(i.e. on the next week) ...don't upgrade blindly. Please take the
following observations (from X.Org 6.9-RC3) into consideration.
I. Compilation issues:
1. The gcc4 patch is no longer needed.
2. The "locale_names" patch no longer applies, and the
[EMAIL PROTECTED] testcase passes without the patch.
3. The luit_race patch is no longer needed.
4. The <linux.config.h> sed is still needed.
5. Compllation fails on the
xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/os-support/linux/lnx_agp.c file with the
error location pointing to /usr/include/linux/agpgart.h. I believe this
to be a bug in linux-libc-headers. Workaround: add the following line to
the very top of the
xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/os-support/linux/lnx_agp.c file:
#include <linux/types.h>
6. xterm is no longer built, but is still mentioned in the twm menu.
II. Runtime issues
With the default settings and the 2.6.15-rc5 kernel, I experience
lockups when running glxgears. These lockups are somehow related to
cursor shape changes. My video card is:
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280
[Radeon 9200] (rev 01)
or, for those who prefer "lspci -n" output for exactness,
0000:01:00.0 0300: 1002:5961 (rev 01)
I was able to fix the issue by switching from the old "XAA" architecture
to "EXA":
Section "Device"
Identifier "My Video Card"
Driver "ati"
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "true"
EndSection
Note that this requires a recent in-kernel DRI driver, i.e. the current
LiveCD 2.6.12.5 kernel is too old for this trick. And, of course, this
fix is ATI-specific and can't be put in the default LiveCD xorg.conf.
III. Configuration issues
1. The "en_US" keyboard layout has been renamed to just "us". The
console configurator has to be changed to take this into account.
2. The new "evdev" driver is able to handle keyboard and mouse input,
the existing "kbd" and "mouse" drivers are declared as obsolete.
However, I cannot recommend switching to the new keyboard setup yet,
because of unresolved XKB issues: no way to set the Russian layout
correctly when the "evdev" driver is used for keyboard. Mouse is OK.
I admit that I have not tried the new modular X.Org 7.0-rc3 yet, but,
since the code is the same, the same issues exist.
Going modular would bring us the advantage of being able to avoid
building unwanted components. E.g., everything except xlockmore is now
using Xft fonts, so none of the core bitmap fonts (except "fixed" and
"cursor") are needed if we replace xlockmore with xscreensaver. Those
bitmap fonts take 42 megabytes, and there are many bugs in X.Org fontset
handling (relevant for i18n and UTF-8 locales). Also, it has been
reported (can't verify) that core font metrics are miscalculated when
screen resolution goes above 1280x1024. So it would be a good idea to
drop support for such fonts.
--
Alexander E. Patrakov
--
http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/livecd
FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/
Unsubscribe: See the above information page
