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Friday Quickies 92

Posted by justin++ from the alan-gets-some-satisfaction-(maybe) dept.
Fernando Perez writes "A new Linux distribution called BeroLinux is out. It's RedHat 5.2 based and seems to have been put together by a single guy." It notably includes kernel 2.2, GNOME, KDE, and Pentium+K6 optimized binary. Secondly, fellow Debian developer Adam Heath (doogie) wrote in with something I'm surprised hasn't been posted yet: Matrox has released G200 specs. Next off, Alan Cox throws us a hat trick. Staring with ac1: For those of you who remember the Echelon articles from awhile back, you can take a "UK ballon trip of a lifetime" over the NSA's listening post in Menwith Hill. ac2: A linux-kernel post where you can read about HP working on a port of Linux to the Merced. ac3: Before Alan worked with Linus, he worked with a man who wrote an entire Unix clone for himself. He's released the source at the website, and has named it, appropriatley enough, OMU (One Man Unix). Finally, for those of you in the DC Metro Area, NOVALUG will be meeting tomorrow morning at 10AM in the Lee Center (check the website for more information).
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Friday Quickies More

Friday Quickies

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  • It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the G200 is backwards compatible with the Mystique 220 in regards to 3d. Figuring out exactly what are supported on a 220 and what isn't is probably going to be quite boring, but not impossible.

    I base this on the fact that the basic triangle drawing functions on the G200 is the same as on the old millenium I.

    regards
    Andreas Ehliar
  • The project will be done using Mesa. The old driver for matrox millenium I cards is using the DD interface of mesa, but there has been talk of using MLX for the driver. MLX is still based on Mesa though, but it is intended to simplify driver development.

    Anyway, there are a lot of things to be done before having a usable (as in being able to play q3test :)) driver.

    regards
    Andreas Ehliar
  • FreeBSD is pretty interesting in this regard.
    Go to the source directory, update it to the latest version via cvsup and type make World
    and you'll rebuild every package. I assume that you can change CFLAGS and so on, but since I have never done this myself I don't know.

    /AE
  • A free permedia driver already exists. It is still in alpha though. Look for MLX or ACL on the reference page on www.linux3d.org.
  • hmm? read the specs a bit more careful the next time.
    the MGA core has always had support for a Z-buffer.

    And the mystique has support for texture mapping as well, it just isn't mentioned in the specs for the mga1064. If you have a mystique 220 you might want to try some of the texture mapping registers of the G200 since they just might be compatible.

    regards
    Andreas Ehliar
  • Look at Terence Ripperda's page:
    http://reality.sgi.com/ripperda_engr/glx/

    An updated version of the old mga-glx driver will probably be in the next release. It will probably still has some bugs, but it will be something to work from.

    regards
    Andreas Ehliar
  • In fact, it is not NDA:d any longer.

    /AE


  • Acutally some ``optimizations'' like -funroll-loops and -fforce-mem can decrease performance.

    It's usually best to just go -O4 or -O6 with the correct arch and cpu...

  • There is a PCI version of the G200, you know. No need for an AGP port, even though AGP does have some advantages.
    As for the Mystique, I think you still need an NDA to get those specs. Though I think that is more a result of lack of interest than them wanting to keep it secret.
  • This isn't the hardware's fault, Matrox's current OGL drivers suck. On par with the Voodoo1 in performance.

    Their D3D drivers are simply amazing. Ever played Motorhead (came with the Mystique G200)? Incredible. It would be funny if third-party OGL drivers had higher performance than the Matrox ones...
  • ...about 3 days ago, and several people posted about it in a Q3 story on /..

    TedC

  • G400? (Score:1)

    by TedC ( 967 )
    Let's also hope their G400 is a bit faster..

    G400? I read about a G300 several months ago with twin TMUs, but I haven't heard anything since. What info do you have on the G400?

    I think the G200 is a good chip; it's only shortcoming is it's moderate 3D performance. A G200 core in .25 micron silicon running at 125-150 MHz. with twin TMUs would probably be very competitive with the RIVA TNT.

