Subject: Re: XFree86 on alpha
To: NetBSD/alpha Discussion List <port-alpha@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: port-alpha
Date: 11/14/2003 16:09:09
[ On Wednesday, November 12, 2003 at 15:56:46 (-0500), Michael G. Schabert wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: XFree86 on alpha
>
> Xsrc does contain XFree86 sources, but it also contains sources for 
> XDecNetBSD, XMacBSD, etc which are not XFree86. When you compile 
> xsrc, there's an if defined(USE_XF86_4) directive. If that isn't set, 
> then it'll compile the native XServer instead of XFree if it's an 
> architecture which has a separate native Xserver.

Note USE_XF86_4 is optionally set to "yes" only for specific platforms
in /usr/share/mk/bsd.own.mk -- i.e. on a netbsd-1-6 system the old
xsrc/xc tree will be used when building xsrc on an alpha, by default,
instead of the new xfree/xc tree because USE_XF86_4 is not set for alpha
for NetBSD-1.6.x.

> The noticeable difference between XDecNetBSD and XFree86 is that you 
> cannot use the wscons virtual consoles with XDecNetBSD, while you can 
> when you run XFree86.

Hopefully someone is working on fixing this problem.  It should be
possible to add wscons support to any X11 server, though I've no idea
what level of difficulty this would be for XDecNetBSD.

> Also, XFree86 cannot control the TGA or PMAX 
> cards because they're graphics-only (no VGA-compatibility mode).

I don't think that's exactly true.  Note there is a "tga" driver for the
XFree86 version of the Xserver, though I suspect it can currently only
be used with PCI-attached TGA cards:

	xsrc/xfree/xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/drivers/tga/*

There are also some drivers for quite a few other non-VGA-compat cards
in the drivers directory (e.g. for the various Sun framebuffers).

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

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