Wouldn't it be nice ...

I just committed xorg-server 1.4.0.90, which is a prerelease for 1.4.1. Here's the Gentoo ChangeLog:

Bump to 1.4.1 release candidate. It's gotta be an improvement over 1.4, so i'm letting it go into ~arch.

(#192221) 'xorg-server-1.4 - keyboard LEDs do not work' fixed upstream.

(#201047) 'xorg-server 1.4 no longer loads xmodmap via xinitrc properly' fixed upstream.

(#197104) 'xorg-server-1.3 and 1.4 consumes 100% CPU, locking the keyboard, apparently triggered by opening an OpenOffice pulldown menu' fixed with patch from master branch.

(#196019) 'xorg-server creates unnecessary file /etc/X11/X11/Xsession.d/92xprint-xpserverlist' fixed by not installing the same file twice to 2 different places (Andy Crook).

(#195886) 'xorg-server-1.4.0-r2 built with hal USE flag crashes on shutdown if dbus service is not running' fixed upstream.

(#195551) 'xorg-server-1.4 fails to build w/kdrive on amd64' fixed with Makefile.am patch designed for easier sed but unsuitable for upstream because the line gets too long (Michael Gorse).

(#194503) Don't spit versions when showing drivers to rebuild via qlist, and also provide a command for people to do it themselves later.

The upstream X.Org change list is available here.

I just updated everything I could find in Gentoo for X packages. The last couple of months were backlogged due to other priorities. Please let me know whether I missed anything, and file bugs if you find issues.

As that famous song [YouTube, last.fm] says, it's been a while. Since last I blogged, that is. Lots of stuff going on in my world, although I haven't been spending enough time on Gentoo lately.

I've joined the Web 2.0 trend, using Google Reader and saving my bookmarks on del.icio.us via the wonderful Firefox plugin. Next thing you know, I'll be reading Digg or another equally trendy Slashdot replacement. The only thing like that I read now is the superb LWN. I just added the Planet Conary feed (thanks ferringb!), because I think there's a lot Gentoo can learn from rPath, since it's got a similar base.

My Gentoo activity is probably best illustrated via the CIA commit stats — only 9 commits this week and 41 this month. A large part of my drop in commit activity lately is thanks to Joshua Baergen (Josh_B on IRC), who's really started to take over X maintenance with double my commits this month, mostly in preparation for X.Org 7.2 as well as the new input-hotplug work for X.Org 7.3.

In Gentoo, we plan to show you a mixture of 7.2 and 7.3. What we try to do is mix and match the latest individual X component releases wherever they're compatible, regardless of which "official release" they come from. So you may already have a number of input-hotplug components, and the only changes you'd need to make are the server and drivers. This mirrors what you saw with 7.0 and 7.1, where the server and drivers lagged back on 7.0 waiting for Nvidia and ATI while all the other components jumped to 7.1.

I'd like to publicly thank Diego Pettenò (look, I got the accent right!) for his contributions to XCB, both in my overlay and upstream. On that note, I encourage anyone using my overlay to send me patches for anything that doesn't work. There's no reason a personal overlay should only hold commits from that person.

In the past month, I've gotten in touch with two new, exciting ventures using Gentoo. Engine Yard is a Ruby on Rails deployment provider that allows you to purchase virtual clusters, and SiCortex is an innovative HPC cluster creator that uses Gentoo on clusters with 5,800 nodes. Check out the videos on the Engine Yard site, they've got one specifically about their use of Gentoo.

I've also taken on the job of creating a monthly newsletter for the OSEL, which aims to get more students involved in open source at OSU and liaise with the academic side of the university, while the LUG interfaces with the local community and the OSL connects with the broader, outside community. This is really exciting for me because I've got a significant journalism background [PDF] (and no, that contact information is no longer accurate), but I haven't had a chance to use it for a couple of years. I'll share the first issue with all of you once I finish it.

As you may know, Gentoo's stuck on X.Org 7.0 for x86 and amd64 because we package and "support" Nvidia's and ATI's binary drivers. Finally ATI released 7.1-compatible compatible drivers. Now we just have to wait for Nvidia. Anyone got some idea on when that might happen?

I've been pondering the idea of moving binary drivers out of the main tree to a Gentoo-hosted overlay at overlays.gentoo.org so this doesn't happen again, and I've heard nothing but positive feedback so far. Anyone got thoughts on this?

Just discovered I can make it to Thursday of OSCON too. I'm really excited about this, since it's the only conference I attend.

I'd like to do lunch with X folks Thursday, lemme know if you're interested. We haven't gotten together for a while.

