Announcing the Release of XFree86[TM] 2.1 March 15, 1994 ------------------------ Contents -------- 1) What is XFree86? 2) What's new in XFree86 2.1? 3) XFree86 features 4) Systems XFree86 has been tested on 5) Supported video-card chip-sets 6) Where to get more information 7) Bugs known fixed in XFree86 vs stock X11R5 8) Known bugs in XFree86 9) Credits 10) The XFree86 Project, Inc. 11) Contact information 12) Source and binary archive sites 1 - What is XFree86? -------------------- XFree86 is a port of X11R5 that supports several versions of Intel-based Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The XFree86 servers are derived from X386 1.2, which was the X server distributed with X11R5. This release consists of many new features and performance improvements as well as many bug fixes. The release is available as source patches against the MIT X11R5 code, as well as binary distributions for many architectures. Note that while the source and installation trees retain the 'X386' name (for simplicity of maintenance of the source tree), there is no connection between XFree86 and the commercial X386 product formerly sold by SGCS. The XFree86 Core Team has maintained technical contacts with SGCS in an effort to keep user-affecting changes to the workings of the products from diverging too radically (although this has happened anyhow over the course of time). There is no direct involvement of either group in the workings of the other. ****News Flash**** At this time, the XFree86 Core Team is pursuing the legal work to complete the formation of The XFree86 Project, Inc, a not-for-profit corporation. The paperwork is with the lawyers, and this incorporation should be complete in the near future. See the section on The XFree86 Project, Inc, later in this document for more information. 2 - What's new in XFree86 2.1? ------------------------------ XFree86 2.1 is not a huge release compared to prior XFree86 releases. There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that two of the Core Team members have moved and started new employment, significantly cutting into their time for XFree86 work. In addition, we are hard at work on merging XFree86 with the upcoming X11R6. Many new features have been put on hold while this integration is done, so that a stable and viable X11R6 release can be developed. XFree86 3.0 will be released on the X11R6 contributed software distribution, and it is our intention that many of these features will be present in that release. The following items have been added since XFree86 2.0 was released in October 1993: 1) The X Consortium's fix-26 is included. 2) Support for pixel multiplexing has been added for Mach32 boards with ATI68875, TLC34075 or Bt885 RAMDACs. This allows dot clocks up to 135MHz to be used with these boards. 3) Support for the TI ViewPoint 3020 RAMDAC used on the #9 GXe Level 14 and 16 cards has been added, supporting dot clocks up to 135MHz and 200MHz respectively. 4) Support for pixel multiplexing (and thus dot clocks up to 135MHz) has been added for the SPEA Mercury cards (S3 928 + Bt485). This has *not* been tested on other 928 + Bt485 cards. 5) Performance improvements for some of the accelerated servers. 6) Support has been added for all the display widths available with the S3 chips. In addition to the 1024 and 1280 widths supported by XFree86 2.0, there is now support for 640, 800 and 2048 with all 801, 805 and 928 chips. 1152 is supported with 801/5 chips at revision C or later. 1152 and 1600 are supported with 928 chips at revision E or later. Note that this change should make XFree86 viable on 512k boards. 7) Support for 8-bit resolution RGB values (as opposed to the standard VGA 6-bit resolution) for S3 cards with AT&T20C490/1, Sierra SC15025 or Ti3020 RAMDACs, and for Mach32 cards with ATI68875, TLC34075 or Bt885 RAMDACs. 8) Support for DRAM based S3 cards using slow memory has been improved. 9) Accelerated support for the Cirrus chipsets has been enhanced and extended to include the lower-end chipsets (5420, 5422, 5424). 10) The pvga1 driver can now access all the clocks on boards using the WD90C30 and WD90C31 chips. 11) The 16 colour generic VGA server has been extended to include banked memory support on selected chipsets. This allows it to make full use of the available video memory on these boards. This server now includes support for GrayScale and StaticGray visuals which makes for better use on many laptops. 12) Support for the Sigma LaserView and Visa monochrome boards has been added to the bdm2 driver in the Mono server. 13) Support for Solaris x86 2.1 has been added. 14) Support is included for shared libraries on FreeBSD-1.1 and NetBSD-current (0.9 based) systems. 