Xorg 7 impressions
I just had a chance to try out the newest release of Xorg windowing system AKA X11. It is the release 7 or X11R7 which also tends to be called the "modular xorg" from what I've seen because it has completely changed from being "monolithic" in its architecture to being "modular".
I first wanted to use normal X11R6.8.2 on my new Arch installation thinking I could get my savage direct rendering to work there, but it turned out that DRI project (dri.freedesktop.org) is removing support from old Xorg (they just yesterday removed the old DRI snapshots) so I was left with upgrading to the latest xorg as the best option. And I didn't regret it.
The new xorg no longer requires me to manually download and install snapshots to get DRI working because now I can get it to working by just installing a normal savage driver package. There's no more hassle just to get 24 bit colors and 3D acceleration working. 
Also, since it is now modular, you have to install keyboard and mouse drivers separately (it's just one package for each), but that will probably be preinstalled in most distros that'll support xorg7 so it's not a problem. Also, there is no more /usr/X11R6 directory as all xorg binaries are now in standard /usr tree, which I like.
New xorg also seems speedier, it's xorgconfig has better detection (for example I didn't have to manually edit xorg.conf to get my mouse scroll to work) and overall seems to be a great improvement, and who knows what all great features are beneath the hood.
So there, if nothing else then this rant could serve to let you know that if you're fighting to get direct rendering working for your graphics chip, you might wanna give xorg 7 a go.
Thanks
Daniel
For all Arch GNU/Linux users that have savage graphics chips here's something that may be useful.
Cool, I have a savage graphics card in my lappy, but no arch
Anyways, nice review on it, must give it a try:)
Sounds quick
Yeah. Xorg7, at least in Arch, seems to be a bit unstable though. It seems it has some issues with opengl causing low FPS and even freezing up when rendering 3D.
But for other things like normal displaying there are no problems and those remaining issues should be fixed when it get's tested and passes into current repository.
there is gonna be some problems when Vista comes out with opengl
MS, decided that they would make a new 3d system, which forces games devs to make the games using their new system, incompatible with any other platform.
Thats not so bad, devs have a choice, or rather they would if MS didnt downgrade performance on opengl on the new vista boxen
Which means games devs are gonna have to use the new MS system, otherwise their games will be slow, because of that they have to sacrifice other platform
I didn't know about that. This is clearly a deliberate monopolistic behavior since it obviously is designed to lock competition out of the game.
I just hope enough game developers see this and choose not to use MS's platform, but to open their games up as Free Software that will run on a growing number of GNU and other free operating system powered boxes.
That's the main problem though, developers will have to make the game twice, to workon two platforms, which is well..nasty to say the least, and for what? 3 or 4 percent of the market, they won't do it much at all.
Ah well, at least it leaves us to lovelt FOSS gaming
Cube here i come!
Well if they don't do it, existing Free Software games developers will be improving on a pretty good number of existing great free games for free operating systems.
And they ought to show them who's better!
I would say; VegaStrike here I come, but I need a better graphics card for that awesome game (at least judging from what I've seen on their site). :-)
That is another thing I have noticed about foss games, better on older hardware too.
My Radeon 9100 with the free DRI drivers plays Nexuiz nice without the uber special effects.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R200#Models for other cards that do too.
My Radeon 9100 with the free DRI drivers plays Nexuiz nice without the uber special effects.
That's great. So it is possible to use those cards with 3D acceleration of sort without the proprietary drivers. That's releaving.
It crashed dapper. I think I'll wait a wee bit more.