X Windows video acceleration?

davidbrit2

Licensed Computer Geek
Well, I've got X Windows with Afterstep up and running, but is there a way to tell the X server to use some sort of video acceleration? I know there are some specific X servers designed for ATI cards, so perhaps this is what I should use. I just need to know where they are, and how to tell XFree86 to use the proper server.
 
I think with the current XDarwin packages, there is no way to accelerate the video. I'm going through the same thing, too. The slower your CPU, the slower the XDarwin display. I mean, there isn't even an XF86Config file. I don't expect acceleration when I"m running it through quartz, but when I log in at the console, I expect speed close to what YellowDogLinux was giving me (blazing).

I'm guessing, and remember, this is a guess, that if you download XF86 from xfree86.org (they have darwin/ppc packages), that you would get the full-blown X distro, with accelerated video, but I could be very wrong about this.

Hey, does anyone know when we will see Blender for Mac OS X, and if it will run in aqua or in XF86? Just wondering (waiting). The website says Q3 2001, and I don't know when the 3rd quarter starts.
 
Yeah, video acceleration through Quartz is probably out of the question. It seems like there ought to be an XF86Config file somewhere. I downloaded the full source package and built X Windows myself. Evidently it's using some other config file. Now I just have to figure out what it might be.
 
I just downloaded the file Xdoc.tgz from the xf86 binary distro ftp site, and here's what I have found out (extract the file and read the README.Darwin file - you my already have that in your system).

XDarwin uses the IOKit. It reads its configuration information from your system. If you want it to run at a lower resolution, you just turn down the resolution in the monitor's control panel. All the device drivers are part of Apple's IOKit, so anything you read about being supported you can just ignore, if Apple doesn't support it, XDarwin does not support it either.

So I'm guessing that Apple will have to change something about the IOKit for XDarwin to get any faster. (running XDarwin from the console is called IOKit mode, and with in aqua is quartz mode).

I was looking forward to just using afterstep, too (with my transpartne aterms and all that), but it looks like I'm going to have to put up with slow video for a while. I guess we will never see Mesa running with Xdarwin either, sense I think it is hardware dependent.

Hope this helps, it helped me!
 
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