) )


    --

  • I used S3 virge with an old DVD decoder, and it was ALWAYS a pain to get it going on XFree86, everytime i installed (cos it was experimenting kind, back in the day) and it was gruelsome, and a miracle for it work with a single visit to the damn program
  • This topic has come up several times on Slashdot recently - it's nice to see TWO readers in the same thread giving Acorn the credit they deserve for having had superb anti-aliasing for years.

    I still can't believe X doesn't support font anti-aliasing... but there you go, no doubt the same people will jump down my throats saying "but you don't need it" as did the last time this came up on Slashdot. :-)

    cheers
  • I complete agree with you - glad to see some sense on this topic at last!

    (by the way I seem to remember some of the older ARM3s were at 25Mhz, could be wrong though... I had one put in my A3000 back in the day.)
  • I think that the debian packages (at least) are including some pre-realse work with this too. At least, it was noted in the changelog a while back that we were now 'including render extension'.
  • > 2) You need to find ttmkfdir if you want to use Truetype fonts, mkfontdir doesn't do it. I don't know if there is a Debian package either.
    There is a Debian package containing tool that'll do fonts.dir file for your, namely mkttfdir(1) which is part of the package fttools.
  • Who says you can't?

    'apt-get source PACKAGENAME', edit the debian/rules (which is just a simple makefile), and then run dpkg-buildpackage.

    Presto! You have brand-spankin' new .debs with your modifications.
  • > 2. If you're planning on using a 3d accelerated graphics card i.e. (Rage 128, 3dfx, etc), you must have DRI support compiled into your kernel with the appropriate kernel module for your card. There is a new Mesa for XFree86 4.0.1 that has builtin support for DRI; however, there is a problem with this package. It does not include the libGLU(a subset of the Mesa library) static library or header files. This means that you must manually extract libGLU from the existing Woody Mesa package and copy it into /usr/local/lib/whatever if you plan on running 3d apps that depend on libGLU(almost all!).
    _Plase_ check your facts before posting.

    ~ $ dpkg -S libGLU.so.1
    xlibmesa3: /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1.3

    See that? Thanks to the patch made by Craig Dunwoody, the latest phase2 package and the first package upload to woody contains the GLU library. Before that patch you had to do that ugly stuff you mentioned, though. But not anymore.


    > 4. Try to avoid emailing Branden at all costs. He's been less than friendly to me, and I know other people who have had similar experiences.
    This is pretty natural reaction if you ask me. What would you feel if you'd receive a couple of dozens of mails daily all asking the same thing: when on earth are you going to do those XFree86 4.0 debs you lazy dog? But, for (sometimes) more intellectual conversation, there's an excellent mailing list available, debian-x@lists.debian.org [debian.org] . Folks over there, that includes Branden, are glad to help you with all the problems you may encounter regarding the XFree86 4.0 debs. Though be sure to crawl through the debian-x list archive [debian.org] before asking simple questions. It's pretty likely it has already been asked and answered. Especially if it has something to do with the 3rd-party 3D drivers.

    Hope that helped.
  • This is NOT true.

    Don't believe him/her. This only APPEARS to be true - there is no rule. It may happen that the stable distribution is a bit behind the latest developments, but do you want bleeding-edge software in a 'stable' distribution?
  • Yes I know it's been around for a long time. It's been around since 1989 (ish), I was just making a point that using outlines is better than blending bitmaps.
  • I still can't believe X doesn't support font anti-aliasing...

    I have a feeling there used to be a VERY long thread a few months back on WHY it does not support it and whether it is simple to built it in. Good thing that at least it supports TT fonts by default...
  • No its not. I vote that all the users with decent hardware pissed at all the users with old hardware fork the kernel, X, and KDE and start a distro meant only for those who have the sense not to use 5 year old vidcards.

    Matrox Millenium G200 8MB: $30 +4s/h on pricewatch.

