[Techtalk] I want Tux Racer dangit

[Carla Schroder]

Sad tale of woe: all I want is to play Tux Racer. Such a simple want. However 
I need hardware acceleration enabled. Hmph. God hates me, the fates are 
against me, and even my cat has attitude because of this.

video card: Voodoo 3 1000
OS: RH8 
other specs on request

Originally resolution was set at 1024x768, 24 bit. After YEARS of futzing with 
this stupid thing, and lsmod shows ZERO video drivers loaded, and glxinfo 
shows DRI not working, I look in the XFreeakin server logs. Well lo and 
beholden, in wee tiny type, it says tdfx driver not loaded, and DRI not 
enabled, 'cause they won't work at 32bpp. Windows can handle up to 1024x768, 
32 bit and full acceleration, no problem, but hey, it does no good to argue.

After cussing something awful, man, you shoulda been there, I change to 
1024x768, 16 bit. OK, this time X is happy, the log reports

"(II) LoadModule: "tdfx"
(II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/tdfx_drv.o
(II) Module tdfx: vendor="The XFree86 Project"
(II) TDFX(0): [drm] created "tdfx" driver at busid "PCI:1:0:0""

Yay! I dance for joy. Fire up Tux Racer, and boom! No Tux Racer, and I am 
slammed into 640x480 with a groovy sliding desktop. Sheee.

I take a I hate Linux break.

OK. After the break, I restart X, run glxinfo, and it says

"gd error (glide): gd error (glide): grSstSelect:  non-existent SSTgd error 
(glide): grSstSelect:  non-existent SSTSegmentation fault"

At 1024x768, 24 bit, glxinfo spits out all kinds of data, the pertinent bit 
being

" OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect"

So why would changing the color depth cause it to pitch such a fit?

The EXTREMELY lame RH8 'redhat-config-xfree86' is useless. Might as well edit 
Xfree86 config by hand. Xconfigurator was such a lovely utility, it does not 
come with RH8. I may download and try it next.

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc/README.DRI has a lot of interesting-looking 
information. 

but still....

THIS SUCKS!!!

what the HELL is the matter with dommed Red Hat, anyway! This is freaking 
2002, I think it is time for this sort of drama to be a thing of the past. If 
Mandrake and SuSE can enable hardware acceleration out of the box, why cannot 
the esteamed RH itself.

Any useful ideas, and or complementary tantrums, are welcome.
-- 
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Carla Schroder
Bratgrrl Computing
www.bratgrrl.com
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