hi,
after upgrading from LM8.2 to 9.0 (actually a completely new
installation) I was curious if 3D-acceleration for my SIS630-based
laptop was now functional in LM: short conclusion: NO.
I had to deal with the following strange things:
* X-Configuration:
I was told that 3D-acceleration was possible for my card, but only in
XFree 3.x. In the next sentence however I was told that 3D-acceleration
was possible for my card, but only in XFree 4.x.
* 3D-acceleration - DRM:
The acceleration itself was not operable in any way because for reasons
unknown the standard LM9.0 kernel does not have no SIS-DRM-module. After
downloading the kernel-sources I found out (make menuconfig) that the
SIS-DRM was not enabled in the kernel configuration.
* 3D-acceleration - Framebuffer:
In order to work, the SIS-DRI-driver for X needs its own
framebuffer-driver (SISFB) loaded right after the kernel boots. That can
either be done by adding "video:sisfb" in lilo.conf or by loading it as
a module (which is probably not reasonable for LM).
Finally after recompiling the kernel and adding "video:sisfb" to
lilo.conf I got this so called 3D-accelerator working (it is actually
not much more but only "so-called", but thats another story :-{).
Maybe the necessary changes can make it into the next release, as there
are quite a lot of cheap laptops around that are based on that chipset.
Udo