  • Re:Anti-Aliasing? (Score:3)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @03:38PM (#648855)
    What do cruft-encased UNIX old-timers get from preaching function over form? Does it make you feel 'leet? Humans are visual creatures. They appreciate things that look nice. Cars, magazines, furniture, people of the opposite gender (a bow to P.C ;) computer cases, everything! Form should not take precedence over function, but form shouldn't be left out entirely either. If you leave out form, then you're blind. If you leave out function, you're an iMac. If you do both, then you are one of a rare breed of competent designers.

    PS> Aliased fonts also cause headaches.
  • Yeah, it can look /ok/, but it's not the best I've seen by a very long way. It's also pretty slow too, IIRC.
  • Anyone - help !
    How can i start X4.0.1 on a Hercules Monochrome card ? There is no hga driver and the fbdev driver wants 8bpp or more. The plain vga driver only talks to vga devices.
    And apt-get dist-upgrade uninstalled xserver-mono and xserver-fbdev which conflict with 4.0.1 ...

    help meee!!!

    --
  • The history of Debian release codenames is explained in the Debian FAQ [debian.org], section 5.6, Where do these codenames come from? [debian.org], and other related sections. (how's that for an `insightful' comment, I'm the FAQ maintainer :o)

    The codename for next release is usually picked by the release manager, at the point when the frozen tree gets created. Considering "woody" hasn't been frozen yet, it's not known how the next unstable will be called.

    -- Josip Rodin

  • Don't forget
    () What are you talking about, I've been using the 4.0 debs for weeks now

  • Possibly. Bear in mind that the example in question is a monospaced font for a start. And unfortunately truetype fonts vary wildly in the quality of their hinting. Unlike ps fonts (which have a stroke based hinting scheme), tt fonts have a small program included with them which is executed on a virtual machine in order to work out the hinting. Therefore the quality of the hinting for a postscript font is dependant mostly on the quality of the ps renderer, whilst the quality for a tt font can vary wildly between fonts, as it depends on how good the code is for each font.

    I believe that part of the reason for MicroSoft's 'web fonts' on screen quality is down to the amount of work they put into the hinting code.

    Font nuts usually use this as an argument as to why ps fonts are better than tt fonts.


    Phil

    ps. Note that none of the above affects the printed quality of fonts, only the rendering on the relative low-res computer displays we currently suffer before...
    --

  • That's funny, I've been trying to get my posts to format like that for ages. Much easier to read you know? That's why newpapers print in column format. You only have to scan stright up and down, not in back and forth, up and down zig zag pattern.

    Guess I'll start using Lynx to post. Thanks for the hot tip. :)
  • There are debs of 4.0.1 that someone has succesfully compiled on potato (from a slightly earlier version of the woody ones). Search the debian-x archives and you should be able to find it.
  • Its news because not too many distros have started using xfree 4, and because Taco is a card carring Debian nazi.

    I hope you got your undies in a knot over the stories of Red Hat including gcc 2.9.6 in thier last release.
  • If you leave out function, you're an iMac. If you do both, then you are one of a rare breed of competent designers.

    Yes, only the best can leave out both form and function.

  • A valid point in deed. But the fact that an upgrade of some program has now become available in the unstable developer branch of some linux-distribution doesn't really strike me as a story.

    Then go to your preferences [slashdot.org] and make sure that "Debian" is selected for exclusion from the homepage. Voila; no more stories about Debian, "unstable developer release" or otherwise.

    And for the record, "unstable developer branch" doesn't adequately describe what woody (2.3) is; Debian doesn't follow kernel-style numbering.

    Jay (=
  • I feel I should add my own datapoint, I've been using X4 since 4.0 and I have not experienced a single random crash. (P300, Intel i740 chipset video card)
  • There are still a ton of issues with it.

    Issues? I didn't have much for issues. I was very impressed. The only thing that all out broke was Netscape. The package I was using depended on libxpm. apt-get install netscape fixed that.

    The dextor configuration utility works incredibly well. I wish it was smart enough to add ZAxisMapping instead of Emulate3Buttons though. :)

    After getting the new X up an running, I had my TNT2 working with nVidias drivers in no time. All in all, it took me about 1.5 hours to go from the old X to playing Quake 3 under Linux.

