Re: Video Card for Woody

[Richard Otte <otte@ucsc.edu>]

On Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 12:13:48AM +0200, Mario Vukelic wrote:
> I did nothing special at all. It worked out of the box with both the
> XFree driver and the Matrox-supplied driver.
> My XF86Config-4 includes this:
> 
> Section "Device"
>         Identifier  "MATROX CARD 1"
>         Driver      "mga"
>         BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
> EndSection
> 
> If you use the proprietary drivers, be sure to include
>         Option      "HWCursor" "off"
> 
> in this section, too. I found that the XFree drivers worked better than
> Matrox's drivers. I can't see anything Matrox's do better, on the
> downside they can't use HWCursor and X needs longer to start up. It may
> be that some stuff I don#t use like Xinerama and TV out are better or
> only work with them, though.
> 
> If you use XFree's, you#ll get the message that mga_hal can't load, but
> this does no harm - it's only needed for Matrox PowerDesk config tool,
> availabel with their drivers. You can get the Matrox drivers here
> http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/drivers/latest/home.cfm
> 
My 550 is working fine, but I'm not completely sure that I'm using the matrox
driver or if I'm using the XFree one.  I'm running testing (version 4.2.1.6 of
xserver-common and xserver-xfree86).  In my XF86Config-4 file I have:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "matrox 550"
        Driver          "mga"
EndSection

and when I type lsmod I see:
mga                   103384   1 

I know I did install the Matrox driver at one point, assume I'm still
using it.  Could you let us know exactly how to use the XFree86 driver?
What would the XFree86Config-4 file look like for each driver (and do I
have to install some other module to use the XFree86 driver)?  

Also, were you able to use the Matrox Powerdesk config tool; I was not
able to get it working (or to get dvi to work with it).  

Thanks,  
Ric