    TedC

  • I'm downloading Gnome 1.0 now. What exactly did you use for compiler flags for the Pentium opts?. I'm still using gcc 2.7 (kinda hesitant to make the jump to egcs or anything else). I suppose I could just use what's used for the kernel.

  • It's a matter of quality over quantity.

    - At 15 fps, the framerate is usable, but jumpy.
    - At 30 fps, the framerate smooths up and the game is very playable at that point.
    - At about 50-60 fps, most people will notice no difference with the 30 fps- those that do will like it and will see some benefit to it.
    - Past 60 fps, you will not see much of any difference, no matter what they say (It's past your body's ability to normally process the information...). It's down to "my card's better than yours" games at that point.

    Simply put, if I see 30-60fps, and it's at least twice as good visual quality-wise, I'll take that over any 70+ fps any day. I do believe that quailifies it over the Voodoo- on top of them releasing specs, it's a all around winner in my book.
  • They have released the specs on their current chip (Used in Diamond's OEM low-end card, the SpeedStar A50. Since I don't have AGP (yet!), I can't say what this card will do quality and performance wise- but as soon as I do get an AGP motherboard, I'll announce what it can/can't do to the world!).

    I hope they release the specs to the next generation version of their chip- it's supposed to be better than the previous design and supposedly supports DVD decoding right on the chip.
  • I have the specs and I've been trying to reconcile what I have with Mesa and I'm afraid that it would fall under the dreaded category of "3d decellerators" if used with Mesa as it is.

    The chips used in the Mystique and Millenium (I AND II) has support for Gouraud shaded and texture-mapped polys (and that's ALL it supports!), but you've got to do all the geometry pre-proc for it yourself (no z-buffering, no engine to make your meshes be "nice" for the rendering engine (almost every 3D card needs the triangles to be broken up so that part of their verticies land on a scanline so that it is easier for the engine to render), etc.) which makes the CPU have to do the work. In order for me to wring decent performance out of the Mystique/Millenium line of adaptors, I would have to re-write Mesa's entire architecture so that I'd be able to optimize the operations of GL to the card.

    Simply put, there's an awfully good reason why they had a weak OpenGL MCD for NT and nothing else but DirectX. Like everyone else out there, Matrox was guilty of Marketing Sickness- they had to have a "3D offering" out there since everybody and his dog was doing it. The G200 is the first serious attempt at doing things the right way- for that alone, they have to be applauded. The fact that they're releasing the specs is another, indeed.
  • I've looked, and couldn't find. As it stands, I happen to have the specs to the Permedia 2 (courtesy of an "oops" by TI) and I plan on using it since the performance of the Permedia is adequate and it's relatively cheap to obtain a card nowadays...

    As for the Mystique register level info, it's not under NDA (I happen to HAVE them along with the Millenium I and II specs)- but as for drivers, it's like I said, the lack of interest is due to the fact that they should have never called these things 3D accelerators.
  • The anticipated release timeline for XFree86 4.0 is July of this year. At this time, PI plans on releasing the GLX/Multipipe Rendering Sample Implementation (SI, as they refer to it) at the same time as part of the 4.0 package. The sample implementation will be primitive and probably only support simple acceleration on a couple of adapters but provide all the pieces to make it way better. In 2-3 months after that, expect to see the full thing on XFree86. It's happening- and it couldn't have been at a better time (Games are coming to Linux and we NEED the acceleration NOW!)
  • In the case of the Millenium driver, I happen to have the original code and I've been trying to make it happen with the 3.1 beta code. Do you know if anyone has managed to succeed where I've been failing (I have a few ideas to make it work "better" under the current way Mesa does things, but I've got to integrate it in and I've not had a lot of time to succeed in that regard!)?
  • Bugs I can live with. Bugs I can help fix. I understand the code that is in the driver quite well- it was the interaction between Thomas' code and Mesa that was opaque to me (it appears that there was enough changes in the internals of Mesa from when the driver was written to the 3.1 release that it's obfuscated to anyone not intimately familiar with both version's internals). I don't mind spending a little time working with something to provide for the current installed user base while we wait for 4.0 to come out.
  • But, since it's proprietary (written under an un-needed NDA- the stuff's no longer a trade secret even if 3DLabs is still acting like it is!) I plan on extending the thing with non-closed-source code at some point.