    Debian, keep up the excellent work!
  • Well, depends on the user. A lot of people just don't need multi-user. I, for example, do a lot of programming and I'm perfectly happy in BeOS. It offers me a lot more than Linux (I have access to most of the UNIX CLI tools and the nice BeOS API) and I can boot into Win2K when I need to use 3D Studio. Of course, it all depends on what you need to do. If you're just web-browsing and word-processing, then BeOS gives you the stability of a *NIX, without needing to be admined. If you need to do 3D rendering, then nothing other than Win2K (or NT) is going to satisfy you. If you need to run a server or need to do X development, then you probably have to run a *NIX. I'm just saying to use whatever feels right. However, don't be blind to the fact that BeOS can do a lot more than most people give it credit for.
  • I just downloaded this thing and normal AA rendering looks like crap afterwards

  • Re:Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky (Score:3)

    by dbarclay10 ( 70443 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @11:03PM (#648870)
    You know, I had noticed that X died on me fairly often, but I found out that it was Java that was causing the problems. I didn't really care, though.

    This was a few months ago. A few days ago, I got the Java2(1.3 ;) runtime from java.sun.com, and now all the crashes have stopped.

    Dave
    'Round the firewall,
    Out the modem,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
  • Using the binaries from Xfree86 is kinda silly because then you won't be dealing with all the dependency issues. Packages specifically from the distrobution are important if you want to have a coherent setup that will be easily upgraded.
  • Umm, if you run at a high resolution on anything less than a Matrox card you deserve the eyestrain.
  • I've installed the X 4.0 from source and the only problem so far was that I had to bring back some shared libs from X3.3 in order to succesfully compile KDE 2.
    Apart from that, it rocks.

  • Re:OT: What are they on? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04, 2000 @04:58PM (#648879)
    and Buzz, and Bo, and Rex. The scheme is characters in `Toy Story.' (An exployee of Pixar was head of Debian at the first naming.) As for what's next, I don't know either. Andy? Armymen? (ragnarsedai)

  • Re:Read This Before Upgrading! (Score:3)

    by jkc120 ( 104731 ) on Sunday November 05, 2000 @12:09AM (#648886)
    The blinking could be a side effect of not loading the "dbe" module in "Section \"Modules\"" ;) Try adding a line Load "dbe" (double buffering extensions) in XF86Config. I've read a couple of places that this will fix the flickering issues in some applications.

  • Sorry to break it to you, but there aren't going to be any official XFree86 4.0 Potato debs. See this [debian.org] for details.
  • Well. I just finished recovering from
    the upgrade to XF4.0 using

    apt-get update
    apt-get dist-install

    It was not an altogether smooth experience.

    I did have the presence of mind to exit
    from X before attempting it.

    apt-get claimed that task-x-window-core
    was being kept back. Now I am rather
    new to debian and wasn't sure what exactly
    was meant by a package being kept back,
    but as I had already determined to take the
    plunge I went forward.

    This was perhaps, not the wisest move.

    A great many things where installed and
    removed. At the end of it all startx would
    not cause X to run. It failed because it claimed
    it couldn't open display 0:0.

    So I paniced and began searching on google
    with lynx for someway to take it all back.

    I discovered several kluggy suggestions involving
    diff file of the /var/lib/dpkg/status and
    /var/lib/dpkg/status.yesterday.0 files, but
    nothing that looked very promising. (As
    an aside, if anyone knows a good way to role
    debian back to yesterday please let me know,
    it looks like this is something that should be
    quite doable.)

    So I revisited the task-x-window-core problem.

    apt-get install task-x-windows-core

    revealed that it could not install because it
    couldn't install xutils.

    apt-get install xutils

    informed me that it would have to remove
    task-gnome and a bunch of other things
    that I really didn't want to have to give up.
    Being desperate however I agreed.

    xutils then installed fine.

    apt-get install task-x-windows-core

    then complained that it couldn't install because
    it couldn't get xbase to install.

    apt-get install xbase

    went off without a hitch however. Then finally

    apt-get install task-x-windows-core

    worked. Things installed and dexter was invoked
    to generate the configuration file.