15) The SuperProbe program introduced with XFree86 1.3 has been updated to detect more chipsets, to detect installed video memory, and to be more reliable overall. 16) Several dozen bug fixes for problems detected and reported for XFree86 2.0. Plus a number of other small things. Refer to the CHANGELOG file in the source distribution for full details. 3 - XFree86 Features -------------------- Here is a list of the other significant features that XFree86 adds over stock X386 1.2 (X11R5): 1) New servers to support S3, ATI and 8514 accelerated hardware, and support for Cirrus and Western Digital accelerated hardware in the SVGA server. 2) The SpeedUp package from Glenn Lai is an integral part of the SVGA server, selectable at run-time via the Xconfig file. Some SpeedUps require an ET4000 based SVGA, and others require a virtual screen width of 1024. The SpeedUps suitable to the configuration are selected by default. With a high-quality ET4000 board, this can yield up to 40% improvement of the Xstones benchmark over X386 1.2. 3) The fX386 packages from Jim Tsillas are included as the default operating mode of the SVGA server if SpeedUp is not selected. This mode is now equivalent in performance to X386 1.1b (X11R4), and approximately 20% faster than X386 1.2. 4) A monochrome server that supports bank-switching of available SVGA memory to allow virtual screens up to 1600x1200. 5) Support for the Hercules mono card in the monochrome server, and with it the ability to support a "two headed" server - one mono VGA, and one Hercules. 6) Support for Hyundai HGC1280, Sigma LaserView and Visa monochrome graphics card in the monochrome server. 7) A 16-color VGA server is included, which supports generic VGA hardware. 8) SVR3 shared libraries, tested under ISC SVR3 2.0.2, 2.2, 3.0.1 and 4.0; SCO 3.2.2, 3.2.4. 9) Support for Linux, 386BSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, BSD/386, Mach, OSF/1, SVR4.2, SCO, Solaris 2.1, Amoeba, and Minix-386. Including shared libraries for Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD. 10) Support for LOCALCONN. This support is for both SVR3.2 and SVR4. For SVR4.0.4 with the 'Advanced Compatibility Package' and on SVR4.2, local connections from SCO XSight/ODT clients are supported. 11) Drivers for ATI, Trident, NCR, Compaq, Cirrus, and OAK SVGA chipsets. Refer to chipset-specific README files for details about these drivers. 12) Support for compressed bitmap fonts has been added (Thomas Eberhardt's code from the contrib directory on ftp.x.org). 13) Type1 Font code from MIT contrib tape has been included, and is compile-time selectable. There are contributed Type1 fonts in the contrib directory on ftp.x.org. 14) New configuration method which allows the server's drivers and font renderers to be reconfigured from both source and binary distributions. 15) Greatly improved documentation and configuration databases are included. 16) A new tutorial on how to develop correct video card and monitor timing data, written by Eric Raymond (derived from previous documentation and a lot of experimentation). 17) Greatly improved support for international keyboards, including implementation of the Compose key functionality found on many vendor servers. 18) Many enhancements in error handling and parsing of the Xconfig configuration file. Error messages are much more informative and intuitive, and more validation is done. There are many new options that can be enabled in the Xconfig file. 4 - Systems XFree86 has been tested on -------------------------------------- SVR4.0: Esix: 4.0.3A, 4.0.4, 4.0.4.1 Microport: 2.2, 3.1, 4.1, 4.2 Dell: 2.1, 2.2 UHC: 2.0, 3.6 Consensys: 1.2 MST: 4.0.3 (Load 2.07 and Load 3.02) ISC: 4.0.3 AT&T: 2.1, 4.0 NCR: MP-RAS SunSoft: Solaris x86 2.1 SVR4.2: Consensys Univel UnixWare SVR3: Interactive: 2.0.2, 2.2, 3.0, 4.0 SCO: 3.2.2, 3.2.4 AT&T: 3.2.2 Others: 386BSD 0.1, NetBSD 0.9, FreeBSD 1.1(beta) BSD/386 1.0 Mach 386 OSF/1 Linux 0.99pl15h Amoeba Minix-386 5 - Supported video-card chipsets --------------------------------- At this time, XFree86 2.1 supports the following accelerated chipsets: 8514/A (and true clones) ATI Mach8, Mach32 Cirrus CLGD5420, CLGD5422, CLGD5424, CLGD5426, CLGD5428 S3 86C911, 86C924, 86C801, 86C805, 86C805i, 86C928 Western Digital WD90C31 The Cirrus and Western Digital accelerators are supported in the SVGA server; the other chipsets each have their own server. A list of cards on which the accelerated servers have been tested is included in the file AccelCards. They may well work on other cards, but we cannot guarantee it. In addition, the following SVGA chipsets are supported: Tseng ET3000, ET4000AX, ET4000/W32 Western Digital/Paradise PVGA1 Western Digital WD90C00, WD90C10, WD90C11, WD90C24, WD90C30, WD90C31 Genoa GVGA Trident TVGA8800CS, TVGA8900B, TVGA8900C, TVGA8900CL, TVGA9000, TVGA9000i, TVGA9100B, TVGA9200CX, TVGA9320, TVGA9400CX, TVGA9420 