Modular X.Org 7.0 is now stable on x86 and amd64. On architectures not held back by binary drivers, X.Org 7.1 is expected to go stable very soon.

Please see the migration guide for details. The main problem people seem to hit that they can't figure out on their own is XKB breaking because of major configuration changes.

If you have any issues or want more packages keyworded stable, please file a bug. I've only marked stable a minimal set of packages to try to discover which packages people use.

It's been a while since I posted. I've discovered that the more time I spend blogging, the less actual work I get done. And I don't have any bosses or employees who I need to convince I've been working.

Lots of work has gone into improving the Gentoo scientific computing experience. I've written new, more flexible eselect modules for BLAS and LAPACK, a couple of very commonly used linear algebra libraries. They're in my overlay now, and they will enter the Portage tree soon.

I'm trying to make Gentoo the distribution of choice for my day job -- protein X-ray crystallography. This means packaging all the weird Fortran stuff with even weirder, broken build systems. I'm waiting on a patch to go into Portage 2.1.1 to fix RESTRICT=stricter, then I'll be able to add the remaining apps chilling in my overlay -- primarily CCP4 and Coot. I've recently added packages for CNS, SHELX and ABINIT. Ghemical-2's ability to run GAMESS-US also helps quite a bit, and I hope to find some time to work on the WebMO package that's hard-masked in Portage.

The entrance of GCC 4.1 into testing has made a lot possible, but also requires a lot of fixing. This is particularly the case in scientific computing, where there's an entirely new Fortran compiler -- gfortran. Please note that gfortran is NOT a renamed g77. It accepts different options, and it compiles different code. Only gfortran will compile Fortran90 and Fortran95 code. Only g77 will accept common options such as -fno-globals. Do not assume they are the same.

I've also gotten back into trying to do some work on the cluster project, prompted by a couple of active cluster builders in the #gentoo-cluster IRC channel. I hope to be able to set up a test cluster this summer and rework the high-performance computing documentation. It's currently a bit of a hack, outdated and incomplete but better than nothing. I'd like to create a clean cluster setup using diskless nodes with UnionFS, PXELinux, etc. Also on this list is getting OpenMPI into the tree and creating some sort of 'eselect mpi' module that will allow not just system-level switching but also changes on a per-user level.

Also, X.Org 7.1 has entered testing a bit under a month ago. Look to see this stable well before the 2006.1 release, which is in August. Now that Portage 2.1 is stable, the last major blocker appears to be gone. Perhaps we can get it stabilized around the beginning of July. That would be a nice Independence Day present.

Finally got around to trying out Xgl on Wednesday. Used the xgl-coffee overlay (link to HOWTO) and modified ebuilds to be live cvs instead of dated snapshots, so I don't need to ever bump them. You can get the new ones from my overlay if you want them -- x11-base/{xgl,xorg-server,x11-drm}, x11-wm/compiz, x11-libs/{cairo,libdrm}, media-libs/{glitz,mesa}, x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati will get you basically the latest X there is.

After fixing an accidentally applied aiglx-only patch that made all the pixmaps upside-down in compiz, stuff worked quite well on my iBook G4 (Radeon 9600 or so).

The motivation for doing this was a demo to my LUG at the meeting. I also gave a 5-minute talk on how to get involved in open source. I've posted the slides [PDF], but they're quite unhelpful without me narrating.

I've added VIDEO_CARDS capabilities to x11-drm and mesa in addition to xorg-x11 now, so you have complete control over which video cards and input devices your X will support. If you happen to use binary drivers, you'll probably want to set VIDEO_CARDS="none fglrx" or "none nvidia"; that will prevent the 3D drivers in mesa from building.

Makes for a nice reduction in space -- each 3D driver on my system takes up about 13M, when built with debugging. Installing 7 instead of 15 makes quite a difference. Also there's the savings in build time.

If people clamor enough, I might split ati out into r128, radeon and mach64, as well, but probably won't split radeon up any further.

Got some help, posted to the dri-devel mailing list, and already got one of the big problems fixed. Now UT2003 runs again, and Quake4 runs for the first time ever (although with funky colors)! Still working to get Doom3 fixed.

Discovered that fglrx (ATI binary drivers) only enable stereo for cards with a physical stereo connector (a mini-DIN port). This is annoying, because a number of stereo goggles have VGA pass-throughs to get the sync. That means there's a little plug that plugs directly into the monitor VGA port on the computer, and it has a plug on it for your monitor cable. It also has a little cable going off for the stereo goggles.

