Should 9.3 carry a warning about NEW_XORG

[Ian Smith]

On Sat, 5 Jul 2014 04:58:32 -0600, Warren Block wrote:
 > On Sat, 5 Jul 2014, John Marshall wrote:
 > 
 > > Perhaps my "X no longer works" scenario is due to "certain hardware"?
 > > Is there a list somewhere of hardware on which NEW_XORG will not work,
 > > so that folks running 9.2 with that hardware can set WITHOUT_NEW_XORG
 > > BEFORE they upgrade to 9.3 and save themselves grief?
 > 
 > There is a list of video cards, both working and non-working:
 > https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics#Video_cards

Which is unsurprisingly focussed on the newer hardware - what developers 
have and use, virtually by definition - but there's scant reference to 
what older hardware may NO LONGER be supported in newX.

John has a T43 thinkpad, with unstated graphics hardware; intel 915 or 
Radeon X300 according to thinkwiki?  And I have two going T23s with S3 
SuperSavage IX/C (2002 vintage) and an X200 with intel GM45 Contiga, 
just 'pre-2009' referring to:

https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/WITH_NEW_XORG

which leaves me unsure of support for these with new xorg, particularly 
when the footnote for VT switching(1) is incorrect for the meaning of 
'works' - the X200's GM45 happily switches to sc(4) vts from X - though 
it seems an unexpected X upgrade to WITH_NEW_XORG would likely leave me 
without visible vts until building a VT kernel? (and even then?)

I've read this thread 3 times and followed relevant references and I'm 
still confused about the 9.3-RELEASE scenario.

It seems that if you upgrade from 9.1 or 9.2 you will need to manually 
intervene, either way .. please correct any incorrect assumptions:

. if you don't wish your ports updated to new Xorg you'll need to add 
WITHOUT_NEW_XORG to make.conf before updating any relevant ports, though 
- inconsistently? - any installed packages, including those on the DVD, 
will still be for old Xorg.  Until you are sure this is the safer way -
but you have to know about it when upgrading.

. if you do want ports updated to new Xorg and you have older graphics 
hardware you'll need to compile a VT kernel to get vt switching from X 
back .. and you'll need to add the new repo to get new Xorg packages.

Seeing that a perhaps not miniscule proportion of 9.x X users will need 
to do some manual configuration on upgrading to 9.3, a relevant WARNING 
in http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.3R/relnotes.html should be helpful.

cheers, Ian