Feel free reproduce this mail anywhere you like. Reply to the list <debian-x@lists.debian.org>. Do not send mail to me privately.
* To use DRI you need a proper kernel version (not to mention a card supported by current DRI code). Unfortunately there is no official Linux kernel with the proper support. Use the latest 2.2.18pre or 2.4 test kernels. * There was a problem with the MIT-SHM (shared memory) extension at one point in the phase2 Debian packages, but it has been resolved. * The X Strike Force webpage is offline due to a disk crash, but it will be back when the machine is recovered. The unofficial XFree86 .debs are available at <http://samosa.debian.org/~branden/woody/>. * Where to send mails: this part is very important. * DON'T MAIL ME DIRECTLY ABOUT PROBLEMS WITH X. This is not only personally harassing since I've asked people thousands of times (plus once in nearly every message I send to the Debian lists), but it keeps other people who may have seen the same problem, or know of a fix, from helping you. * <debian-user@lists.debian.org> is the proper support list for problems with the officially released Debian XFree86 packages (3.3.6). * <debian-x@lists.debian.org> is not in general a user support list at all; only Debian-specific problems with my XFree86 4.x test packages should be sent here. In other words, problems with the *packaging* belong here. Problems with X itself should go to the XFree86 lists. * <newbie@xfree86.org> is the proper support list for problems with XFree86 from users who don't know much about the X Window System, diagnosing problems, or fixing them. This includes most of the people who send me private mail asking for help. * <xpert@xfree86.org> is the proper support list for problems with XFree86 from people who knowledgeable and motivated enough to help fix them (by, e.g., compiling X themselves from source, trying different versions from CVS to try and narrow down problems, or hacking source code themselves). * The packages I have made available of XFree86 4.x are not official, and not stable. I do not support upgrades between versions of these unofficial packages. If you have problems, downgrade to 3.3.6 or purge the X packages before changing versions. I *do* want to hear about package overlaps and other problems experienced when installing the phase2 .debs on a system "naked" of X, or when upgrading from official 3.3.6 packages. Mail reports of such to <debian-x@lists.debian.org>. * Impatience and complaining from people not motivated to contribute some of their own effort to solve problems will delay, not speed, the process of creating official debian packages for XFree86 4.x. I'd like to have stable packages of XFree86 4.x out myself. Life would be hunky-dory. But they're just not ready yet. * Stop complaining about the size of these experimental packages, particularly xlibs-dev; they contain everything that they are supposed to per Debian policy, and will get much smaller when I do the official release because I will be stripping them. I am presently not stripping these packages because I am hoping some enterprising users might be willing to help track down bugs by providing backtraces. (In any case, the gargantuan xlibs-dev package is not even necessary unless you're compiling X clients -- but keep in mind that you MUST NOT compile official Debian packages against these libraries until XFree86 4.x .debs are officially released.) Here is a list of issues that are delaying official Debian XFree86 4.x packages: * The Mesa problem (specifically, the lack of libGLU.so) really has to be sorted out upstream if Debian is going to have a sensible handling of Mesa in our distribution. Alternatively, I can stop shipping the Mesa stuff altogether in the XFree86 packages until support is ready, but this will pretty much leave DRI out of the picture. I'd appreciate feedback on doing this. The XFree86 versions of the Mesa and OSMesa libraries can be added into woody at a later date without causing any real disruption. I'd appreciate feedback on the possibility of releasing 4.0.1-1 (or 4.0.2-1, or whatever) without the XFree86 version of Mesa. What little feedback I've had so far indicates that people would rather wait for upstream to resolve this, so that we ship XFree86 with its own version of libGLU. * Another big issue is support for all of Debian's (released) architectures. This really sucks right now because I can't get patches merged myself, Dan Jacobowitz (PowerPC), and Ben Collins (SPARC) are both very busy with other things, and I'm staying on bleeding edge CVS so it's impossible for these guys to keep up. Portions of the architecture-specific patches are being made to some of the most volatile areas of the XFree86 source tree, and involve hairy stuff like varying architecture-specific details in PCI bus management. I really don't like being i386-centric but upstream is changing very rapidly right now, and it's hard to pick a flag day for Debian. 4.0.1 is practically ancient by now. Over four and a half megs of patches have been applied upstream since then. * I have merged the fonts previously in xfonts-cjk into the xfonts-base package (in anticipation of extension of many of the fonts in the -base package to include characters beyond those in ISO-8859-1). However, apt wants to *remove* xfonts-base entirely, leaving the old, obsolete xfonts-cjk package. This really sucks since I've got all the package relationship fields correct per the Packaging Manual. When I mentioned this to Culus he waved his hands and started mumbling about NP-completeness, which is what he usually does when someone finds a problem with his problem resolver. Thanks for listening. -- G. Branden Robinson | You should try building some of the Debian GNU/Linux | stuff in main that is modern...turning [EMAIL PROTECTED] | on -Wall is like turning on the pain. http://www.debian.org/~branden/ | -- James Troup
pgprl4OBC6FJ5.pgp
Description: PGP signature