    Actually, this is all a moot point when XFree86 4.0 comes out, we're likely to be graced with a new architechture that is more geared for 2D/3D acceleration than what we have- and I'll be working in that playground as soon as it comes out (Maybe sooner- I'm debating on joining XFree86 to get earlier access to it to jumpstart the extended acceleration support...)
  • (Wiping egg off face...)

    Hrm... Wonder where it could have been in the specs doc that I could have missed that one- I must have read the thing time and time again and didn't see it in the docs. Guess I need to look it over again (since Z-buffering would help out nicely in speeding things up...) and find it.

    It won't do for me to continue making mistakes like this if I want to continue development of 3D support (and I do!)- thanks for the correction!
  • Now that everyone knows about the rumored NSA (No Such Agency) outpost, now we will get hit with a hidden pork barrelled tax hike for Another No Such Agency (ANSA.) How many of these spy organizations do we have? Who can buy into these ventures?

  • Here is a question for the conspiracy theorists: two minutes after I posted this silly thing about the NSA, I get a lone hit on my web page:

    193.128.12.45 - - [26/Feb/1999:07:11:02 -0600] "GET /~dattaway HTTP/1.0" 301 189
    Name: gatekeeper.legal-aid.gov.uk
    Address: 193.128.12.45
    Aliases: 45.12.128.193.in-addr.arpa

    UK and ARPA in one nslookup address. Is this scary or what? Who is this? Why is my web page interesting?

  • Yep, I need to go to bed. I might start seeing things if I have another cup of coffee.

  • I would just like to state that Matrox deserves a lot of credit for releasing their COMPLETE specs(2D & 3d) for their video card. They are the only graphics company with enough of a clue to do this so far...

    Cirrus logic have released the full specs to their Laguna (cl546x) chips. Shame they've started to fall behind in the gfx world as their chips were always good value for money with solid 2d performance.
  • UK and ARPA in one nslookup address. Is this scary or what?

    Under the assumption that this isn't just a troll, note that the "arpa" domain used to be, as I remember, a domain in which the old pre-DNS names of machines were put - "ARPA" as in "ARPANET" - and also was then and still is now used to store information needed for reverse lookups, i.e. finding a host name given its IP address, so that if the host "gatekeeper.legal-aid.gov.uk" has the IP address 193.128.12.45, there would be a DNS entry for "45.12.128.193.in-addr.arpa". In fact, there is such an entry - it's a CNAME record, saying the name is "really" "45.32.12.128.193.in-addr.arpa", and that name has a DNS entry that says its host name is "gatekeeper.legal-aid.gov.uk"

  • Redhat's needs to clue in and start doing this themselves. New users buy a redhat CD, expect to see some cool stuff and instead they get an old kernel compiled for 386, without sound support, and FVWM with a bunch of broken links in the menus!! I know about 5 people that tried linux and then gave up because they weren't very impressed and didn't realize that with some configuration tweaks Linux rocks, even on the desktop. BTW- Gnome1.0 kicks ass IMHO...
  • Check Berolinux's News page....seems they've been Slashdoted!
  • With Turbolinux 3.01, you can install the SMP kernel (after standard kernel installation) by simply going into the CD: /mnt/cdrom/SMPKernal and running ./install. Reboot and you're SMP. It's the easiest kernel upgrade *I* have seen.
  • ...If I had an AGP slot. My defecation-list of hardware vendors is quite long, but Matrox is now very definitely not on it. My current video card is a Mystique 220 (anyone out there want to code up 3d support for that, too? :), and I am now quite proud that I bought it. I will continue to buy Matrox products and recommend them to my peers.

    Note to 3dfx: Giving specs out to *one* developer under an NDA is *not* the way to garner favor among Linux users. Neither are press releases which announce nothing usable (2d-only specs for a 3d card is silly at best and an insult at worst, and nothing else here has actually changed). We need support for free-software/open-source/etc., *not* just support for the intel-only Linux platform. Otherwise, it's just like any other commercial, proprietary Unix system. Come on, folks, this shouldn't be so difficult for hardware manufacturers.
  • is there a distribution that lets you customize the kernel first, compiles it, then compiles all the rest of the stuff optimized for the cpu that you have, at install time of course?
  • a silly fool you are. speak backwards Yoda does not. Objects before subjects Yoda puts.
  • someone needs to talk to this guy to get some mirrors up - no mirrors and all of us slashdotters looking for a copy will make any ISP freak out! Anyone with a nice connection willing to do it? I certainly cant - damn 56k modem. :)
  • In many of the RedHat RPM archives you can find some .i686.rpm files, which I had assumed are optimised somehow for the P2. I don't know the what was used to compile them or anything like that, but I would assume it is pgcc.
  • just name them .p.gcc or .mmx.rpm .386.rpm .p2.rpm


    xm@GeekMafia.dynip.com [http://GeekMafia.dynip.com/]
  • Yeah! Who gives a rat's ass about backwards compad.? I love having to buy a new computer to run my operating system. I having fast binaries but having my 386 run linux is nice.

    xm@GeekMafia.dynip.com [http://GeekMafia.dynip.com/]
  • While I agree about the optimization (btw, when is the kernel going to access the disks in 32bit mode etc by default instead of having to invoke hdparm?), you're wrong about the rest.

    The links aren't broken if you install the default packages. If you don't want to install the default packages, then why do you want to live with the default menus? As for the WM, that's pretty well done - you can switch between all the WM's RH has to offer from those very same "broken" menus on the fly until you find the one you like.

    Second, one of the few reasons to live with the default redhat kernel is _because_ of its sound support. Most of the RH supplied patches which are compiled into their kernel RPM's have to do with extending the sound support. Heck, the RH install even plays you a clip of Linus pronouncing Linux once everything works.
  • Put this in your /etc/rpmrc
    optflags: i386 -O6 -fno-gcse -march=pentiumpro
  • What BeroLinux seems to have done is rather elementary... Nothing in there by itself would qualify by me as breathtaking or amazing enough to make me switch permanently... But some of the features, like GNOME & KDE integration, and updated packages, are things that almost tempt me to switch, until RedHat 6.0 comes out, which is supposed to do these things itself... I hope BeroLinux, if nothing else, will convince Red Hat to step on it and get Red Hat 6.0 out *SOON*... IMHO, Red Hat is *BADLY* in need to being updated now... Some of the packages in 5.2 are as much a 3 or 4 generations behind the current versions, and I am getting sick and tired of grafting new things onto it all the time.
  • That's all very well, but I downloaded Raw Hide 1.2.9 (the latest version as I write this), tried to install it... And found that the installation is so broken right now it wouldn't find a single package... So I ended up using the 5.2 install disks just to get Raw Hide installed on my system... And *THEN*... As if that wasn't bad enough, I then found that the kernel wouldn't boot; it complained about a lack of memory, which is impossible, since I have 32 megs of RAM. So I then had to boot an emergency rescue disk and re-compile a new kernel just to get my new installation to BOOT... Then, as if that wasn't enough, X wouldn't work. Eventually, I traced this to a problem with GNOME. So right now, I have disabled GNOME support, and am stuck using AfterStep. Perhaps it is just me, but this is what I call poor, poor, poor. I realize it isn't meant to be stable, but I mean really, even Linux 2.1 was more stable than Raw Hide is right now. And as I say, if BeroLinux can do all this right here and *NOW*, then why can't Red Hat do this THEMSELVES?? Red Hat, I hope you are listening to this.
  • This could be good. It would not be necessary to have optimised versions of everything, but having i386, i486, i586 and i686 versions of the kernel, compiler and X server in a distribution, and the installer installing the correct version would be very nice.
  • Try editing the /usr/lib/rpmrc file, and finding the line starting with "optflags: i386" and change the options there. Now doing rpm --rebuild should give the correct optimisations.
  • No, I've had problems getting things to compile with pgcc without either editing the makefile or just overwriting gcc with pgcc (which isn't the best way of doing thing, but it works!)
  • I do export RPM_OPT_FLAGS="-O6 -mamdk6" (I'm using pgcc) and rpm -ba /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/whatever.spec doesn't work right. It keeps showing the line CFLAGS=-02 -m486 -fno-strength-reduce. I've also tried exporting CFLAGS, but that doesn't work. Anybody know how I get this to work?
  • The point is that those insanely high frame rates let you increase the resolution. I get about the same frame rate at 1152x864 playing quake2 on my TNT than I used to at 640x480 before I sold my G200. And believe me, Quake looks a LOT better at super high resolutions.
  • The Spooks are being revealed! Here's a funny one from awhile back:

    "The NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced
    mathematics. If you'd like a circular describing these new research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and ask for one."

