X on NetBSD

[Paul V. Bolotoff]

Well, there are several problems actually. First of all, the SRM BIOS emulation
layer which translates i386 BIOS code to Alpha. It isn't perfect, so that some
hardware doesn't even start up. Secondly, many drivers fail during software
bootstrapping through int10. It isn't a problem on i386, but some kind of
emulation is required on Alpha once again. Finally, broken PCI DMA makes a real
trouble. Doesn't seem to be fixable without getting rid of those obscure
*_bus_space macros though. For some reason, there are even more problems on
NetBSD than on FreeBSD. Maybe syscons is a better deal for X if compared to
wscons\pccons or the reason is somewhere else (for instance, working module
loader on FreeBSD). The fact is that some video hardware runs well on FreeBSD but
doesn't on NetBSD no matter how hard you try. In general, if you're serious of
running X on *BSD\alpha, get a bunch of PCI video cards (old probably) and
give'em a try. Some should work. In particular, when it comes to FreeBSD 4.11 and
XFree86 4.5.0 on my AlphaPC 164LX, I have succeeded with 3Dfx Voodoo 3 and
Banshee, NVIDIA\STM Riva 128 as well as with several Trident cards. Neither
Matrox card worked though. I cannot tell of X.Org because I don't use it. I'm not
into licencing battles, but if some people decide they want a credit for their
hard volunteered work, I guess they can have it for sure, and that shouldn't be
promoted as the primary reason for this fork in development. I also don't run
FreeBSD 5.x or 6.x on Alpha because I see very few to no real
advantages\improvements compared to 4.x. Maybe it's a matter of taste. Haven't
tried XFree86 on NetBSD for a long time.

PVB

On Tue Jul 17 20:48 , 'Rafael Ruiz' <gandano at gmail.com> sent:

>Hi All!
>I would like to know why *BSD has problems with X (Xorg or XFree) on Alpha
>Platform. I like NetBSD, FreeBSD, but i have a lot of problem for use X on
>these. X runs very well on Linux/Alpha but i would like to work with BSD and
>to make a workstation with X. Why *BSD don't let X work on Alpha? This in
>not problem of X. In old versions of FreeBSD like 4.5 and so, XFree ran
>good.
>
>I think that BSD/alpha is better that Linux/Alpha .... but do we must to
>limit at console/text mode only? Due to i can not to use X on FreeBSD, nor
>NetBSD, I check OpenBSD, but it has the same problem. In NetBSD we can to
>build xsrc (XDecNet, XFree86,...), but only for 21164 processors, with 21264
>it seem not work. We can to use caseydoodley Xfree86 modifications
>too(thanks mel), but with some limitations.
>
>We only have two options:
>
>        1.- For Workstations with graphical environment -> Linux
>        2.- For Servers (Text mode) -> BSD
>
>Is this our only choice?
>
>It's a pity that BSD has this problem with X, it is the best free Operating
>System for Alpha. Does think NetBSD or OpenBSD developers to open the door
>for X in the future?
>
>Opinions? Solutions?
>
>Thanks for your comments.
>Rafa
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