xorg7.3 [was: 7.0 preview slides]

[Warren Block]

On Sun, 4 Nov 2007, Peter Jeremy wrote:

> Having followed X within FreeBSD from XFree86 3.1.2 through to X.org
> 7.3, I can safely say that X.org 7.3 is by far the worst version as
> far as POLA violations and regressions are concerned.

It looks to me like X was mostly static for many years, and now xorg is 
starting to make serious improvements.  Documentation and testing always 
lag behind new code, and I think some of the problems have been due to 
lacking documentation of the new way.

> I don't recall seeing anyone mention "better", though possibly those 
> people aren't making a fuss.

Put me down for better--DRI works on both monitors of an MGA450, and now 
without a binary blob.  Granted, getting there took some doing.

Hotplugging an external monitor with my Thinkpad (ATI video) now also 
just works.

> It is difficult to understand how an "update" that broke generic 
> features like xkb LEDs, xdm and mouse scrolling, as well as ati, mga 
> and nv drivers (that I've personally used) could be considered an 
> improvement.  I agree that the problem with xkb LEDs has been 
> corrected, xdm has been partially fixed and I believe the nv problem 
> has been fixed and there is an unofficial patch to work-around the MGA 
> BIOS problem

The first two have been fixed (update to xdm within the last few days, 
thanks to Florent).  The MGA BIOS problem is not really a 7.3 problem. 
It's legacy X code that's been around for a while, and later versions of 
xorg revealed it.

> noticed so far:
> generic:
> - Updating xdm over-writes local modifications

There were a couple of problems with the port (#116421, #117722), but it 
may have been fixed with the last change.

> - Impossible to disable wired-in modelines in the X-server
> ati (Radeon X200M):
> - VTY/X11 switching is dodgier (corrupts the screen more frequently)
> - system clock gets screwed up (it can lose several seconds) during a
>   VTY/X11 switch
> - DPMS display off/on can corrupt the display
> - The X-server often abort()s on shutdown
> mga (G550):
> - Impossible to specify a default initial resolution
> - HW cursor is broken
> - DPMS is broken
> (I can't currently test the systems with nVIDIA chipsets)

Those look like xorg (non-FreeBSD) bugs that should be entered in 
bugs.freedesktop.org, or may already be there.

Tilman Sauerbeck is actively working on the new mga driver, and at least 
hardware cursor support is on the to-do list.

> I don't believe it's feasible to roll back to X.org 7.2 so in the
> short term (for the upcoming FreeBSD releases) about all that can be
> done is to try and locate and apply fixes for the various regressions.

Making sure there are PRs for FreeBSD problems and bug entries for xorg 
problems would be a good first step.

> The solution for the longer term is unclear - the FreeBSD ports system
> can't really handle a '-devel' variant of modular X.org - it comprises
> too many ports.  At the same time, the normal X.org ports can't be
> used for beta code because too many people will wind up running that
> code, courtesy of portupgrade or similar.  Maybe the GNOME or KDE
> groups have some suggestions on how to handle integration testing of
> large ports collections without adversely affecting the ports tree.

The modular version of xorg should make fixes quicker.  It's a lot 
easier to rebuild one module than all of X.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA