FC2 Issues

[Timothy Murphy]

<posted & mailed>

Craig White wrote:

> Yes Xorg has become the focus of X server for a large portion of Linux
> because of the license issues. What you have characterized as a quibble
> about licenses has caused the largesse of the open source packagers to
> migrate. Have you reported your problems there? Did you bugzilla your
> problems with Xorg/FC-2 to fedora's bugzilla?

I already said I had submitted a bug report.
===================================================
Bug 718 - Cannot run at 16bpp with 1024x480 (as with XFree86) 

Bug#: 718 
Product: xorg 
Version: 6.7.0 
Platform: PC 

OS/Version: Linux 
Status: NEW 
Severity: major 
Priority: P2 

Resolution:  
Assigned To: xorg-bugzilla-noise at freedesktop.org 
Reported By: tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie 

Component: Driver/ATI Rage128 

URL:  

Summary: Cannot run at 16bpp with 1024x480 (as with XFree86) 

Opened: 2004-06-03 20:44 

Description: 

Sony C1VFK Picturebook (notebook) under Fedora-2 
Video board: ATI Rage Mobility P/M (Mach 128) 
This ran at 1024x480 with 16bpp under Fedora-1 (XFree86) 
but it does not appear possible to attain this now. 
It runs OK at 1024x480 with 8bpp; 
but when run with 16bpp one gets a large black oval 
which shrinks to leave a blank white or cream screen. 
There seem to be no errors reported in Xorg.0.log . 
One can escape to text mode (with Ctrl-Alt-F1). 
 
Several people have reported this failure, 
and no-one seems to have found a solution.
===================================================

There is a similar bug report in the Fedora-2 bugzilla.

> No one that I can tell is denying the existence of bugs and I think
> everyone is acknowledging that they exist. Do you believe that Xorg
> hasn't done a considerable amount of testing on ati drivers?

Sadly, I see no evidence that there was much testing.
If you look at the xorx mailing list
you will see that there are as many complaints about ATI Radeon
as about ATI Rage.
(The driver is intended to cover both cards.)

As far as I can see, the driver does not work properly
(ie as it worked under XFree86)
with any ATI Rage card.
So I find it difficult to believe it was tested with this card.

I did in fact play with the source code,
trying the previous ATI driver,
but unfortunately there have been changes in the library code called on.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland