Re : Amiga AGA chipset support for later version of X server broken in Debian Woody

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Date: 21 Dec 2004 01:28:05 -0800

Hello,

J.O. Aho (user@example.net) spoke thus:
>mattabat wrote:
>
>> It may have escaped a lot of peoples attention, but the Amiga AGA
>> chipset support for X servers seemed to go out the window with
Debian
>> Woody, i.e. seems to be completely broken.
>> Yet no-one seems to be interested in repairing it..
>
> Could it be that there aren't so many users who still has only AGA on their
> machines. Many have changed to other platforms/amiga clones or have PCI (and
> soon AGP) support, so they can use better graphics cards.

Respectfully, those who find they cannot use an X server on a Amiga
after downloading it would see things differently. They don't care how
many users, just that something that worked before now doesn't. It
also takes the "upgrade or perish" maxim a little too far!
There are enough classic Amiga users still using their machines to
justify a simple bugfix!

>> Is anyone up to the challenge? My programming skills aren't up to
it,
>> but I really want to see a modern X server again on my Amiga
>> (hopefully in Sarge..), not that old equipment seems to be of high
>> priority anymore :(
>
> That seems to be true for all distros, tech from the 80's aren't supported.

The AGA chipset made it into the 90's (shock horror). And Debian isn't
any distro, supposedly the idea of compiling for so many architectures
is so people with older/different equipment can use the bells and
whistles that have been compiled for it..

>> I know the AGA chipset is old hat, but it seems silly to leave it
>> broken. Does it highlight a lack of backwards compatibility in the
>> direction that the X server development has taken?
>
> I think you gain more of still using older version of XFree86 than move over
> to a new version or Xorg, as the new features won't be possible to do in AGA,
> except xrandr, but that one ain't that much used yet, maybe in a couple of
> years
> you will see KDE or Gnome3 (lets hope it will be more userfriendly than
> Gnome2) to use it.

Thanks for all the helpful advice, any ideas on how to install an old
version of XFree86 with Woody in such a way so that the installation
system isn't totally flummoxxed?
Why wouldn't it be easier to just fix it? Perhaps then AGA chipset
users wouldn't feel a need to complain!
Maybe it *won't* be able to use all the bells and whistles, but it
would be appreciated if it worked, at all.

>> Why compile for m68k in the first place if it isn't worth testing?
>
> m68k ain't the fastest CPU, so why run heavy stuff on it, use the console > instead.

Perhaps I mispoke - many classic Amiga users use PPC as well, it's
broken for them as well. m68k and PPC Amigas *do* have the processing
power for a modern X server, why put up without one because they lack
a graphics card?
And since when is a GUI "heavy stuff"??
You use the console for everything. See how annoyed you get. Why
should AGA Amiga users have to do the same, when not necessary?

> //Aho

Forgive me if I sound annoyed, but it's been far too long since I used
a X server on my Amiga and the strain is showing :)

--
mattabat <spammers@hell.com.nz>

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