ATI 28800-4, 28800-5, 28800-a NCR 77C22, 77C22E, 77C22E+ Cirrus Logic CLGD5420, CLGD5422, CLGD5424, CLGD5426, CLGD5428 CLGD6205, CLGD6215, CLGD6225, CLGD6235 Compaq AVGA OAK OTI067, OTI077 All of the above are supported in both 256 color and monochrome modes, with the exception of the ATI and Cirrus chipsets, which are only supported in 256 color mode. Refer to the chipset-specific README files (currently for Tseng, Western Digital, ATI, and Trident) for more information about using those chipsets. The monochrome server also supports generic VGA cards, using 64k of video memory in a single bank, the Hercules monochrome card, the Hyundai HGC1280, Sigma LaserView and Visa monochrome cards. On the Compaq AVGA, only 64k of video memory is supported for the monochrome server, and the GVGA has not been tested with more than 64k. The VGA16 server has not been as extensively tested and debugged as the others, but it should work rather well (but slowly) on most hardware. This server supports memory banking with the ET4000 and Trident chipsets allowing virtual display sizes up to about 1600x1200 (with 1MB of video memory). For other chipsets the display size is limited to approximately 800x600. Note ---- Some of the SVGA card manufacturers are using non-traditional mechanisms for selecting pixel-clock frequencies. To avoid having to modify the server to accommodate these schemes XFree86 1.2 added support for using an external program to select the pixel clock. This allows programs to be written as new mechanisms are discovered. Refer to the README.clkprog file for information on how these programs work, if you need to write one. If you do develop such a program, we would be interested in including it with future XFree86 releases. NOTE: The Diamond SpeedStar 24 (and possibly recent SpeedStar+) boards are NOT supported, even though they use the ET4000. The same is true for all of Diamond's S3 boards. The reason for this is that Diamond has changed the mechanism used to select pixel clock frequencies, and will only release programming information under non-disclosure. We are not willing to do this (as it would mean that source cannot be provided). We have had discussions with Diamond over this, and they do not intend to change this policy. Hence we will do nothing to support Diamond products going forward (i.e. don't send us a program to run to set their clocks). XFree86 DOES NOT SUPPORT DIAMOND HARDWARE. It is possible to make some of it work, but we will not assist in doing this. Diamond's Cirrus-based boards should work with XFree86 because they use the standard Cirrus clock synthesiser. This includes the SpeedStar Pro and possibly the SpeedStar 64. 6 - Where to get more information --------------------------------- Additional documentation is available in the XFree86(1), Xconfig(4/5), XF86_SVGA(1), XF86_Mono(1), XF86_VGA16(1), XF86_Accel(1) and XF86keybd(1) manual pages. In addition, several README files and tutorial documents are provided. These are available in /usr/X386/lib/X11/etc in the binary distributions, and in mit/server/ddx/x386 and ddx/x386/etc in the source distribution. The files README.Config and VideoModes.doc should be consulted for information on how to set up the XFree86 servers. All supplied documents and manual pages should be read before contacting the XFree86 team for assistance. Documentation on SVGA driver development can be found in the directory /usr/X386/lib/Server/VGADriverDoc in the binary distribution, and in the directory mit/server/ddx/x386/VGADriverDoc in the source distribution. If you are totally at a loss, you can contact the XFree86 Core Team at the electronic mail address below. There is a Usenet news group comp.windows.x.i386unix that contains mostly discussions about XFree86 and related topics. Many questions can be answered there. The answers to common questions are found in the corresponding FAQ. 7 - Bugs known fixed in XFree86 vs stock X11R5 ---------------------------------------------- 1) Server now traps and exits cleanly if unexpected signals are received (a core is still generated for debugging). There is an Xconfig option to disable this trapping. 2) VT switching (on OS's that support the feature) is more robust. The server will no longer crash nor will the screen get corrupted as a result of starting or exiting clients while switched away. Also, the screen saver is turned off when switching back so you don't return to a blank screen. These changes also ensure that xdm shuts down cleanly, and allow multiple servers to be active simultaneously 3) Many bugs in the frame buffer code have been fixed. 4) The use of xdm with xqueue under SVR4 has been fixed. 5) The maximum number of server connections is now correctly determined for SVR4 by making use of getrlimit(). 