    Everything is mostly fine now.

    Hopefully my description of my experience will
    help some other poor bastard who is reading this
    in lynx.

    One final note. The above is purely from
    memory (I wasn't keeping a very good record
    at the time) and so there may be some slight
    inaccuracies.
  • I didn't have much luck with Debian... Redhat is nice, but moves too much stuff around IMHO.. Slackware was the very first distro of Linux I ever installed on any system, and it's still my favorite. I snagged XF4.0 a couple days ago and installed it, haven't had a problem yet.

  • Re:XFree86 Debs from additional apt source lines (Score:3)

    by BLarg! ( 129425 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @05:35PM (#648905)
    Apt-get mesag3, mesag-dev, glutg3, and glutg3-dev if you don't already have them. Then download the NVidia driver. Then you have to do a little work to get things to work together. Move /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a.debi an, /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so.debian , /usr/lib/libGL.so to /usr/lib/libGL.so.debian, and /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 to /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.debian. After you rename those files you gotta telll dpkg to divert them. Do that with dpkg-divert --divert /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a.debi an /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a, dpkg-divert --divert /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so.debian /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so, dpkg-divert --divert /usr/lib/libGL.so.debian /usr/lib/libGL.so, dpkg-divert --divert /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.debian /usr/lib/libGL.so.1

    After all that dirty work you should be able to install the NVidia GLX drivers by their instructions, and it will replace the libraries you moved with its own GL implementation. The idea here is that you can still develop OpenGL apps and you still have the GLU/GLUT libraries. Diverting those libraries will allow apt to update Mesa to newer versions without overwriting NVidia's implementation. After doing all that you shouldn't have any problem.

  • Ummm....What's the big deal here? RedHat 7.0 lets you use Xfree 4.0.1 or 3.3.6 and others use Xfree 4.0 as well.

  • Re:Xfree 4.x can be a little flaky (Score:5)

    by Fross ( 83754 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @02:14PM (#648915)
    but I have noticed recently that the X server will SIG 11 at odd times.

    You mean it'll start flaming CmdrTaco then throw all its toys out of the pram and storm off? :)

    Fross

  • Well, I've been running woody for a long time now, as well as using the XF4 debs since they were first introduced. Using the nv driver included with xf4, things are dandy. Using Nvidia's provided binary drivers is another story, completely. If you have an Nvidia card, and can live without 3d acceleration, stick with the XF4 provided driver. Unfortunately for us who like to play Quake3 and do various things which require 3d support (aka blender), you are stuck using Nvidia's drivers. Good luck...every time I use a OpenGL program, and exit, I have to completely exit X before I can run another OpenGL program. Oh...stability...maybe if you run a word processor...but when you are doing heavy 3-d work, things just die. Don't blame xfree86, blame Nvidia. No holy wars over open/closed models, I'm just letting people know. David PS - I have an Nvidia TNT...maybe GeForce cards don't have the same issues? I'm running the newest Nvidia binaries as well.
  • Apparently you don't.

    But if you're not interested in Debian news, why haven't you excluded Debian in you preferences?
  • Slink, Potato, Woody, ...

    In the IQ test of "which word comes next" I'd fail.

    My guess would be "plectrum" or "orifice", can't decide which.

    FatPhil
    (again with all due respect)
  • I routinely upgrade all of the computers that I have running Woody every few days. I first noticed this afternoon when, as a test of a new network card install (replacing an RTL-8139 with a 3Com-SOHO because the RTL-8139 drivers appear to be defective) I did a refresh and, lo and behold, there it was.

    However, it would never have occured to me to submit it as news to /.. I mean, other than die-hard deb-heads, such as myself, who cares, and if you're a die-hard deb-head, then you already knew about it.

  • Who cares? (Score:3)

    by fredlwm ( 146021 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @04:36PM (#648928) Homepage
    Please announce this too: KDE 2.0 is now included in slackware-current.
  • What's the big deal here? RedHat 7.0 ... and others use Xfree 4.0 as well.

    Rob just likes to say "Woody." It's a phase. He'll grow out of it.

