Re: What to do with base X11 for netbsd-9 ?

[Chavdar Ivanov <ci4ic4%gmail.com@localhost>]

My two pennies...

I use -current on an HP Envy 17 with what is reported as Intel 530
graphics. It also has an NVidia GeForce 950M chip, but this is not
usable for now by NetBSD, although correctly identified. The new
graphics driver together with the Mesa updates finally got me with a
proper 3D-accellerated graphics and perfectly running in full screen
video. I can run, e.g. six simultaneous copies of glmark2, it doesn't
break sweat. The accellerated 3D works fine in epiphany as well, as I
have mentioned in another email (but not in firefox 67.0). Hence, I
wouldn't like global switch back to the old Intel driver. Modesetting
works as well, but without any of the goodies mentioned above. I think
I've had a single Xorg crash while testing 3D, but it was perhapsp too
much. Earlier glmark2 used to crash on exit, not any more. The system
has been very stable for me for the last few weeks.

The only problem I have - as most of the rest have said - is with xdm,
the apparently cosmetic nisdiplay of the username and password echo.
There was a suggestion to bring back the old xdm; I don't know the
difference, but I can tell that I have similar problems not only with
xdm, but with gdm, kdm and slim as well. They all work, but show
different types of screen damage (e.g. gdm - slowly disappearing short
horisontal lines close to the bottom of the screen). The subsequent
envirinments - mate, kde, gnome - all work OK, no screen distorsions.
Previously I had weird looking wndows under xfce4 - the shadows
appearing solid, long delays moving windows around - but these are now
gone ( I start xfce4 from text mode with startxfce4 ).

So for me the built-in Xorg is getting to a rather usable state now.
There is a message about the two microcode files not being loaded
(even if I have placed the latest versions in the relevant location,
others have reported similarly ), but I am not aware if this makes any
difference for the Intel driver. It would have been nice if we had a
newer nouveau port and the GeForce card was supported, but this is not
a showstopper for me ( even under Linux the Optimus configurations
seldom work properly ).

Chavdar

On Wed, 29 May 2019 at 19:16, Christos Zoulas <christos%astron.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> In article <26566.1559152951%splode.eterna.com.au@localhost>,
> matthew green  <mrg%eterna.com.au@localhost> wrote:
> >Martin Husemann writes:
> >> Hey folks,
> >>
> >> I would like to get your feedback about the current state of the base X11,
> >> as there have been lots of threads about various issues and I have lost
> >> the overview of what works in -current and what does not.
> >>
> >> We *really* need to branch netbsd-9 very soon now, and it is unclear (at
> >> least to me) what should happen to the in-tree X11 version.
> >>
> >>  - we have very obvious display bugs at first sight in xdm
> >
> >let's revert to the old xdm for now.  this one should be easy.
> >can someone work on it please?
>
> Are those display bugs though? Or is it just that the right default
> properties are not there? If it is just a properties issue, we can
> fix it differently.
>
> >>  - self hosting builds on 4 GB amd64 machines are not really possible
> >>    any more (due to LLVM runtime dependencies, which can not even be
> >>    disabled at build time right now)
> >
> >we should fix it to be disable-able.  i don't think the default
> >should change.  [*]
>
> Yes, we should fix it to be disable-able and the default should
> stay to build it.
>
> >
> >>  - reports here (and on other lists) about display problems and success
> >>    stories have no clear winner (but probably due to me losing track)
> >
> >i've not heard back about anyone using the now-re-addded old
> >intel driver yet, but AFAICT, everyone either had success with
> >dropping the old driver binary in place or using 'modesetting'.
> >
> >i was hoping to find time to bisect the intel driver tree from
> >the 2014-snapshot to the top of tree to find where the display
> >issues appeared, but perhaps we should switch back to the old
> >driver for now until i or someone has fixed the new one..
>
> My experience with the new driver has been better than that with
> the old driver (fewer to none visual artifact issues).
>
> christos
>


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