Very Computer

I managed to download and install Xfree86 4.0 with remarkably few problems.
It took me some time to find out how to configure the XF86Config file but
all in all after five hours everything was up and running.

First the positive.
X now seems to run like hell. At least with my Rage 128 the scrolling between
workspaces (I use Enlightenment) is wonderfully fluent. I could never before use
opaque window-resizing. Now I can without any problems. Also it seems to me that
graphics-intensive themes in for Gtk and E don't slow the computer down much
anymore.

Alas, there is also a lot of negative sides.
You have already read about the complaints that colors are screwed up after you
change to a VT and then back to X. After that only a restart of X helps.
The other really annoying bug is that many pixels in images that are near total
black will be displayed wrong. They are either white or filled with textures of
formerly displayed images. Simlilar things happen when I scroll over eterms.
Eterms sometimes get almost unusable. Xterms are better, but they have wrong
colors. I can't use yast or slrn in them.

First I didn't know if graphics problems were related to incompatible or
outdated libraries, for example imlib.
But then I noticed that the scrolling in gv is completely broken. So this
can't be it.
On a side not, the Staroffice fonts now look really ugly. Since I never understood
fonts under Linux, I didn't bother to look how to fix this.

--

  Honesty-Compassion-Honor-Justice-Honesty-Valor-Sacrifice-Sprituality
How many virtues must be broken for Ultima 9 to be released like it was?

Quote:> X now seems to run like hell. At least with my Rage 128 the scrolling
between
> workspaces (I use Enlightenment) is wonderfully fluent.

You are lucky, from what I have read, it would seem that a lot of
accelerated drivers (especially ATI) are no longer present.
You have the only one that is still accelerated (Rage 128 - which is done by
Suse if I remember correctly).

By the sounds of your other comments - it has quite a long way to go before
it's ready for general use.

I use E on 3.3.6 - and my Rage Pro flies on that too. Chances are that you
were using the Rage 128 on an unaccelerated version 3. Have a look at the
Xfree86 website, and get an accelerated server (version 3....) for your
card. You'll then have stability and speed.

Regards
-craig.

Yes, I was lucky I guess.

Quote:>By the sounds of your other comments - it has quite a long way to go before
>it's ready for general use.

I agree. Still, it looks like a great start. I have seen a lot of .0
versions that were a lot worse.

Quote:>I use E on 3.3.6 - and my Rage Pro flies on that too. Chances are that you
>were using the Rage 128 on an unaccelerated version 3. Have a look at the
>Xfree86 website, and get an accelerated server (version 3....) for your
>card. You'll then have stability and speed.

No, I was already using that driver. Without it I wondered if it was a
mistake to replace my old mach32 card. Once I found the SuSE rage128
driver things were very much improved.
But at least to me it seems that with the update to Xfree86 4.0
X became much faster than even the old accelerated driver.
I could be wrong, though.

Anyway, there is still much I don't know about the new version, like
the Truetype support and how to use GLX effectively.
I decided to wait and watch the newsgroup right now.

--

  Honesty-Compassion-Honor-Justice-Honesty-Valor-Sacrifice-Sprituality
How many virtues must be broken for Ultima 9 to be released like it was?

I wondered about this too, so I determined from the
available docs that mkfontdir was still needed to
generate a fonts.dir file for the ttf's. However,
mkfontdir doesn't by itself know about ttf's, so you
need another utility called `ttmkfdir' to generate
a file called `fonts.scale', which in turn is read by
mkfontdir. To be honest, the format of the two files
did not appear to differ, so presumably you could
create fonts.scale and simply copy it to fonts.dir
(that seems to be all that mkfontdir does with it).

The results of this were positive in the sense that
X now could use ttf's (after adding the necessary
FontPath to XF86Config, of course). On the other hand,
I was unable to obtain any size other than 12 point,
which made them to small to use under Netscape and
such (I like 14pt Verdana on my 15" monitor).

I'm not recalling where I found ttmkfdir, but do
a search on it and I'm sure you'll find it.

Todd

They do present, though they are not enabled by default. I got a ATI Mach64 card, and using the ATI driver, it runs like hell!

Quote:>>By the sounds of your other comments - it has quite a long way to go before
>>it's ready for general use.

> I agree. Still, it looks like a great start. I have seen a lot of .0
> versions that were a lot worse.

Yeah, I was up and running in about an hour, including the time that took me to see that ati driver is the fastest.
I guess that the fact that I didn't knew that there is no accel ATI drivers, is what helped me to find them ;)

Quote:>>I use E on 3.3.6 - and my Rage Pro flies on that too. Chances are that you
>>were using the Rage 128 on an unaccelerated version 3. Have a look at the
>>Xfree86 website, and get an accelerated server (version 3....) for your
>>card. You'll then have stability and speed.

