Thanks to an e-mail from Mark Blakeney I now have 3D working on both heads of my dual-head setup. The last time I blogged about this I had a perfectly working dual-head set up, but no 3D. The lack of 3D isn’t a big deal, as I’m not a gamer, but I’ll 3D support if I decide to use Xgl or other 3D technologies in the future.
Mark pointed me at the MergedFB options of the open source ati driver and this page on the Gentoo wiki. By running using MergedFB and not Xinerama, I get Xinerama like behaviour and 3D.
# /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the /etc/X11/xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type “man /etc/X11/xorg.conf” at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
Section “Files”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/misc”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/cyrillic”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/Type1″
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/CID”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi”
# paths to defoma fonts
FontPath “/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType”
FontPath “/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/CID”
EndSection
Section “Module”
Load “GLcore”
Load “i2c”
Load “bitmap”
Load “ddc”
Load “dri”
Load “extmod”
Load “freetype”
Load “glx”
Load “int10″
Load “type1″
Load “vbe”
Load “v4l”
EndSection
Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Generic Keyboard”
Driver “kbd”
Option “CoreKeyboard”
Option “XkbRules” “xorg”
Option “XkbModel” “pc105″
Option “XkbLayout” “gb”
EndSection
Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”
Driver “mouse”
Option “CorePointer”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/mice”
Option “Protocol” “ImPS/2″
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “true”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
EndSection
Section “Device”
Identifier “MergedFB Device”
BoardName “ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon 9200 SE (RV280)”
Driver “radeon”
BusID “PCI:1:0:0″
Option “DynamicClocks” “on”
Option “MergedFB” “true”
Option “CRT2Position” “LeftOf”
Screen 0
EndSection
Section “Monitor”
Identifier “SyncMasterR”
Option “DPMS”
EndSection
Section “Screen”
Identifier “MergedFB Screen”
Device “MergedFB Device”
Monitor “SyncMasterR”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen “MergedFB Screen”
InputDevice “Generic Keyboard”
InputDevice “Configured Mouse”
EndSection
Section “DRI”
Mode 0666
EndSection
Today was due to be the release date for Ubuntu Dapper, but the release was put back by 6 weeks a while ago. As there are several things that I’m eager to try on Dapper, like a newer kernel, iFolder, improved Suspend to Disk and WPA support, official packages of pitivi and avidemux and newer versions of Network Manager, this is a shame. But Dapper is a very important release; It will be supported for five years. So it’s important to get it right, ensure it’s polished and with excellent internationalisation support. There’s a Beta release out today though.
So, six weeks till Dapper. See the release schedule for more.
The Ubuntu release after Dapper Drake will be….. The Edgy Eft. “An Eft is a youthful newt.” Now you know.
That is all.
HantsLUG’s May meeting will be a Bring-a-Box meeting at Park Hall Church Hall in Aldershot on Saturday 6th May from 10:30am to 4:30pm. If you have not attended one of our meetings before, please read the information about the venue on the wiki. All the regular B-a-B procedures also apply.
The usual requests for snacks and Greeting People apply. If there’s something specific you want help with, please use the I Need Help page.
Spread the word, and I hope to see you there.
For the past few days Kevin Smith has been blogging extensively about Jason Mewes and his battle against drug addiction. They’re long posts but reveal a lot about the duplicitous nature of addicts and how difficult it can be to lay down the law to someone you love (it’s clear from the posts that Smith does love Mewes) who is killing themselves. We walked past Mewes in Red Bank on our View Askew Locations Tour back in September 2003, and I wouldn’t have found the posts if it hadn’t been written by Smith, but the apparent honesty of the posts and the touches of humour make them worth reading even if you’re not into the ViewAskew scene.
There’s also a great Clerks II trailer online. 
Yesterday’s HantsLUG meeting went fantastically. It was our busiest meeting on record with at least 46 people in attendance. There were people from SCLUG, Sussex LUG and Dorset LUG who came along, some of them all the way from Crawley. All of whom were very welcome.
I was amazed that we had 35 people through the door in the first hour. Heck, there were 10 people standing around in the car park by 10am. There were so many new faces, sadly I didn’t get time to say hello to everyone. I was kept pretty busy supervising the talks (and the videoing). They were all well received and interesting talks, but the MySQL and AJAX talks were especially packed. It looks like that sort of topic really interests people. If you have any feedback from the talks or the meeting in general, please let me know.
Thanks to everyone who helped out, staffing the front desk, giving talks, opening the venue, helping others fix their problems. The busier the meetings get and the more things we try to do, the more need there is for people to help out though. We need to get more people actively helping out in order to ensure our activities are sustainable.
There’s the usual wiki page which includes links to the gallery and the talk notes*. If you attended and have any photos we can upload to our gallery, please let me know. Please note down what you did and check that we haven’t missed your name off the list.
* Content from the talks is still being sorted, so that notes page is far from complete, some of the links are wrong.
