The FreeBSD Xorg Team is pleased to announce Xorg 7.7 Release. We are very happy to be able to Call for testing shortly after the Xorg team annouced 7.7 release. This CFT is also open for discussion on how we should move forward with xorg release as we are facing some issues and we would like to ask for your opinion. Right now we have 2 existing xorg versions in our Ports Tree. The situation is quite bad due to our poor graphic card support. That means we do not have much choice but to take it as how it is now. But with regards to mesa support, we have to face some new challanges.

With the new mesa 8.0 release, accelerated support for a number of older graphic cards was dropped. At the moment we are not sure how to deal with that.We are thinking of just replacing mesa 7.11 with 8.0 or making a new flag like WITH_MESA= 7.11.2 / 8.0 in combination with WITH_NEW_XORG, and let the mesa 7.6.1 set as default together with the old xorg version. Obviosly the latter option make the already complex situation more complex. The problem is, users, especially  the new ones can easily get confused with it. Another issue is, the packages.We can’t deliver a package set with the new Xorg releases. This means users with new hardware will have to compile everything by themselves. Though I’m totally fine with compiling, not everyone has the CPU power to compile everything. What I’m trying to say is, I would love to see the newer xorg released as the default version, but i know this will break a lot of old hardware. The thing is, when we want to try to become a Modern Operating System, I dont see any other way to make the new xorg as default but to give Users the chance to compile the old xorg with a flag like WITH_OLD_XORG.

Some notes regarding KMS support:
KMS Support has been completely migrated to FreeBSD 10. The MFC to 9 will come soon, that means so long its not MFC’d to 9-Stable, users need to get the latest patch from our x11 mailing list.

This testing includes
* libdrm 2.4.34 (including KMS support)
* mesa 8.0.3
* full Xorg 7.7 release

Checkout Xorg Development Repo:
You will need to install devel/subversion in order to checkout the xorg repo. Next, you will need to add WITH_NEW_XORG=yes in your /etc/make.conf if you want to try out the new Xorg and mesa. Note
that if you are not qualified for the KMS patch, you shouldn’t use WITH_NEW_XORG=yes because the old intel driver doesn’t build with the new X server. If you are qualified, you should also set WITH_KMS=yes
in /etc/make.conf. Nvidia and ATI users should set WITH_NEW_XORG=yes.

svn co https://trillian.chruetertee.ch/svn/ports/trunk

A small merge script to merge the svn checkout into the real portstree can be found here:

http://people.freebsd.org/~miwi/xorg/xorgmerge

The script is a modified version of the old kdemerge script. Please set the KDEDIR variable to the path of your X.org ports. After merging, run one of the following command, depending on which
tool you use to manage your installed packages.

portupgrade -af \*
portmaster -a

After installing these, you will have to rebuild all xf86-* ports. We will bump all releated ports during the commit to the ports tree.

Roadmap:
Our current plan is to let the CFT running for a while, and see what the outcome of the discussion above is. We hope to get a lot of feedback to solve as many problems as possible. Also we are working on the
libglut to freeglut migration, this will definitely complete before we import Xorg 7.7. So we still have enough time.  We are looking forward for your feedback.

- miwi on behalf of the FreeBSD X11 Team

- Martin

Changes:

– libdrm 2.4.31 (including KMS support)
– mesa 7.11.2
– xorg-server 1.10.6
– a lot of new Graphic Drivers.

I would like to thank:

Koop Mast
Eitan Adler
Niclas Zeising
and all helpers and testers from x11@.

