xfree 4.2.99.4 Is it worth it?

Chickpea · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2002 Posts: 846 Location: Vancouver WA

I am soliciting the opinions of those who have sucessfully upgraded xfree. Is it worth it? Are there any noticiable improvements? I looked at the Change Log but I am still wondering if there is going to be any improvements in perfomance?

Cat

floam · Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 10:43 pm Post subject:

well, what are you running now? I uprgared from 4.2.99-3, nothing very notable, though from 4.2.1 to 4.2.99 was nice.

Chickpea · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2002 Posts: 846 Location: Vancouver WA

richjoyce · n00b Joined: 22 Oct 2002 Posts: 20 Location: Canada

apparently 2.5.x kernels and 4.2.99.x X are very fast together

haven't tried either myself

phelan · Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 11:12 pm Post subject:

I do recommend it, if you know what you are doing. Some progs may have a problem with it. (e. g. TuxRacer fails to compile, some winex compilation troubles)

suka · Developer Joined: 22 Apr 2002 Posts: 383

Emerged it yesterday, so far no problems but now my Gnome 2.2rc2 works with the newest NVidia-Drivers without getting totally sluggish

ebrostig · Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 11:47 pm Post subject:

I'm running 4.2.99-4, looks good.

I can not really say if there are any difference between earlier 4.2.99 versions and this one.

My primary reason is better support for my graphics hardware, Intel i810 in the new version. Works like a charm with direct rendering and company

Erik
_________________
'Yes, Firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'

praxim · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 12:34 am Post subject:

I upgraded, and I really don't like it. The radeon driver seems entirely messed up- when going into X, my console text gets entirely messed up, spitting corrupted characters all over before finally switching into X proper. My "select the entire desktop in Nautilus" benchmark is getting awful results, though this could be my fault. It worked flawlessly with ATI's binary drivers, however. Also, I'm experiencing the strange break in the default cursor that others have.
If anyone has a solution for any of these, I'd be greatly appreciative.

El_Presidente_Pufferfish · Veteran Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1179 Location: Seattle

The only change i noticed was the new cursor, and i like it :-D

vers_iq · Apprentice Joined: 18 May 2002 Posts: 264

migrated from 4.2.1 to 4.2.99.3 ages ago and yesterday, updated to 4.2.99.4, the only think that interest me is randr, might want to compile kdebase/kdeutils or something for kcmrandr, another thing is i find the bright red handhelds pointer is very nice.
_________________
"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America's cup, France accusing the US of arrogance and Germany doesn't want to go to war."

plate · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 3:04 am Post subject:

I'm experiencing the same problems Praxim described, plus a very annoying inability to switch back to a console with <ctrl-alt-Fn>. It now addresses virtual desktops in the window manager, not plain old consoles on F1-F6 and X on F7 anymore... Anybody know how to fix that? And how can I get rid of those ridiculous shadows under my extremely ugly semitransparent pointer?

EDIT: Played around some more, and it gets worse. <Ctrl-TAB> still switches from one desktop to the next, but <Alt-Fn>, e.g. F2 to run an application, has also ceased to work. Driver is ATI, my video card is a plain Radeon 7500. Any ideas what may be going on?

floam · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 3:55 am Post subject:

the new cursors are horrible, way too big and colorful for my minimalistic tastes. to get rid of them do a:

phelan · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 9:24 am Post subject:

deribin · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2003 Posts: 70 Location: Vancouver

when I'm trying to emerge "xfree-drm",
I got the followed error:
>>> Install xfree-drm-4.2.99.4 into /var/tmp/portage/xfree-drm-4.2.99.4/image/ category x11-base
* installing DRM...
gcc -O2 -Wall -Wwrite-strings -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-align -Wstrict-prototypes -Wnested-externs -Wpointer-arith -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -fomit-frame-pointer -DCONFIG_AGP -DCONFIG_AGP_MODULE -DCONFIG_DRM_SIS -DMODVERSIONS -include /usr/src/linux/include/linux/modversions.h -I/usr/src/linux/include -c i810_dma.c -o i810_dma.o
i810_dma.c: In function `i810_unmap_buffer':
i810_dma.c:200: too few arguments to function `do_munmap_R951cacb4'
make: *** [i810_dma.o] Error 1

!!! ERROR: x11-base/xfree-drm-4.2.99.4 failed.
!!! Function src_install, Line 88, Exitcode 2
!!! (no error message)

Darthanubis · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Oct 2002 Posts: 77

Went from 4.2.99.3 > .4 and it killed my damn AA that I worked so hard on!

I'm pissed.

Also, once again, I can't roll back to the previous ebuild, because its been raped from my system!

What? Now if I want AA I have to go all the way back to 4.2.1?

phelan · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 10:30 am Post subject:

jufoa · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 10:30 am Post subject:

i am going to upgrade as soon as stable comes out

nemiak · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Posts: 19

I've had nothing but trouble with 2.2.99.4.

I lost AA fonts in KDE and Mozilla & GDM broke.
Bold text in KDE doesn't show up as bold anymore.

I find the new shadowed cursor distracting.

Has anyone else had this kind of trouble?

Larde · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 10:57 am Post subject:

I don't use KDE, but my AA in Gnome and mozilla/phoenix still is fine. Overall, I don't see any problems with the new xfree.

Yours,
Larde.
_________________
Someday this will be my home... http://moonage.net/
I'll make you a deal
I'll say I came from Earth and my tongue is taped

not_registered · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Posts: 148

no problems so far besides the transparent cursor bug that makes cursors transparent and ugly :lol:

har har har.

otherwise everything works as good as it did with X4.2.1 (im guessing alot of the changes are under the cover (grrrrr baby very grrrrr) or related to features in window managers and desktop environments that arent implemented yet.
_________________
It's Floam, it's Floam. It's flying foam!

plate · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 12:10 pm Post subject:

Nobody else experiencing the problems I have? Namely <ctrl-alt-Fn> doesn't switch between X and virtual console, <alt-Fn> is not doing anything at all, and - just discovered that one - <ctrl-alt-bsp> doesn't kill X?

wzzrd · Apprentice Joined: 18 Jul 2002 Posts: 245

Haven't been playing with it long enough to notice the real nice bits, I guess... But: I do have a very, very spiffy new cursor. It is überl337. Apart from that: I heard the 41.xx nvidia drivers now work without major hogging the system, but I haven't dared to upgrade them yet

idl · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 1:44 pm Post subject:

4.3 is out in a few days aint it?

floam · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 2:12 pm Post subject:

again to to turn off the new ugly cursors read my post up a few posts

mlybarger · Guru Joined: 04 Sep 2002 Posts: 475

[quote="port001"]4.3 is out in a few days aint it?[/quote]

all the xfree folks say in irc is "sometime in feb". though their web site says Dec 2002 it was released to binary packagers. and i thought the kde release was off schedule.