Re. http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-help/2002/07/07/0015.html

NetBSD does not currently support DRI.  If you are interested in it, you
might follow this link:

  http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/2002/06/17/0000.html

(This is a post to the current-users mailing list from back in June.)

DRI requires XFee86 4.x, which is now going to be the default in
NetBSD/i386 1.6, I gather.  (I'm a bit mixed on the change to XFree86 4.x.
I have a nice, working 3.x config, and was all set to postpone switching
to 4.x until DRI support was there.  4.x offers nothing new that I care
about, and will require me to change configs.  I may just keep the 3.3.6 X
server that ships with NetBSD 1.5.2.  (^&)


At this time, accelerated 3D under NetBSD is only possible via the Utah
package (a Mesa derivative that works with XFree86 3.x, but *not* XFree86
4.x).  I never got anything useful out of the Utah package.  (My video
card wasn't directly supported by the version we had in pkgsrc.  I didn't
have time to seperately try to port a more current version.  The "genric"
support (via SVGA) was supposed to offer some improvements even so (by
imposing fewer software layers and buffer-copies, I guess), as I recall;
but it offered little or no improvement for me and resulted in *terrible*
degradation of quality.  (When using the SVGA X server, I had to cut my
display resolution and the shading was done with coarse
dithering/stippling rather than smooth color selection as I recall. There
was something else (the depth buffer?) that was vastly degraded.)

Some people reported that the Utah package worked well for them, though.
It just didn't work well for my (S3Virge) card.

I think that the Utah project is dying (or has died) slowly.  It was a
stop-gap measure before XFree86 4.0 was released.  When XFree86 4.x was
released and GNU/LINUX kernels had DRI support, the raison d'etre for Utah
largely evaporated.


The unfortunate reality for as far as I can tell is: If you want hardware
acceleration and if Utah doesn't cut it for you, you need to use a
different OS.


  ``I probably don't know what I'm talking about.'' --rauch@math.rice.edu