From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Feb 5 21: 7: 0 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4260337B405 for ; Wed, 5 Feb 2003 21:06:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from pool-151-201-19-185.pitt.east.verizon.net (pool-151-201-19-185.pitt.east.verizon.net [151.201.19.185]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 522DB43F75 for ; Wed, 5 Feb 2003 21:06:58 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dacut@kanga.org) Received: from kanga.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sydney.kanga.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A2ABD10C3F5 for ; Wed, 5 Feb 2003 23:10:47 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3E41E047.50900@kanga.org> Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 23:10:47 -0500 From: David Cuthbert User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021212 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: GGI (was: Project Status) References: <20030205035930.45235.qmail@web13404.mail.yahoo.com> <20030205103556.B7212@papagena.rockefeller.edu> In-Reply-To: <20030205103556.B7212@papagena.rockefeller.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > XFree86 is doing great, and getting better and better, in my opinion. > What's the problem? [...] Stability? It's rock solid. Hrm. Sadly, I must disagree here. Although the core algorithms of XF86 may be solid, (many of) the drivers are far from so. Much of this, of course, isn't the XF86 developers' fault; video hardware is notorious for being poorly or incorrectly documented, and the rush to market often introduces bugs which, if not worked around, can crash the machine unless the software carefully tip-toes around said bugs. From what I understand, the hardware developers are reluctant to share information with the XF86 team (low volume, questions about enforcing NDAs, etc.). I think they're being overly paranoid, but I understand their concern. Anyway, I'm on a box which allows me to log in about once. Once the X server goes down, it takes the machine with it about 75% of the time (this is a card from the long-defunct Number 9 company, the Revolution IV card required to drive the SGI flatpanel monitor over an OpenLDI connection, the Betamax of LCD connectors). Under Windows, this was never a problem (even switching to full-screen command prompt mode), presumably because Microsoft had access to the hardware designers. I do wish that there was a way to use Windows drivers through some kind of (massive and ugly) compatibility interface. No, I'm not volunteering to write it. :-) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message