On Fri, 1 Mar 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 10:26:00 +1100 >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: Mike A. Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >Subject: Re: Linux on Tecra 9000 > >On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 11:21:27AM -0500, Mike A. Harris wrote: >> On Tue, 26 Feb 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> >> The latest Savage driver from Tim Roberts, is included in Red Hat >> Linux 7.1 and 7.2, either stock, or with our current erratum. >> Tim's driver is the latest driver. > >It doesn't look like it's in my RH 7.1 ? If it's in an update rpm can you confirm the >version number so I can look for it ?
XFree86-4.1.0-15 - ftp://updates.redhat.com/7.1 or use up2date to make things easier as there's quite a few new dependancies. >> It is the latest one, and that driver was released quite some >> time AFTER Red Hat Linux 7.1 was shipped. I communicate with Tim >> fairly often, and update the Savage driver with his newest code >> whenever he releases a new update. The current Savage driver >> shipped for both Red Hat Linux 7.1 and 7.2 is 1.1.20t, which is >> the latest version unless a new one has come out and gotten past >> me. > >I have previously downloaded and tried the latest driver from >Tim's Web site. It comes in xf41sav.tgz and you are correct it >is 1.1.20t. It has initial SuperSavage support (the Tecra 9000 >has an S3 SuperSavage IXC). This driver did not work on my >machine. I emailed Tim and he confirmed that it needed XFree86 >4.1. My RH7.1 comes with 4.03 and it certainly doesn't have the >correct driver for my machine. You're not using the latest official update. 4.0.3 indeed doesn't have the latest driver because 4.0.3 predates the latest driver by several months. >So maybe you've produced an rpm with one compiled for XFree86 >4.03 ? Where is it ? What is it called ? No, 4.0.3 is no longer supported at all. 4.1.0 is our official update which is supported now. >Do I need to load all XFree rpms or just the latest >XFree86-S3-....rpm ? If I install an rpm how do I know which >version of Tim's driver is included in it ? That is a 3.3.6 rpm, not a 4.x one. You need all of the packages. Again, the easiest way to upgrade is via up2date. Alternatively you can use ftp as per above though if you prefer. >Now I was also wondering why you ship Tim's driver ? Because it fixes several longstanding critical bugs which have prevented users from using their machines effectively, and the stock drivers are quite broken. >Have you tested it and compared it with the drivers on the S3 >web site and found it to be better. No I have not, because I dont need to in order to know that Tim's driver is better than what is on the S3 site. Tim is/was the official Savage driver maintainer, and has been since the beginning if I'm not mistaken. He knows this code better than anyone does period. He maintained this under NDA from S3. Within the last 6 months or so, S3 decided that they wanted to maintain the driver for whatever reason, and put it up on their website. The driver on the S3 site is basically an exact copy of Tim's 1.1.18 driver if I am not mistaken, and as such is older than Tim's current driver. S3 appears to have just wanted to kill off Linux support than to actually maintain it IMHO. At any rate, I trust Tim's driver more than anything, and as long as Tim is maintaining the driver, his latest efforts will be included in Red Hat Linux, as his code has proven to solve all known problems reported to us with Savage based hardware. >Tim says that his is built on code for the savage drivers that >had some bug fixes not included in the base from which S3 built >theirs. Correct. >Is this the reason ? Maybe it's historical ? i.e. Tim has been >writing the drivers for some time (AFAIK) or is it political >i.e. to do with one produced free Vs one produced by commercial >interests ? I'm not advocating a change I would have used his >driver if it had worked with my installation but I am curious. Basically, the drivers on the S3 site as far as I'm concerned are of zero importance to anyone, other than the fact someone can say "we support Linux, download our driver from http://foo".; I trust Tim's own code to the point that if S3 released an actual driver that had in-house written bug fixes, I would pass it by Tim first to ensure the code is sane. Tim's 1.1.20t driver in particular fixed a _lot_ of bugs that were long standing. After updating to this driver I received a lot of thanks back from happy Savage users both outside and inside Red Hat. So in summary, if using the latest release, with a supported card, there are no known issues that I am aware of. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike A. Harris Shipping/mailing address: OS Systems Engineer 190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie, XFree86 maintainer Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3 Red Hat Inc. Phone: (705)949-2136 http://www.redhat.com ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris Red Hat XFree86 mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] General open IRC discussion: #xfree86 on irc.openprojects.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