  • Driver Work At A Premium (Score:4)

    by Christopher B. Brown ( 1267 ) <cbbrowne@gmail.com> on Saturday November 04, 2000 @05:55PM (#648931) Homepage
    The problem is that the driver scheme is completely revised in XFree86 4, thus meaning that drivers effectively need to be rewritten.

    Consider it granted that the existing code base will be very useful for reference, and possibly even code fragments, when writing the new drivers. That does not deny that the drivers need to be created afresh.

    Drivers get written based on two things:

    • Developers wanting to do so, and
    • Developers being encouraged to want to do so .

    It's not S3 that "sucks," and, it should be noted, by the way, under S3 driver support [xfree86.org] that it's only the S3V that is supported; my S3 968 board is not supported , with no plans for that to be upcoming.

    To the contrary, it's closer to being you that suck. If you want S3V supported, then you should either be looking at the code, or doing something like sending a donation to XFree86 along with encouragement that they improve S3V support.

    A 4MB S3V card is likely worth $10 these days; that is just not going to warrant a lot of work at this time when they're only available as surplus, and when efforts are concentrating more on supporting 3D hardware which an S3V "325" is just incapable of coping with well.

  • this is why my sources.list is pointed to 'stable' and 'proposed-updates'.

    I'll admit sometimes the package maintainers screw up and install a package into 'proposed-updates' that breaks the system (like lprng 3.6.12-7 with buggy setuid kernel bug-check) but overall you get the same important package upgrades without the risk to production or important systems.

    When X4 has support for the Savage4 chipsets (and it better be free) and it's in proposed, I'll upgrade, but horror stories I've seen and heard with X4 will keep my system in 3.3.6 for a while.
  • The "Nirvana of text presentation" is not achievable on today's monitors. Windows does as good a job as I've seen anywhere at making fonts readable at both large and small point sizes.

    Antialiasing at small point sizes is unhelpful on most display technologies as all it does it makes the text blurry - try it, it looks crap. That's why they don't do it.

    The font renderer in RiscOS was OK, but it didn't handle things like asymetric sub-pixel alignment very well - it just relied on the antialising to 'blurr' our the errors at small point sizes.

    For a good example of the difference between a good font rendere and a god-awful one, use notepad and AcrobatReader side-by-side with various fonts and sizes. Check by zooming the pixels, too.

  • Re:XFree86 Debs from additional apt source lines (Score:3)

    by psychos ( 2271 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @02:19PM (#648935)
    Don't forget to get the XF ree 86 4.0 drivers [nvidia.com] from NVIDIA [nvidia.com], even if you're not using 3d; they're faster for 2d stuff than the open-source drivers included with XFree86.
  • What do cruft-encased UNIX old-timers get from preaching function over form?
    Gee, I dunno, maybe because we like to use our computers to get things accomplished, instead of admiring them from across the room as objects d'art?
    They appreciate things that look nice. Cars, magazines, furniture, people of the opposite gender (a bow to P.C ;) computer cases, everything!
    My car is a dirty green Toyota Tercel encrufted with bumper stickers, my furniture mostly second-hand, my boxen encased in plain beige (with various comic strips and the like plastered on, of course),and I don't judge printed matter by its cover. (Otherwise one would conclude that USA Today is a superior source of news to the New York Times.)

    Now, in terms of persons of the appropriate gender, when it comes to sex form is a part of function. But in the other examples you site, some sophmoric designer's notion of form usually ends up getting in the way of using the damn thing - pretty chairs that are impossible to sit in, computer cases that impede repair and update,

    PS& Aliased fonts also cause headaches.
    Actually, I find that blurry "smoothed" fonts are more likely to hurt me, as my eyes try in vain to bring them into focus. OTOH, a lot of people here seem to be saying that they're most useful for small fonts, whereas my take is just to save myself the eyestrain either way and avoid small fonts completely. (Website and document designers who force them on me are, of course, idiots who should be strung up by their thumbs.)