Just a review of myself since i’ve need it for my talk

I’ve started playing with Linux in 2000/1, and since then I have been switching between Linux and Windows from time to time. By the end of 2001, I switched completely to Linux because I had enough of windows blue screens problem. After some hardcore testings of other distributions like debian, slax, crux, fedora, suse and gentoo, I finally stayed with Gentoo for 1 ½ years. But after portage got more and more buggy, I started to look for a new challenge. I’ve met some BSD Guys in IRC, and after a while I setup FreeBSD in dual boot and started playing with it. I was really surprised on how fast and stable it runs, and also the community impressed me with their helpfulness. If you ask anything over the mailing list, you will always get helpful answers from the developers and users. My experience with Linux community is totally the opposite. It was common for me to get answers such as “RTFM” or “Try google”, which is not what I hoped for. I still remember today how many times I had to reinstall Linux just to fix up some mess. After a while with Linux I have the impression that Linux is going more and more towards mainstream, which is of course nice for the end users, but the fact that anyone can install Linux without knowing what happened in the background makes it even worse. Not to mention about the kernel size, which I have always seen some new stuff in, but the old codes were left unmaintained. This leads to a bigger kernel with more security holes, which leads to system instability. The kernel is now 63MB, which is so much bigger compared to FreeBSD kernel.

I believe that Linux now has a big user base where 70% of the users do not understand what is occurring in the background or if they even know what ‘terminal’ is Thank you Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora. Well alright I think I stop here because you maybe start thinking that I’m bashing Linux, which I am not . I also have a lot of good experience with Linux and of course I won’t forget which user base I was from .

In November 2005, I moved completely to FreeBSD. After a while using FreeBSD, I was thinking on how to give something back to the community. I started submitting patches to the FreeBSD project, and in Jun 2006 I got my FreeBSD ports commit bit. Since then I am one of the most active member in the Project. At least, this is something that I could do in return of being able to enjoy a good and a stable system with a big choice of applications that is easy to handle using the package management system.

There are a lot of things that I love about FreeBSD, and I bet you know most of them already. FreeBSD has a clean structure that makes it so easy to understand. It is a rock solid system, very stable and easy to maintained. For applications, you have a choice between package system, if you want it fast, or the famous ports system, if you wish to compile applications yourselves with specific options. Another great thing about ports system is its easy framework, which provides flexibility to FreeBSD users to build their own stuff.

FreeBSD’s user base is probably not as big as Linux’s, but I can safely say that FreeBSD’s community support is one of the best in the open source world. As I have mentioned previously, I have not been in a more helpful community than FreeBSD’s. If you’re in the mailing list or a community member, you’ll know what I mean .

FreeBSD has a lot to offer to new users. The deep learning curve is probably tough for a first timer, but all is worth it. And FreeBSD has the best gift to new users, the handbook. FreeBSD handbook is one of the best documented operating system, and this is another reason why I like FreeBSD so much.

Well there another 5000 reason…

So long miwi

Few days back I’ve met up with Mohd Fazil Azran for a small talk about *BSD at Starbucks coffee. I was interested to know why Malaysian *BSD community is so inactive, and from the discussion, I’d say that the reason is more likely caused by too much of politics in the group, financial issues, lack of interest to share knowledge and blablabla..

So now, I would like to suggest for a complete rebuild of a *BSD open group. It will be a group where everyone shares the same right, and the freedom of speech. No politics, no financial problems (go dutch all the way ), no hidden agenda. Just a group where everyone can share their knowledge freely. Hopefully with this group, we could attract more users to *BSD, as well as building back the trust for *BSD .

The kick off of this new group will be on the 3rd March, where I will give my first talk about FreeBSD - what is FreeBSD, why FreeBSD, FreeBSD ports and who use FreeBSD. My talk will be around 30 to 45 minutes, and afterwards I will be free for questions and discussion, and of course, coffee .

Date: Saturday, March 3, 2012
Time: 2 PM till 5 PM
Location: Old Town White Coffee, Bangsar South (KL)

You should be aware that this would be my first experience, so don’t expect for any professional talk. Everyone is welcome

So long.

PS: Help me to share & rt it & and follow me on twitter

KMS Support [1]:
Unfortunately, the intel KMS driver will only work for the latest FreeBSD 9-STABLE or 10-CURRENT users. The patch for HEAD current is named all.13.1.patch.
The higher the version the newer the patch is. Other needed patches are already available in the Xorg update.

HEAD Users:
Get the latest patchset from Kib here:
http://people.freebsd.org/~kib/drm/

9-STABLE Users:
Meowthink maintanice currently the backport to 9 STABLE, make sure you have the latest FreeBSD 9-STABLE src check out. Get the patch from here:
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0BxbPi2OX4_B-NWY3NWU3MzEtNDBjYy00NTljLThlZGItMWFlYjIyYjI4Yjk3&hl=en_US

Rebuild your Kernel and reboot.

