It has been one year and four days since X.Org 7.3 was released and a number of months since X.Org 7.4 was supposed to be released, but today X.Org 7.4 is scheduled to finally make it out the door! This release is shipping quite late and with a slimmed down set of features, but in this article we have more details on what this release holds in store for the Linux desktop community and why it may be a short-lived release.
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Member since:2005-07-24
I just got a new motherboard. The graphics chipset came out about 3 months ago. And I'm running the latest development version of my preferred distro, which has Xorg 7.4 and the very latest point release of the video drivers. Not only does 3d not work... neither does 2d. In fact, even during the text based installation of the OS the screen is strangely wrapped vertically and flickers at about 10 Hz. The vesa driver gets me a sort of usable screen, but not at the correct aspect ratio. The evil proprietary company that can't keep up with our open source speed of development and released this chipset without making sure that it had working drivers for Linux? Intel. It's a G43 chipset with X4500 video. I'm having to use my Nvidia 7200SE with nvidia's drivers, which performs flawlessly, until it all gets sorted out.
My gripe is that even when the companies do everything we ask: Release good docs... supply the development infrastructure... assign engineers to assist with development... our FOSS video drivers are still crap for some reason. In 2008 we should at least be able to get text mode right!
Edited 2008-09-10 17:43 UTC
RE[5]: Xorg 7.4 comes with a whimper...
with hardware I guess its because you can't say that laptop that for forced at gunpoint on you doesn't work anymore, although I am pleased that your employers are so generous. 
Member since:2005-06-29
The problem is, these things take a while, so while the driver has been out, your distro (I'm guessing ubuntu) hasn't integrated it yet.
I agree that there should be a better infrastructure to deliver opensource graphics card updates, but don't blame others for a problem that is basically "distro didn't update it yet".
Also, the 7200SE is kinda old, so if intel made discrete graphics cards, your argument would sound something like "It's a G43 chipset with X4500 video. I'm having to use my G965 with intel's drivers, which performs flawlessly, until it all gets sorted out."
I remember when a friend bought a brand new 8800GT and there was no nvidia driver for like 1 or 2 months.
The bottom line is: updates take a while to get to most distros. Don't blame intel (they've been doing an excellent work) for that.
Member since:
2006-01-16
I think the problem has more to do with waiting for the companies with closed drivers to catch up. Even with all the advances that got cut from 7.4, the nvidia legacy drivers still don't support the ABI changes to the xserver-1.5 and their non-legacy driver barely makes the cut. And this issue has been known for quite a while. Not sure about drivers elsewhere...