  • Re:XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody (Score:4)

    by FiDooDa ( 23111 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @02:28PM (#648943)
    Taco doesn't use Red Hat or the others, that's why
  • I believe that statement is trademarked by the manufacturers of Yugo automobiles.
    ----
  • Please also recognize that there are some problems w/NVidia's drivers in SMP systems. On my system, some GL app's crash - some much harder than others. Still can't get quake2 to run for more than 30 seconds w/out crashing. Trying a single CPU kernel makes the problems go away, but that is not the solution I was looking for.

  • YES !

    If you have matrox with utah-glx or Hercules mono DO NOT apt-get yet.

    I did (having both cards) and:
    - XF86_SVGA no longer works so: bye bye 3d ...
    - XF86_Mono and fbdev are gone and X4 doesn't seem to have ANY hercules suport at all
    - xf86cfg DIES with SIGILL
    - xf86config generates the same'ol fscked up config-file (now for 4.x versions)
    - empty man pages... lots of them... had to "strings input/wacom.so" driver to get some hints.

    however - for 2d X4.0.1 on my g400 is smoother...

    --

  • Read This Before Upgrading! (Score:5)

    by Hornsby ( 63501 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @06:29PM (#648959) Homepage
    After using the apt repository on Branden's(the Debian X Maintainer) website to have XFree86 4.0.1 on two of my desktop machines, I have a few words of advice.

    1. The 4.x X servers use a new style of configuration file. It's supposed to be automagically generated by running xf86cfg; however, this doesn't always work. Branden has written a tool to generate the config file, but it doesn't always work either. In lieu of this, it's probably a good idea to go to XFree86.org [xfree86.org] and brush up on the 4.0 series XF86Config file format before upgrading. Also, the new name for the config file is XF86Config-4 (I don't know if this is debian specific) instead of XF86Config.

    2. If you're planning on using a 3d accelerated graphics card i.e. (Rage 128, 3dfx, etc), you must have DRI support compiled into your kernel with the appropriate kernel module for your card. There is a new Mesa for XFree86 4.0.1 that has builtin support for DRI; however, there is a problem with this package. It does not include the libGLU(a subset of the Mesa library) static library or header files. This means that you must manually extract libGLU from the existing Woody Mesa package and copy it into /usr/local/lib/whatever if you plan on running 3d apps that depend on libGLU(almost all!).

    3. There are still serious issues with 3d acceleration on the Rage 128 cards and 3dfx cards. If I run tuxracer(or any GL app) with certain WindowMaker apps running(from inside of Blackbox), I get constant blinking inside of the 3d application. The solution(for now) is to shut down any WM applet that refreshes constantly. Don't even try to use 3d acceleration inside of enlightenment(horrible blinking).

    4. Try to avoid emailing Branden at all costs. He's been less than friendly to me, and I know other people who have had similar experiences.

    Other than that, the new X is really nice and noticably faster than the 3.3 series. Enjoy it.

  • Experience with a Voodoo3 and X4.01 Woody (Score:4)

    by Outlyer ( 1767 ) on Saturday November 04, 2000 @02:32PM (#648960) Homepage
    Well, I upgraded to X4 yesterday via apt, and the packager did an amazing job. First of all, there is a nice dialog-style configuration tool called Dexter which builds a config file easily. However, there are a couple of caveats:
    (1) If you're using DRI with a Voodoo3, you need to modify your XF86Config-4 to use a default depth of 16... maybe it's obvious to some people, I didn't make the conclusion instantly.
    (Voodoo3's only support 3D in 16-bit color)
    (2) You need to find ttmkfdir if you want to use Truetype fonts, mkfontdir doesn't do it. I don't know if there is a Debian package either.
    (3) Voodoo3 support is buggy, I don't know if it's the Glide, the DRI modules, or X itself, but some things (like a few xmms plugins) crashed my box HARD, as in, I needed a hard reboot.
    Anyway, those issues aside, this is a remarkably well-packaged version of X4, and most people will have little or no trouble with a smooth upgrade via apt. Much props to Branden for packaging them so well.
    If you do upgrade, believe me, there is a noticeable speed increase, and Tuxracer is playable :) Don't forget to build that 2.4-test10 kernel too.

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