Interview with XFree86's David Dawes

X-Men writes: "OSNews features an interesting interview with David Dawes, one of the core developers of the XFree86 project. David talks about XFree 5.0, about the fund for the development of the ATi Radeon 8500 driver, about X11's legacy issues and more."

automatic configuration?

[cpeterso]

David Dawes: This is one of the things I'm currently working on in my spare time: to make configuration automatic. My goal is to make the XF86Config file optional and to provide a facility for the X server to choose the best driver for the given hardware, with appropriate fallbacks if the hardware isn't explicitly supported. This is something I think XFree86 needs, because, as you mention, it can be very difficult for people new to this environment to get it up and running.


Configuration is one of X's biggest problems. Windows and Mac OS have had auto video configuration for a long time. Why must Linux users wait another 2-3 years for XFree86 5.0 to copy Plug-and-Play features that were in Windows 95? Have fun..

Re:automatic configuration?

[LinuxGeek8]

onfiguration is one of X's biggest problems.

Yup, this is something I'd like to see improved as well.
Like changing your Resolution and RefreshRates on the fly might be a nice option.
No more fiddling to get 85Hz as a VertRefresh out of a videocard/monitor that can handle that just as a maximum.

Re:automatic configuration?

[extrasolar]

"Like changing your Resolution and RefreshRates on the fly might be a nice option."

The resolution thing has been supported for years with a simple key-combo.

Re:automatic configuration?

[LinuxGeek8]

Ok, I don't really care about the resolution :-)
But I do care about the RefreshRate.

Re:automatic configuration?

[ianezz]

"Like changing your Resolution and RefreshRates on the fly might be a nice option."

Well, strictly speaking, changing resolution is already there (Ctrl+Alt+plus/minus on the keypad).

What you really mean is probably to change the desktop size along with the resolution. There is some work in progress on the RandR extension [xfree86.org] (Rotate AND Resize), which should deal with this (and other interesting things).

Changing refresh rates while the X server is running is already possibile with XFree86, since you can do it using xvidtune (still, you have to copy and paste the modeline it generates if you want your changes to be persistent across sessions). Perhaps, a nicer app to do this wouldn't hurt (volunteers?).