Re: NetBSD 6.0/amd64 on a Latitude E5500 (X11 related)

[iMil <imil%home.imil.net@localhost>]

Hi Peter,

> Simply downloading and extracting the X sets of the daily binary
> snapshots fixed this for me, but it's still a pain for new users
> who will just install 6.0 and don't even know that they can get
> daily snapshots, let alone what a "pullup" means and that such a
> snapshot will fix it.

Yes that's the spirit, while we're making quite some noise around
the 6.0 release, I know some newcomers who've been reluctant to pursue
the experience because they were unable to fix their X11
environment, which is a shame considering the overall quality of the
system.

> I used modular Xorg a few times in the past, but I learned not
> to do that as the Xorg upstream release updates kept breaking
> perfectly functional drivers.  I got glitches and crashes at
> various points in time.  The shitty state of Xorg in base is just
> a reflection of the basically nonexistent quality control that
> the Xorg upstream project seems to have for their drivers.

Did you? I've been using modular Xorg from pkgsrc for almost all
5.{0,1} lifetime and its been rock-solid, never had a glitch nor
a crash with it.

> > http://packages.netbsdfr.org/
>
> That's pretty cool!  These third-party repos should be advertised
> better as I thought there weren't any *at all*.  Are there others?

I must say I don't know, but I'm very curious about it, most of all
are there any non-NetBSD/DragonFly/MINIX maintained repositories out
there? Like for GNU/Linux? I know Jonathan Perkin from Joyent has
up-to-date SmartOS and OSX repositories.

> Particularly related to things like mplayer and other "legally murky"
> software.  For some reason on most Linuxen there's no problem getting
> binary packages for mplayer and vlc with full codecs, but on NetBSD
> there's no such thing (and vlc is nonfunctional considering it won't
> load 99% of the videos out there).  I think third party repos could
> fix this situation.

Very interesting point, we (NetBSDfr) don't really know what are the
legal risks of providing those restricted packages here in France. As
you say, most GNU/Linux distros provide these packages.

> I'd love to try this but I still consider Xorg's release crapshoot
> too risky.  It's a shame there's no other free X implementation which
> cares about non-Linux OSes.

I can only tell you that my laptop is now perfectly usable :)
I plan to upgrade my two other NetBSD-based workstations with it as
soon as the build for their architecture is finished.

Cheers,

------------------------------------------------------------------
Emile "iMil" Heitor .°. <imil@{home.imil.net,NetBSD.org,gcu.info}>
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