[ltp] XFree86 4.2 1161-43G RH7.2

[linux-thinkpad@www.bm-soft.com]

In your message dated: 23 Jan 2002 23:00:08 GMT,
The pithy ruminations from Martin West on 
<[ltp] XFree86 4.2 1161-43G RH7.2> were:
=> 
=> Just installed XF86 4.2 without problem so far. It seems to be faster,
=> and touch wood I have not had the problem where the cursor would decided
=> to offset itself to right by about 100 pixels, only cure was to reboot.
=> regards Martin West
=> 

I just installed the XFree86 4.2.0 binaries (from xfree86.org, not RPMs) on my
Thinkpad A22p (ATI Rage Mobilty 128 graphics), kernel 2.4.18-pre4. There was no
problem with the installation, but the kernel driver for the r128 card doesn't
give DRI (DRM) access, and I got errors about the version of the r128.o module
being too old (not unexpected). 

Next I used the DRI kernel source module from
	http://www.xfree86.org/~alanh/
to build a new module...that worked for acceleration and DRI (and it's
noticeably faster), but:
	
	under 16bpp, I notice a bit of color "corruption" at the xdm (kdm,
	actually) login prompt (but everything is fine once I'm logged in)

	dvd display is corrupt--the "classic" ATI problem--only the left 1/2
	of the image is shown, and the pixels have the wrong proportion (this
	happens with a number of different players and disks--and it was not
	a problem under X 4.1.0)

I then tried the drivers from
	http://gatos.sourceforge.net/ati.2.php
and then the drm-kernel modules from 
	http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gatos/drm-kernel-1.2.0-6.tar.gz
(which don't have a Makefile.linux in the tarball), and the drm-kernel source
from CVS (where there is a Makefile.linux). Now there's still the minor color
problem during the kdm login (I have an image background, and the overlayed
login dialog box doesn't have the correct colors--it sort of looks like a
bit-depth problem), but everything elese works.

The performance under X is fine (glxgears at just under 800 with lots of 
windows open) and now the DVD problem is fixed. The new release does "feel" 
faster--switching between virtual desktops (each of which has a solid color 
background, no wallpaper) seems faster, with none of the visible repainting of 
the screen in large blocks.

Mark


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