6) The default pointer button mapping has been fixed. 7) xterm no longer tries to open /dev/tty[psr]?? for SVR4. This speeds up the startup time for xterm, as well as keeping it from using the wrong pty's on SVR4.0.4. 8) xconsole fixed to use /dev/osm (SVR4 and some SVR3.2) for OS messages. 9) A bug with XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 which caused strange problems with some hardware has been fixed. 10) The xman scroll bug has been fixed. 11) Improved the accuracy of the server's probe for pixel clock frequencies 12) Redefined the handling of the numeric keypad, so that it works correctly with Xt-based applications (translation problems resolved). 13) Plugged security risk related to suid-root execution of the server. 8 - Known bugs in XFree86 ------------------------- 1) There are some problems with some of the 'xset fp' operations (in particular 'xset fp rehash'). These seem to be caused by memory allocation/deallocation problems in the server's font code. We believe that we have worked around this problem, but have not yet solved the root cause. 2) While not strictly a bug, there is currently a limitation on the dot-clock frequencies allowed with the S3 server. For S3 cards with the Bt485 RAMDAC (e.g. #9 GXe), the limit is 85Mhz. There is some special programming required to use these RAMDACs at higher dot-clocks, and we were not able to get it fully developed in time. An exception to this is the SPEA Mercury card which is supported at dot clocks up to 135MHz. We welcome reports of bugs sent to the electronic mail address listed below. 9 - Credits ----------- XFree86 was originally put together by: David Dawes Glenn Lai Jim Tsillas David Wexelblat , 386BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD support by: Rich Murphey Original 386BSD port by: Pace Willison Amancio Hasty Jr Mach 386 support by: Robert Baron Linux support by: Orest Zborowski SCO Unix support by: David McCullough Amoeba support by: Kees Verstoep Minix-386 support by: Philip Homburg OSF/1 support by: Marc Evans BSD/386 support by: Hans Nasten Paul Vixie Solaris support by: Doug Anson David Holland SVR3 shared libraries by: Thomas Wolfram Linux shared libraries by: Dirk Hohndel Original accelerated code by: Kevin Martin Rik Faith Jon Tombs S3 accelerated code by: Jon Tombs David Wexelblat David Dawes Robin Cutshaw Amancio Hasty Mach32 accelerated code by: Kevin Martin Rik Faith Mike Bernson Mark Weaver Craig Groeschel Mach8, 8514 accelerated code by: Kevin Martin Rik Faith Tiago Gons Hans Nasten Scott Laird Cirrus accelerated code by: Simon Cooper Harm Hanemaayer Bill Reynolds Western Digital accelerated code by: Mike Tierney 16 color VGA server by: Gertjan Akkerman ATI SVGA driver by: Per Lindqvist and Doug Evans Ported to X11R5 by Rik Faith Trident SVGA driver by: Alan Hourihane NCR SVGA driver by: Stuart Anderson with the permission of NCR Corporation Cirrus SVGA driver by: Bill Reynolds Hank Dietz Compaq SVGA driver by: Hans Oey Oak SVGA driver by: Steve Goldman Configurable MFB and Hercules driver by: Davor Matic Banked Dumb Monochrome and related drivers by: Pascal Haible X386 1.2, and moral support from: Thomas Roell Mark Snitily Other contributors: Joerg Wunsch (ET3000 banked mono) Bob Crosson (video mode documentation) Thomas Eberhardt (compressed fonts) Eric Raymond (new video mode documentation) and an entire horde of beta-testers around the world! 10 - Contact information ------------------------ Ongoing development planning and support is coordinated by the XFree86 Core Team. At this time the Core Team consists of (in alphabetical order): David Dawes Dirk Hohndel Rich Murphey Jon Tombs David Wexelblat , E-mail sent to will reach the Core Team. 11 - The XFree86 Project, Inc. ------------------------------ The XFree86 Project, Inc, has been founded to accomplish two major goals: 1) To provide a vehicle by which XFree86 can be represented in X Consortium, Inc, the organization responsible for the design, development, and release of The X Window System. 2) To provide some basic funding for acquisition of facilities for ongoing XFree86 development, largly to consist of new video hardware and basic computing facilities. The first of these was the primary motivation. We have held discussions with the X Consortium on and off for many months, attempting to find an avenue by which our loosely-organized free software project could be given a voice within the X Consortium. The bylaws of the Consortium would not recognize such an organization. After an initial investigation about funding, we decided to form our own corporation to provide the avenue we needed to meet the requirements of the X Consortium bylaws. By doing this, we are able to be involved in the beta-test interval for X11R6, and will be