This came up because I thought stereo should be enabled (the X log said so), but in reality I didn't get any stereo visuals. I'm trying to convince ATI to add a ForceStereo option that's at least available for all FireGL cards, if not all cards their drivers support.

Also, a couple people asked what stereo is. Basically, it's viewing a 3D object using a 2D screen and some special goggles. Usually, the screen alternates a "left eye" image and a "right eye" image at >=120Hz, and the goggles are required to blank out the wrong eye so you see a true stereo image at ~60Hz. It's useful for visualizing any 3D objects (molecules, ocean simulations, buildings, probably geology for geoman), and some games can use it too. Tom's Hardware has a decent review from May 2005.

Update: See my newer post -- UT2003 runs again, and Quake4 also runs. Overall, lots of textures are screwed up, however, so you get strange colors.

Just updated my Mesa to CVS HEAD from 6.4.1. I'm very pleased to see that UT2004 is fast enough to be playable now.

Doom3 does a lot better, although still can't play it. It starts up now and gets through most of the intro, but it dies when it's about to start the actual level.

Update: Apparently Doom3 works in multiplayer mode, which I can't test because I have the demo version.

Ends with:
*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_state.c function r300_setup_rs_unit line 1269
fragprog wants col0, vp doesn't provide it
***************************************************************************
*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_state.c function r300_setup_rs_unit line 1315
Don't know how to satisfy InputsRead=0x00000002
***************************************************************************
signal caught: Segmentation fault

Quake4 doesn't screw up my resolution anymore when attempting to start, although it still doesn't start at all. Lots of missing extensions at startup time:

X..GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two not found
X..GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette not found
X..GL_NV_float_buffer not found
X..GL_NV_register_combiners not found
X..NV_fragment_program not found
X..GL_EXT_stencil_two_side not found
X..GL_ATI_separate_stencil not found
X..GL_ATI_fragment_shader not found
X..GL_ATI_text_fragment_shader not found
X..GL_ARB_shader_objects not found
X..EXT_depth_bounds_test not found

Ends with:
reloading gfx/guis/scrollbar_down.
*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_ioctl.c function r300Clear line 555
CB_DPATH has been enabled.
Please let me know if this introduces new instabilities.
***************************************************************************
signal caught: Segmentation fault

One major and unfortunate regression: UT2003 no longer runs.

Xlib: extension "XiG-SUNDRY-NONSTANDARD" missing on display ":0.0".
*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_ioctl.c function r300Clear line 555
CB_DPATH has been enabled.
Please let me know if this introduces new instabilities.
***************************************************************************

Backtrace:
[ 1] ./Core.so [0xb751778a]
[ 2] [0xffffe420]
[ 3] [0xb68ea00a]
Signal: SIGSEGV [segmentation fault]

Other games:
America's Army is faster, but the colors are totally screwed up on many of the menu screens.

In another regression, Cube is now unplayably slow. Cube console output:

*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_ioctl.c function r300Clear line 555
CB_DPATH has been enabled.
Please let me know if this introduces new instabilities.
***************************************************************************
*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_render.c function r300Fallback line 793
fallback:ctx->Polygon.OffsetLine
***************************************************************************

Legends plays great with both 6.4.1 and CVS HEAD, as does Enemy Territory.

Summary:

	6.4.1	HEAD
UT2004	Too slow	Works
Doom3	Doesn't start at all, screws up resolution	Can't begin first mission
UT2003	Works	Works
Quake4	Doesn't start at all, screws up resolution	Works
Quake3	Works	Works
America's Army	Too slow	Faster, colors weird
Enemy Territory	Works	Works
Cube	Works	Too slow
Legends	Works	Works

Kudos to everyone working on the r300 driver. Keep up the good work!

I need to get stereo 3D going for work, because it's very important to what we do. For us to move more workstations from old SGI IRIX boxes to new Linux once, it's critical that stereo 3D work on them. As far as stereo 3D goes on Linux, a few options exist:

• Use nvidia binary drivers


• Use ati binary drivers


• Go find patches against Radeon or Matrox drivers on some unspecified date, and either find that date of X release or forward port them

I started out with the third approach and a FireGL 8800, but I've gradually moved to the second approach because the third was too much work. Found a nice link to an SGI page on setting up fglrx (ATi's binary drivers) for stereo 3D, FSAA, multiple monitors, and more. Got the 120hz mode working on the monitor, which is what we require for stereo (60hz for each eye, alternating). Next step is getting the drivers to recognize that stereo should be available, and making it available to Coot through GtkGLExt.