Know issuse:
There will be a patch reject in the sys/dev/drm/i915_suspend.c file. The solution is to manually undo the expansion of the $FreeBSD: ….$ tag, so it only
says $FreeBSD$.

Checkout Xorg Development Repo:
You will need to install devel/subversion in order to checkout the xorg repo. Next, you will need to add WITH_NEW_XORG=yes in your /etc/make.conf if you want to try out the
new Xorg and mesa. Note that if you are not qualified for the KMS patch, you shouldn’t use WITH_NEW_XORG=yes because the old intel driver doesn’t build with the new X
server. If you are qualified, you should also set WITH_KMS=yes in /etc/make.conf.

svn co https://trillian.chruetertee.ch/svn/ports/tags/xorg_7_5_2

A small merge script to merge the svn checkout into the real portstree can
be found here:

http://people.freebsd.org/~miwi/xorg/xorgmerge

The script is a modified version of the old kdemerge script. Please set the KDEDIR variable to the path of your X.org ports.

After merging, run one of the following command, depending on which tool you use to manage your installed packages.

portupgrade -af \*
portmaster -a

After installing these, you will have to rebuild all xf86-* ports. We will bump all releated ports during the commit to the portstree.

Roadmap:
Our current plan is to let the CFT running until the last weekend of February. We hope to get a lot feedback to solve as many problems as possible.
So please help us to get the best xorg update ever in!

Links:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/Intel_GPU [1]
http://wiki.freebsd.org/Xorg
http://miwi.bsdcrew.de/2012/02/working-on-xorg-stuff/

Happy updating

- Miwi

Well I know I haven’t been writing for a long time but there are always reasons behind it . Lately I have been busy with my job and personal life, but anyway I’m still alive and I have started working on FreeBSD since a while.

As stated in the subject, why I’m writing today is to talk about FreeBSD Xorg stuff. Personally I have stopped working on it for a long time. The main reason was that we are still stuck on some problems like missing KMS/GEM support, though since a while there is some progress that can be seen. Also kwm@ and eadler@ jumped into the Xorg team and did a lot of good work in the last few months.

As a result, Xorg gets 2 layers of framework. What this means, users with newer GFX hardware will get the chance to use newer Xorg server and drivers. The team has decided to create a new flag called WITH_NEW_XORG that users have to include in /etc/make.conf. This was mainly done for the intel KMS work being done. It should probably work for other chips. Unfortunately, the intel KMS driver will only work on FreeBSD 9-stable or 10-CURRENT users. Older version of FreeBSD will not be supported. Intel users will need to patch their src manually with Kib’s KMS kernel patch to get the newer chips to work. We have libGL and Mesa patches in our xorg-dev repo ready.

Here are some facts on what you will get with WITH_NEW_XORG:

libdrm 2.4.30 (including KMS support)
mesa 7.11.2
xorg-server 1.10.4
a lot of new Graphic Drivers.

After this is done and committed we going to work on Mesa 8.0 and X server 1.12. The reason we haven’t done this yet is because they are in RC stage and x server 1.11 and above break the nvidia driver. We will call for a testing soon with the full instruction on what you will have to do. So keep your eyes open..

So long…

PS: follow me on Twitter here.

Yesterday I have committed a patch to fix mostly all problems under FreeBSD 10. I plan to make 10 exp-run after the 9.0 Release within 2 weeks to poke maintainers and upstream as to ensure that
for the 10.0 Release, everything is fixed and we can remove the current workaround. Appreciate all the help to get it to work.

Thx

I finally managed to get portscout back on a stable server. I have removed all mail addresses from the old portscout to cleanup all the unused mail addresses. If you are a maintainer and would like to get a mail notification, please drop me a mail using your maintainer mail address and I’ll add to the list. The RSS feature will be back very soon as well.Thanks to Martin Matuska (mm@) for hosting portscout now.

Note that portscout.org will be rerouted as soon as possible. As for now, please use http://portscout.cc.

- Martin

I’m looking for some fast Tinderbox build server (i386|amd64) for free,
if anyone have them please let me know …

- Martin