On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Pedro M. wrote: >I would like to see XFSetup (RedHat) and Xconfigurator within X . Not sure what XFSetup is unless you mean XF86Setup, which was an ancient XFree86 3.x and earlier config tool written in TCL/Tk. It was shipped with XFree86, but was removed from the source tree at some point as it only worked with 3.3.x, and nobody had any intention on porting it to 4.x. There was no motivation for anyone to port it to 4.x either, since xf86cfg more or less replaced it as a GUI X configuration tool, supplied with XFree86. XF86Setup, was not a Red Hat tool however, but an XFree86 tool that is now obsolete. Xconfigurator was originally written by Red Hat (way before my days here) and was very heavily based upon the XFree86 supplied xf86config source code. Xconfigurator was discontinued as of Red Hat Linux 8.0 however, and replaced with a new tool written in python, named redhat-config-xfree86. The reason that Xconfigurator was discontinued was because it was never more than a quick ugly hack really. It worked quite well all things considered, but the source code is a huge ugly mess of spaghetti code which had new bits bandaided in over time with each new OS release, while developers rushed to enhance it in new ways with minimal effort to minimize developmental resources put into the tool, at least that is my personal viewpoint based on examination of the source code and having maintained it myself for a year or so. It was more a hot-potato application that nobody really was interested in owning, and more "got stuck with". The unmaintainable sources can attest to that. With a pileup of new features required or requested for X configuration, it became obvious to me, that Xconfigurator would not be able to be pushed any further without a total rewrite from scratch. Look at the source code of it yourself, and you will find it difficult to disagree with me on that. ;o) So it was decided to rewrite a new config tool for our OS distribution, and in Red Hat tradtition (obsession?), it was written in python+GTK+, as a GUI application. While redhat-config-xfree86 does not currently do all of the same things Xconfigurator did, that is by design and intentional, as Xconfigurator had too many advanced/expert settings in it which normal users rarely if ever require, and many users changed things anyway and created problems unnecessarily for themselves. So, Xconfigurator wont be coming back in our OS at least, however the source code is dual licensed GPL and MIT, so anyone can hack at it if they desire. If someone in the OSS community is interested in any way of rekindling Xconfigurator as a sourceforge or other project, feel free to contact me about this, and I don't think there will be any problem reassigning the source code to someone else. ;o) Be sure to actually LOOK at the sources first before committing to such an effort however, and make sure you've got a barf bag handy. ;o) That said, the only X configuration tool that will be in our OS releases here on out, will be our in-house written new config tool, redhat-config-xfree86, which is being renamed to "system-config-xfree86" I believe in our next release, so that others feel more at ease about reusing the source code for their own purposes, or in other distributions. Now I know your comments were not pertaining directly to Red Hat, and our XFree86 releases, however I thought that my comments might help others to understand the two applications a bit better that you pointed out, and at least why they are not present in Red Hat OS distributions any longer. That can help to understand also why neither application is part of XFree86 itself directly, and neither application is ever likely to be part of XFree86 in the future, as there is really no good technical reason for them to exist anymore. Nonetheless, this is the open source community, and anyone sufficiently motivated enough, can take either utility and revitalize them for their own purposes. >Why when i go to Windows the first time, it goes in a low >resolution and frequency and no in XFree ??. Windows starts up generally in 800x600 nowadays (XP). It uses a special driver Microsoft supplies called "VGASAVE". I'm not completely at understanding at what this driver is doing specifically, however I believe that it is more or less a VESA BIOS driver, which can fallback to VGA mode if need be, and might possibly have special code in it for certain other hardware. It's more or less a "failsafe" driver which is "good enough" in order for a proper native driver to be installed for the video hardware in the system. When you boot into 'safe mode', this is the driver Windows uses. XFree86 could benefit also from having such a driver of course, and the "vesa" driver is probably the closest thing to such that exists in XFree86 currently. The vesa driver however requires a non-broken VESA BIOS in order to work correctly, and judging by the large number of "vesa" driver user's bug reports I see, there are numerous broken BIOSes out there which make it difficult to have a failsafe driver. I believe it would be possible to fork the "vesa" driver into a new driver named "failsafe" or somesuch, which uses VESA VBE by default, but gets special hacks put in place for systems that are reported to not work, but workarounds can be found, and detected by PCI ID and other mechanisms. I'd like to at least experiment with this in the future to see if it is a crazy idea or not. >If everything is OK (after installation = first time) I can >change the resolution, frequency and so on from the same Gnome >or another desktop manager. > >I suggest try ( during installation) by default the 800X600 mode >and a low refresh frequency ( if there is not plug and play >autodetection). I don't disagree, however in order for it to work on _all_ video hardware, including hardware there are no drivers for, and hardware there are drivers for, but the drivers may be buggy, thus preventing the user from using X from the start, a new driver is required, which can provide minimal unaccelerated 2D video using VESA VBE and other fallbacks. Without that, it's just a pipe dream. -- Mike A. Harris _______________________________________________ XFree86 mailing list XFree86@xxxxxxxxxxx http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xfree86
