Hi. I'm Craig Goodrich, and I use Linux on my home machine most of the time. (If you're interested in my political scribblings, look in G4C).
The stuff on this page is of archaeological interest only (from January 2000).
For a patch to compile old Nvidia X drivers under the 2.6.23+ kernels, go here.
The main reason for this page isn't to link to all the fascinating things you can do with Linux or to link to the latest Linux news. It's just to make available whatever random stuff I think may be of interest.
XFree86 3.3.6 servers hot off the press ... er ... ftp site!
Currently I've got a full set of X servers linked with FreeType, a free True Type font rasterizer. None of the code is original with me; I simply built everything with the xfsft patches by J. Chroboczek et. al. For more info, check out his site.
Update Jan 14, 2000: Now it's the XF 3.3.6. servers -- SVGA has Matrox G100/G200/G400, Cyrix MediaGX, Voodooo, and lots of RIVA and nVIDIA support!
This stuff was built from the latest XFree source tarball, using gcc 2.95.2 with switches -O6 -mpentium (i.e. maximum optimization and Pentium instruction rescheduling) against glibc 2.1.2.so -- the latest I could find. So you need a glibc-compatible system to run them. (Please let me know what they work/don't work on; I've only tested them on Red Hat 5.various and the fall 1999 RawHide.)
For the moment, use http: to download them (Save link as .... or whatever). AIRnet may let me use an FTP site or something eventually....
The servers will just untar into . -- back up your
current version of the server before you replace it with this
one. The servers are named XF86_SVGA.tt [or whatever]; the
easiest procedure is simply to untar it into /usr/X11R6/bin
(or wherever your distro keeps servers) and then
ln -sf XF86_SVGA.tt X-- since xinit (and Xwrapper) assume the server's name is just X.
Note: Recent versions of XFree link /usr/X11/bin/X->Xwrapper and /etc/X11/X->/usr/X11/bin/XF86_whatever, the latter being the actual X server. This avoids having to make the server suid, which is a potential security hole (though in most contexts not one worth losing sleep over, IMHO). Check to see how your distro does it before you install....The font tarball should be untarred from /, since it creates a True Type directory in usr/lib/X11/fonts . This tarball, by the way, contains a couple of copyrighted Microsoft fonts, so it's probably highly illegal; luckily Microsoft's lawyers are busy with other matters now.... Update: Microsoft's typography page has a nice set of fonts available for download, but they're in the form of DOS self-extracting .exe's, so you may need access to a Windoze machine to unpack them. (DOSEMU or gzip might work, too. Let me know if they do... Another Update: The versions for 16-bit Windows -- Win 3.1 etc. -- are self-extracting zips that gunzip handles just fine. The 32-bit Windows versions are packed up using the Dark Side of the Force and require Win9x or NT to decompress. Sigh....)
To use the font tarball, get more TT fonts from your benighted Windoze-using friends, dump them into the TrueType directory, and edit fonts.dir and fonts.scale appropriately. Update: No editing necessary any more. (Thanks, Joerg) See below.
You'll also need to go to your XF86Config file (usually in
/etc/X11) and add the line
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/"to the Files section (look for other FontPath statements).
If none of the above makes sense to you, don't mess with these binaries. But KDE with Arial really looks spiffy....
S3 ViRGE -- The SVGA server now supports the ViRGE chip with nearly full acceleration -- or at least fast enough for me (I have a ViRGE/VX board). In 3.3.2.x, XFree recommended strongly that SVGA be used instead of S3V; now apparently both are recommended. I use SVGA myself, so if you have a ViRGE card, please try SVGA first. See the XFree hardware notes for more information.
Going from the S3V server to the SVGA you'll need to take the [Screen] section from the [accel] chunk in XF86Config and put it under [svga] (which is right above it in the file) to define the screen resolutions you want to use. SVGA is still not counted as "accel", for some reason, although it's looking more and more as though long-term plans are to roll everything into it. Probably they'll get there just as the Frame Buffer stuff is perfected.....If you have problems, let me know, and if you really, really can't live without the S3V server I'll put it up for you... Update: OK, ok, I put it up... But do try SVGA first....Anyhow, look in your XF86Config for an [accel] section right under an [svga] section and AFTER BACKING UP YOUR XF86CONFIG OF COURSE!! do what seems like a good idea, bearing in mind that the earlier S3V server read [accel] and SVGA will be reading [svga].
fonts.scale -- this file is needed for X to
find your fonts. Its first line is the number of
font lines in the file, then the font lines themselves.
(fonts.dir is identical.) Update: Use ttmkfdir and
mkfontdir to update your TrueType fonts.scale and fonts.dir.
See the README in the font tarball.
Joerg Pommnitz has written a utility
ttmkfdir based on xfontdir that will generate a correct
fonts.scale for your TT directory. The source is available
at his web site; I'll have a binary here
Real Soon Now..... Update: It's now included in the font
tarball! Joerg has also put up some beautiful screen shots, so
go take a look....
Netscape --
Try putting this in your .Xdefaults (or .Xresources, whichever you have)
file:
-- This tells Netscape to use the arial fonts for menus and non-text
dialog boxes. You can make the fonts anything you want, of course;
just use this format and take the font lines from fonts.scale. The "12"
is point size, so you can fiddle until it's perfect...
By the way, this rpm is based on Aladdin's
latest version and includes all the normal drivers (X, LaserJet, etc.) in addition to
the StColor driver; plus it was compiled with the egcs magic switches -O6 -mpentium.
So you might want to try it even if you don't use an inkjet...
Note: You must upgrade the fonts in addition to the ghostscript binaries!
Feb 15 -- rebuilt Xservers. Juliusz Chroboczek wrote that a glyph was wrong in xfsft for the
KOI-8U (Ukrainian) encoding, and kindly provided a patch....
Feb 13 -- finally installed my Stylus Color 600 at home and discovered that my GhostScript didn't
support it. So I got the driver and fixed it. Put the .rpms here so as not to waste the effort...
netscape*fontList: -*-arial-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*, \
-*-arial-bold-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*=BOLD, \
-*-arial-medium-i-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*=ITALIC
Boot Managers --
LILO works for most relatively simple multi-OS setups, and
of course you'll need it anyway to boot Linux. But if your
machine includes NT and/or you're a pathological OS junkie
(I have Win98, NT4, NT5, OS/2 Merlin, and Linux on this machine
and plan to add Be, Solaris, and FreeBSD sometime soon),
you might want to take a look at:
Both of these sites are worth visiting anyway, simply for the additional
information about the boot process you can glean from them. (You have
read all the LILO documentation, haven't you?)
GhostScript 5.50 RedHat 5 RPM for your inkjet!
If you have an Epson inkjet -- Stylus Color 400, 600 or whatever --
support (at least from RedHat) isn't very good.
Here's a fix:
Just install them with
rpm -Uvh rpmfilename.rpm
-- possibly with --force --nodeps if necessary. Then run printtool
under X, install your printer as an Epson Stylus Color, and everything will be just
peachy. Print a PostScript test page to be sure....
Sources -- This note is primarily to comply with the various licenses
involved. All binaries for download here are open source, in that the source code is widely
available without charge (that's how I got it, of course). The only modifications I've
made to anything here are either fairly obvious hacks to the Makefiles or application of well-documented patches.
The source is not posted here due to space limitations, but if you have trouble finding it,
write to me and I'll tell you where to get it.
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