contributing the majority of XFree86 to the X11R6 core release. The next full-featured release of XFree86, version 3.0, will be present on the X11R6 contributed software tape, with full X11R6 support, and (hopefully) a host of new features. As time goes on, XFree86 will be involved with more of the development of The X Window System, as a full Consortium member. How exactly this will evolve is still being determined. An additional benefit of this incorporation is that The XFree86 Project, Inc has obtained outside financial support for our work. This will hopefully give us the freedom to be more proactive in obtaining new video hardware, and enable us to release better products more quickly, as we will be able to go and get what we need, and get it into the hands of the people who can do the work. The initial Board of Directors and Officers of the The XFree86 Project, Inc, are the same XFree86 Core Team as is listed above. Our bylaws have been crafted in such a way to ensure that XFree86 is and always will be a free software project. There is no personal financial benefit to any member of the Core Team or any other XFree86 participant. All assets of the corporation remain with the corporation, and, in the event of the dissolution of the corporation, all assets will be turned over to the X Consortium, Inc. It is hoped that by doing this, our corporation will be merely a formalization of what we have been doing in the past, rather than something entirely new. Here is a list of the organizations and individuals who have provided sponsorship to The XFree86 Project, Inc, either by financial contribution or by the donation of equipment and resources. The XFree86 Project, Inc gratefully acknowledges these contributions, and hopes that we can do justice to them by continuing to release high-quality free software for the betterment of the Internet community as a whole. UUNET Communications Services, Inc. UUNET Communications Services, Inc, deserves special mention. This organization stepped forward and contributed the entire 1994 X Consortium membership fee on a moment's notice. This single act ensured XFree86's involvement in X11R6. AIB Software Corporation American Micro Group AT&T Global Information Services (formerly NCR) BSDI InfoMagic LunetIX Frank & Paige McCormick Prime Time Freeware Red Hat Software The XFree86 Project, Inc, welcomes the additional contribution of funding and/or equipment. Such contributions should be tax-deductible; we will know for certain when the lawyers get finished with the papers. For more information, contact The XFree86 Project, Inc, at We are in the process of establishing our own Internet domain, XFree86.Org. Most of the pieces are in place, and we hope to be online within a few more weeks. We will post an announcement when this is ready for use. 12 - Source and binary archive sites ------------------------------------ Source patches based on X11R5 PL25, from MIT, and as an upgrade from XFree86 2.0 are available via anonymous FTP from: ftp.x.org (under /contrib/XFree86) ftp.physics.su.oz.au (under /XFree86) ftp.win.tue.nl (under /pub/XFree86) ftp.prz.tu-berlin.de (under /pub/pc/src/XFree86) Refer to the README file under the specified directory for information on which files you need to get to build your distribution (which will depend on whether this is a new installation or an upgrade from an earlier version of XFree86). Binaries are available via anonymous FTP from: ftp.physics.su.oz.au - SVR4 binaries under /XFree86/SVR4 ftp.win.tue.nl - SVR4 binaries under /pub/XFree86/SVR4 ftp.tcp.com - SVR4 binaries under /pub/SVR4/XFree86 stasi.bradley.edu - SVR4 binaries under /pub/XFree86/SVR4 stasi.bradley.edu - Solaris x86 2.1 binaries under /pub/XFree86/solaris stasi.bradley.edu - SVR3 (SCO) binaries under /pub/XFree86/sco ftp.physics.su.oz.au - SVR3 (SCO) binaries under /XFree86/SCO blancmange.ma.utexas.edu - SVR3 (ISC) binaries under /pub/ISC ftp.prz.tu-berlin.de - SVR3 (ISC) binaries under /pub/pc/isc/XFree86 tsx-11.mit.edu - Linux binaries under /pub/linux/packages/X11 ftp.unipi.it - Linux binaries under /pub/linux/XFree86_2.1 XFree86.cdrom.com - FreeBSD binaries under /pub/XFree86/FreeBSD/XFree86-2.1 gil.physik.rwth-aachen.de - FreeBSD binaries under /pub/XFree86 agate.berkeley.edu - NetBSD 0.9 binaries under /pub/NetBSD/ports sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu - NetBSD 0.9 binaries under /pub/NetBSD/ports ftp.cs.mcgill.ca - NetBSD 0.9 binaries under /pub/NetBSD/XFree86 Ensure that you are getting XFree86 2.1 - some of these sites may archive older releases as well. Each binary distribution will contain a README file that describes what files you need to take from the archive, and which compile-time option selections were made when building the distribution. 15 March 1994