[Gnewsense-dev] Towards a better X11 experiance on the yeeloong

[Daniel Clark]

Please read over this ticket (text also below [1]):

https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/index.php?28169

And tell me if you see any errors or room for improvement, and also if
you can help with any of it.

BTW has anyone actually gotten X11 working well under squeeze on the
yeeloong? By default it errors out on boot; I'll get a paste of the
exact errors to the ticket soon.

Thanks to philv, nyu, and bernie on #gnewsense-dev for providing most of
the below information / content; I'm just trying to summarize so we know
what to do next.

Cheers,
-- 
Daniel JB Clark   | Sys Admin, Free Software Foundation
pobox.com/~dclark | http://www.fsf.org/about/staff#danny


[1] gNewSense GNU/Linux - Bugs: bug #28169: X11 is too slow

Here is a plan for people to comment on based on IRC conversations.

First, the problem statement:

(a) There are changes in the version of X in debian squeeze /
xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion that fix a lot of problems / allow the
accelerated graphics to work. People feel that this change is required
for the yeeloong to be really usable.

(b) There are changes specific to lemote in the older version of xorg on
the dev.lemote.com/debian repository that make xv work. xv is an X
extention that makes video playback nicer by allowing a defined part of
the screen to be used with a different color depth and type. This xv
support should be forward ported to the X from debian squeeze using
quilt, dpatch or simular to do the actual change in the source package).
This change is nice to have, but lower priority than just having
accelerated X graphics work.

Suggested steps towards a solution:

(a) Install Debian Squeeze on a yeeloong to verify that
xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion does in fact work well. Torture test in
various ways (xperf, changing between X and VTs a lot, etc.)

(b) If (a) goes well, backport the squeeze packages to gnewsense metad,
using the gentoo patches at (1) http://qurl.com/ztrlk (2)
http://qurl.com/q1v63 (3) http://qurl.com/lzfhd to make it work under
mipsel.

(c) Forward port xv patches to squeeze version of xorg packages in the
most expediant way possible / include in .debs with quild / dpatch /
whatever.

(d) Forward port xv patches to squeeze version of xorg packages in a way
that is likely to be included by upstream xorg developers, and then work
to do that.

Status:

djbclark and bernie working on (a) at the moment. Please coordinate in
#gnewsense-dev or via this ticket if you can help.

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