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Date:      Fri, 30 Dec 2016 16:36:53 +0300
From:      Beeblebrox <zaphod@berentweb.com>
To:        freebsd-x11@freebsd.org
Subject:   End of year Xorg status rant
Message-ID:  <20161230163653.54909631@rsbsd.rsb>

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Hello,

I've been using FreeBSD-11 for a little over 2 years. I had upgraded very e=
arly to take advantage of the Radeon-KMS drivers. Since the version was HEA=
D, I resigned to my fate of strugling through some very serious display pro=
blems; now that 11 is Release, I'd like to make some headway on this proble=
m. Below listed issues make the FreeBSD Desktop experience a complete Hell =
for me.

What I'm seeing:
* None of the web browsers work well. Firefox crashes immediately. Epiphany=
, Midori & Chrome display a litle better but crash prety quickly. Recently =
installed qupzilla-qt5, which at least is semi-stable but lines on page tex=
t get mixed in to one another resulting in text-on-text - also clickable it=
ems are not where they show up on the page. The recent Seamonkey update is =
working the best but has same problem as qupzilla-qt5, and if I wait a whil=
e the page gets re-drawn correctly. Best browser is Opera, works and stable=
, but scares the s**t out of me when I use it since it's old and probably v=
ulnerable. If I add a script-blocker extension to it (likes of no-script), =
Opera also stops displaying the page.

* Window Managers have mixed stability. Lumina crashes within 15-20 secs of=
 coming up; so does openbox/gnome. Gnome-3/gnome-classic is semi-stable, bu=
t most text is garbled and you have a tough time navigating around. All Gno=
me-based apps have it the worst and display strange things even when used i=
n other WM's. Enlightenment, which was broken for a while seems fixed and i=
s performing to some degree. Fluxbox is the most stable.

* Java-based apps behave horribly, must are very quick to crash. VirtualBox=
 for example - It's near impossible to use the GUI and navigate a VM Guest =
because the mouse pointer jumps around like its on amphetamines. Several ot=
her java apps have problems with inability to display text (blank lines ins=
tead), slow response to mouse clicks or flickering.

* All Desktop/WM's have a "stick mouse" problem, where mose refuses to move=
 incrementally (usually near app fram borders) so I end up jerking my hand =
like some mental case to accelerate the mouse out of its stickieness.

* All apps now come with a default yellow foreground setting, but that's th=
e least of my problems :p (nice screenshot of these problems attached). A  =
part of the issue might be libGL, as a recent java app crash log highlights=
 (log file also attached).

* When I switch to vt-console (alt-F1-8) and back to desktop (Alt-F9), some=
times  the screen starts to flicker like mad and if there's a terminal at t=
he foreground the machine starts inputing an endless series of "0-0-0-0-0-0=
-0-0" that I must stop with ctrl+c

* Another possibility I thought of is that the Linux layer in src (COMPAT_L=
INUX32) is not happy with the driver code. The reason I bring that up is th=
at while testing sysutils/grub2-pcbsd, grub drops to grub-console (path to =
mount root) and the keyboard/screen output is very unresponsive to the poin=
t that it takes 1/2 minute for screen output to change.

* All in all, the problem can be best described as an inability to properly=
 refresh/redraw the display; which brings me to the end of this rant.

Thanks for reading, merry Solstice and a happy New Year to all of you.=20


SYSTEM:
* FreeBSD 11.0-STABLE #0 4370756a792(stable/11): Fri Dec 30 09:48:35 +03 20=
16
* All ports installed through poudrire built packages.
* GPU: RS880 [Radeon HD 4250]
* Possibly relevant Xorg.log output:
(WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev
(II) Loading /usr/local/lib/xorg/modules/libfbdevhw.so
(EE) LoadModule: Module fbdevhw does not have a fbdevhwModuleData data obje=
ct.
(II) UnloadModule: "fbdevhw"
(EE) Failed to load module "fbdevhw" (invalid module, 0)
(WW) Falling back to old probe method for vesa
(WW) VGA arbiter: cannot open kernel arbiter, no multi-card support


--=20
FreeBSD_amd64_11-Stable_RadeonKMS
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