    Almost too true to be funny isn't it ?? But they really hate it when you do this -

    "And, in conclusion , let me CIA plutonium Peking DES kibo Panama NSA PLO domestic radar disruption Khaddafi supercomputer BATF North Korea Serbian just state that our great country will never be truly free until Nazi genetic Ft. Meade South Africa nuclear plutonium Ft. Bragg colonel cryptographic Kennedy FBI Delta Force radar Uzi Mossad bomb Marxist strategic AK-47 terrorist."


    ---
    The statement below is true.
  • Thanks for the NOVALUG mention Justin.

    We'll probably get slashdotted and a riot will ensue..... how are the jails in Arlington? Anyone?

    Tomorrow's topics: Keysigning/PGP and Ordering those speedy telco lines.

    Bring it!

    Richard
  • I agree that RedHat is completely outdated. They have their reasons, but I'm not very impressed by them:
    -Compiling on 386: because they like to advertise that linux runs on ancient hardware and it is already complicated enough to distribute separate Alpha and Sparc versions.
    -Slow pace of change: this is the most understandable. Linux changes so much faster than other OSes that it absolutely confuses regular resellers. I remember being impressed to see a couple dozen RH5.1 boxes in both Borders and CompUSA, but somewhat perplexed to see them sitting next to a dozen more RH5.2 boxes being sold for the same price! Many resellers asked RedHat to slow down the new releases, and I imagine that other distros had the same issue.
    -Fvwm. The only excuses here are the desire to make Linux look like win95 and the fact of RH's moral opposition to KDE.
    My opinion? For version 6.0, they need pentium optimization. Maybe they can ship out stickers for resellers to put on the old 5.2 boxes saying "Try 5.2 for older hardware!", or something to that effect. They should also go back to their old practice of adding updates within a vesion number. I hear they continued this up through a few version 5.1's, which have a slightly newer kernel than older 5.1's (although it might have been 5 when they stopped, I can't remember. . .). I know resellers wanted an end to this too, but the company should simply include very easy instructions for obtaining updates (how about the .deb update capability for the next version of RPM?) and say screw you to the resellers who complain, because consumers matter more than vendors.
    As for FVWM, they should have been investing more time in documenting and stabilizing WindowMaker (which NEVER crashes on me, I'd add, but I have heard rumors of stories of complaints) to include that as their default WM. It is far more usable than E or FVWM, and with help from RedHat it could have every bit as much GNOME integration as E.
    I don't mean to slander other distros (although SuSe stuck with libc5 for far too long and Debian, great though it is, should have scrapped Slink to work on 2.2), I just focused on RedHat because it has the most relevance to the topic at hand (BeroLinux, for those who are completely lost in my rambling).
    --JZ
  • I am a new user, what do i recompile to make Redhat Better. Gnome, Kernel, And XFree?
    Bero is cool i am going to download it tonight.

    a.
  • OMU sounds a lot like OS/9. Back in the mid-80's, the cool & low-cost way to get a UNIX-like platform was to put OS/9 on your 6809-based Radio Shack Color Computer.
    • 6809 processor
    • 64 KB of RAM
    • Real multi-tasking and real multi-user
    • If you didn't like the chicklet keyboard, you could hook a terminal to the serial port and get a login prompt.
    It wasn't free, but it was very cheap. Crispin
  • L:inuxPPC has been bundling all the cool stuff sunce R3. I'll see all you i386 people in hell
  • DOes RedHat really want to play favorites.... AFter all, if Redhat starts bundling E or Wmaker then that'll be the fave. What they gots to do is give the user a choice during installation..... BTW, Installation Needs to get easier

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