XFree86 4.3.0 in Debian Unstable

Anonymous Coward writes "XFree86 4.3.0 has finally made it into Debian unstable. See the announcement." Note that Direct Rendering is broken (there's already a bug filed, and I'm experiencing the same problem - looks like something small and stupid, affecting everyone), so don't dist-upgrade just yet.

Re:This is fantastic

[DShard]

and just how many options does make-kpkg need anyway?

Already been in Knoppix-debian!

[Anonymous Coward]

IF you installed Debian via Knoppix (like I did) you will of got it already. But 4.3 is really the end of the Line thanks to the liecence crap!

Now if only they couild get KDE 3.2 in there...

Re:Isn't this late?

[abrotman]

The Debian XSF is a little anal retentive when it comes to the quality of the packages. That said, they do fantastic work and I wouldn't have it any other way. Much better than some of the other debian package managers who constantly have major bugs filed against thier packages. Honestly, I'm surprised they let it in without working DRI. I've been using the experimental X4.3 and have working DRI.

Re:Isn't this late?

[twilight30]

Since you asked nicely, here's why:

Debian tests for a wider range of architectures than the rest of the Linux distros, and in fact wider than XFree86 itself does. (Branden Robinson points this out on his site - Google for 'Debian X Strike Force').

The odd architectures are more difficult to test for, but it results in a couple of benefits:

* Changes can go upstream (obviously, I'm not referring to 4.4) -- and in fact XF86 kind of expects Debian to test for them
* Debian as a whole gets a much more stable set of X packages than the others do -- unstable packages for X are at least as stable as most other distros' production versions.

Re:Been using 4.3 on Debian for months...

[ogre57]

Specifically, Daniel Stone's backport of 4.3, since June, on a laptop.

Finding more recent but unofficial [backports.org] packages [apt-get.org] for Debian isn't any more difficult than finding ones [pbone.net] for Redhat.

Re:DRI

[CableModemSniper]

Ah yes, DRI works for you with the Nvidia driver. You know that the Nvidia driver doesn't use the DRI infrastructure right?

WARNING - melted me

[Jebediah21]

The Debian X packages have a problem with some SiS chipsets!!!

I installed from Knoppix long ago and having been updating since then. I installed the new X packages and rebooted only to get the dreaded screen "melting" screen that happens with some SiS chips. Problem was this didn't just happen when exiting X, it also happened when starting X. Whoops. Of course the testing and stable trees had the same problems.

This screwed me of using X unless I wanted to compile the whole thing myself (on a notebook? No thanks). Thankfully I had just imaged my hard disk a few days ago using Knoppix and was able to restore. Look here for instructions [knoppix.net] (hint: start with cheatcodes dma 2 and leave the thing alone while restoring).

I'll be filing a bug report on this one for sure.

Re:Isn't this late?

[pjack76]

Well, also there's apparently a "hidden" flavor of Debian called experimental, where you can go to get things that haven't made it into unstable yet.

I *needed* XFree86 4.3, because it's the first version to support my video card--after digging through Debian's bug reports, I found out how to apt-get from the experimental pool, where XFree86 4.3 happily lives. Installed without a problem for me (I mean, I manually edit my XF86Config anyway.)

Workaround for DRI:

[molo]

Here's how you can fix DRI. First, confirm that you are having the same problem:

$ LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo
[...]
libGL error: dlopen failed: /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri/tdfx_dri.so: undefined symbol: sse_test_dummy
[...]


The actual name of the module will vary depending on your hardware.

You can retrieve the xlibmesa-dri package from experimental, version 4.3.0-0pre1v5 and use this instead of the version from unstable. This works for some reason. Download it here:

http://packages.debian.org/experimental/x11/xlibme sa-dri [debian.org]

Enjoy.

-molo

Re:Already been in Knoppix-debian!

[alexpage]

KDE 3.2 debs are available for both sid and woody if you want them. They're just not in the official trees yet, for good reason.

Re:Don't start yapping about the delay..

[Captain Rotundo]

It does for the XFree86 guys, which is why the porting Debian does is so important!

Re:Workaround for DRI:

[named]

Thanks for the info. I'm at work right now so can't try it out, but thought I'd mention an easy way to downgrade (seen elsewhere in this article, and somewhere in the docs) for others who might read this.

apt-get install xlibmesa-dri/experimental

I'm pretty sure you've got to have a line in /etc/apt/sources.list for experimental as well
(deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian ../project/experimental main contrib non-free)

XF4.3

[XO]

I pulled 4.3.0 out of the "experimental" branch, I believe it was, months ago, already.

It worked fine, then. So, now that they've moved it to "unstable", it's broken? Great, thanks guys.

I live in fear of doing "apt-get upgrade" sometimes.

LOL.. yes, I know runnign a mix of "unstable" and "experimental" branches is just asking for trouble.. but except for a version mismatch that caused apt-get to uninstall more than half of my system a few weeks ago, I've never had any problems.. lol

Re:Isn't this late?

[xenocide2]

Basically. Some might tell you that experimental is closer to an add on pack that you have to jump through hoops to install. These hoops are there for a reason: a lot of people run unstable and wouldn't be happy to see some important library changed out from underneath them with only one accommodating package. Thats the kind of experimental they mean. Its suggested that first time uploads be placed in experimental if you're not sure it will actually work on a given system. Debian has several systems available to developers to test things on for basic operation.

But really, the release cycle is a dependent on a couple of things: the number of submitted bugs in a package and the number of platforms debian runs on. Seems like with every release Debian picks up more architectures. If you're running PPC or SPARC it sounds like a nice deal, but many people looking for a i386 desktop solution see the consequential slow release cycle and shudder. But I'd rather not restart X into a crash screen, so I don't try to run the experimental XFree. I've run into problems with upgrades to GNOME on unstable--moving from 1.4 to 2.x originally didn't have any migration rules so your old .gnome conf files would knock gnome out. But overall its been pretty solid, most of the developers run unstable on their desktop, enough that in the past, freezing unstable until certain conditions were met was considered a motivator. Maybe if there was a push for developers toward testing as the preferred branch and unstable for new but known to be broken in certain cases, stable might closer reflect today's software and unstable might actually be up to date.

I've been using debian for about a year now, and its pretty fun. I just upgraded X and it took a whopping 10 minutes. The difference isn't very noticable to me. The changelog has lots of bugfixes concerning DRI that probably have kept it in experimental for so long. Seems like basically the most critical apps have a longer testing pipeline to run through into stable. Usually it takes 10 days in unstable to become a candidate for "testing." "Stable" hasn't moved in a long while because there's been some longstanding bugs between certain popular packages. Maybe QA is something underappreciated on a volunteer based distribution, but I like being able to look at a specific package's bug list.