Date: Fri, 29 Dec 1995 13:28:27 +1100 (EST) From: David Dawes <dawes@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: hasty@rah.star-gate.com, sos@freebsd.org, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, jdli@linux.csie.nctu.edu.tw, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: syscons driver Message-ID: <199512290228.NAA02877@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <7177.820198788@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Dec 28, 95 04:59:48 pm
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>> Me thinks this group is too OS centric .
>>
>> The point that it must run on minimal hardware is debatable at this time
>> tnks to Win95 8) Many are upgrading the systems with enough resources
>> to run a multitasking operating system. I bought a P100 not too long ago and
>> it is expected that P100 will be the entry level Pentium in less than
>> 6 months . Disks are cheap now days. Due to Win95 many are gettting 16MB
>> of memory.
>
>And all unfortunately irrelevant if you CAN'T GET X TO WORK ON YOUR
>HARDWARE!
>
>Seriously, if you think it's easy then I suggest that you spend a
>little time hanging out in the questions@xfree86.org mailing list to
>find out just how wrong you are. The X installation and configuration
>issue is an *utter disaster* that we're slowly getting around to
>fixing, but to suggest that the whole X mileau is something you could
>drop a novice user into ("What's a clock chip? What do all these
>timing numbers mean?!") right now just doesn't seem to match any
>definition of reality that I'm currently familiar with.
For the majority of cards that XFree86 runs on you don't need to worry
about timings and dot clocks, and stuff like that (I never do when
getting a new machine up and running). You run 'xf86config' and pick
out your card from the list. Unfortunately there is still an impression
amongst a lot of people that you still need to worry about all these
things for every card, and a lot of people end up making the installation
process more complicated than it nees to be. I see all the mail on the
xfree86@xfree86.org list, and the answer to too many of those questions
is "Get the latest XFree86 release, run xf86config, and select your card
from the list.
If you have an unsupported or poorly supported card, then things can
get difficult/impossible, but for the majority of people it doesn't need
to be as difficult as a lot of people make out.
Having said all this, we do realise that the XFree86 configuration can
be improved a lot, and we are currently working on this issue. We have
a mailing list setup for those interested in contributing ideas and/or
code to this (and you don't need to sign anything or join the XFree86
Project to join this list). If anyone here is interested, let me know.
David
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199512290228.NAA02877>