Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:21:00 -0700 (PDT)
From:      "Thomas Mueller" <mueller6724@bellsouth.net>
To:        freebsd-x11@freebsd.org
Cc:        Matthew Rezny <mrezny@hexaneinc.com>, Niclas Zeising <zeising@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: ports/156405: x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati driver: no hardware rendering
Message-ID:  <682705.3346.bm@smtp104.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

> I recognize it is in the tree. In fact, its landing in the tree is what
> provoked me to respond to this PR at the this time. However, I just saw
> a statement somewhere on wiki or ML that it would not be ready for real
> use for another 1-2 years. From the announcement of it coming into
> -CURRENT, I get the impression it is really not usable beyond testing.
> Lacking a working console after Xorg loads is a total show stopper in
> my opinion (and why I can't call the Intel KMS stuff anything more than
> testing a year after it went in tree). Sure the serial console works,
> but that is only practical for testing, not daily use as a desktop.
> Forget use on a laptop as I haven't seen a serial port on one of those
> in a LONG time, not to mention the impractically of carrying some
> other device to be the console for my laptop, already a device that is
> massively inferior to a desktop in every way other than portability.

I had this type of problem with NetBSD 5.1_STABLE and 5.99.x even with native X that is part of the base system, as opposed to pkgsrc X.

I could return to a text console in the dark and type "shutdown -r now" or even type the command to go back into X, successfully.

Can that be done with FreeBSD, new Xorg and KMS, or is the system just crashed?

With serial ports becoming obsolete, what can one use for or in place of a serial console?

Would it work to have two xorg.conf files, one with Intel driver and the other with vesa?  Then could you go back to a working console when using the vesa driver?

I've wondered (call it X acrobatics) how to switch between root and nonroot, and between window managers, without going back to text console.

I used OS/2 from 1.3 to Warp 4, until the single-digit days of April 2001 when it crashed, then chkdsk ran amok on reboot and trashed the hard-drive data.

I was never able to boot OS/2 again, even from floppies.  

I repartitioned/reformatted the hard disk but was left with Linux and DR-DOS 7.03.

Now it seems Linux and FreeBSD, even NetBSD, have far overtaken OS/2, now eComStation, for hardware support and usability.

Tom



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?682705.3346.bm>