> No, I was already using that driver. Without it I wondered if it was a
> mistake to replace my old mach32 card. Once I found the SuSE rage128
> driver things were very much improved.
> But at least to me it seems that with the update to Xfree86 4.0
> X became much faster than even the old accelerated driver.
> I could be wrong, though.

> Anyway, there is still much I don't know about the new version, like
> the Truetype support and how to use GLX effectively.
> I decided to wait and watch the newsgroup right now.

I used an old accel driver for my ATI, and on XF4, X became twice as fast.

--
Best regads,
        David Tabachnikov (NetHunter)
Please sign the Linux driver petition at http://www.libranet.com/petition.html

Michael,

I have Xfree86 4.0 and use Rage Fury 128 with 16Mb - I can get only
640x480 at 60Hz res - any tips on how to change these settings in the
XF86Config file ? Maybe you could post yours here as an example ?

Many Thanks
Alan

In order to configure my XF86Config I used the xf86config script and
modified it with my old modlines and so that Staroffice and a couple
of other applications run properly.
And of course I changed the driver from svga to rage128.
I wonder why the rage128 still isn't included in the script.

If this doesn't help, here is the script.
I deleted most comments. I hope I didn't delete anything important, too.

---------- snip here ------------

Section "Module"
    Load        "dbe"         # Double buffer extension
    SubSection  "extmod"
      Option    "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension
    EndSubSection
    Load        "type1"
    Load        "freetype"
    Load       "glx"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"

    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/:unscaled"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/URW"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
    FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
#    ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
#    Option "NoTrapSignals"
#    Option "DontZap"
#    Option "Dont Zoom"
#    Option "DisableVidModeExtension"
#    Option "AllowNonLocalXvidtune"
#    Option "DisableModInDev"
#    Option "AllowNonLocalModInDev"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard1"
    Driver      "Keyboard"
#    Option     "Protocol"      "Xqueue"
    Option "AutoRepeat" "500 30"
#    Option     "Xleds"      "1 2 3"
#    Option "LeftAlt"     "Meta"
#    Option "RightAlt"    "ModeShift"
#    Option "XkbModel"    "pc102"
#    Option "XkbModel"    "microsoft"
#    Option "XkbVariant"  "nodeadkeys"
#    Option "XkbOptions"  "ctrl:swapcaps"
#    Option "XkbDisable"
    Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
    Option "XkbModel" "pc101"
    Option "XkbLayout"        "de"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse1"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option "Protocol"    "PS/2"
    Option "Device"      "/dev/mouse"

#    Option "Protocol"        "Xqueue"
#    Option "BaudRate"        "9600"
#    Option "SampleRate"      "150"
#    Option "Emulate3Buttons"
#    Option "Emulate3Timeout"    "50"
#    Option "ChordMiddle"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "My Monitor"
    HorizSync   30-95
    VertRefresh 50-160
   Modeline  "1280x1024" 157.50 1280 1344 1504 1728 1024 1025 1028 1072 +hsync +vsync
   Modeline  "1024x768"  115.50 1024 1056 1248 1440 768 771 781 802 -hsync -vsync
   Modeline  "800x600"    69.65 800 864 928 1088 600 604 610 640 -hsync -vsync
   Modeline  "640x480"    45.80 640 672 768 864 480 488 494 530 -hsync -vsync
   Modeline  "512x384"    22.00 512 528 592 640 384 385 388 404 -hsync -vsync
   Modeline  "320x240"    15.75 320 336 384 400 240 244 246 262 doublescan
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Standard VGA"
    VendorName  "Unknown"
    BoardName   "Unknown"
    Driver     "vga"
#    BusID      "PCI:0:10:0"
#    VideoRam   256
#    Clocks     25.2 28.3
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Rage 128"
    Driver     "r128"
    VideoRam    32768
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen 1"
    Device      "Rage 128"
    Monitor     "My Monitor"
    DefaultDepth 16

   SubSection "Display"
      Depth        8
      Modes        "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" "512x384" "320x240"
   EndSubSection
   SubSection "Display"
      Depth        15
      Modes        "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" "512x384" "320x240"
   EndSubSection
   SubSection "Display"
      Depth        16
      Modes        "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" "512x384" "320x240"
   EndSubSection
   SubSection "Display"
      Depth        24
      Modes        "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" "512x384" "320x240"
   EndSubSection
   SubSection "Display"
      Depth        32
      Modes        "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" "512x384" "320x240"
   EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier  "Simple Layout"
    Screen "Screen 1"
    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection