From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.9) Gecko/20020408 Description of problem: When installing on a machine with Matrox Millenium videocard, Anaconda makes XFree86-3 the default instead of XFree86-4. Millenium *is* supported by XFree86-4. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install RHL on a machine with Matrox Millenium. 2. Do "ls -l /etc/X11/X" Actual Results: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 May 11 04:09 /etc/X11/X -> ../../usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_SVGA Expected Results: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 May 11 04:09 /etc/X11/X -> ../../usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 Additional info: As I understand, Anaconda should behave as follows: if (<the card is supported by XFree86-4>) <Install XFree86-4 as default> else <Install XFree86-3 as default> But either Millenium is listed as unsupported by -4, or the real behaviour is reverse, i.e. if (<the card is supported by XFree86-3>) <Install XFree86-3 as default> else <Install XFree86-4 as default> This bug existed at least since 7.1. BTW, as far as I know, XFree86-4 supports *all* Matrox cards which were supported by XFree86-3, so that there's no reason to install 3-rd version on *any* of Matrox cards. (In fact, "mga" driver was one of the first ported from -3 to -4).
Reassigning to myself, and changing component to Xconfigurator, since the Cards database is what decides this, not anaconda.
The reason that XFree86 3.3.6 is the default for *any* card still, depends on one of several factors. 1) The card is totally unsupported by XFree86 4.x or 2) The 4.x support is totally broken for the card, even though 4.x claims to support it. or 3) The 4.x support has some problems, and 3.3.6 has been tested either internally, or by end users to work better than the 4.x version. In either of the above 3 scenarios, the default gets set to the 3.3.6 Server that supports the hardware best. In the case of the Matrox Millenium, the default is set to 3.3.6 due to bug reports in the 4.x drivers. Our interest, is in having the default video driver *WORK*, and provide the user with the most stable desktop. As such, this default is very much 100% intentional, and this is not a bug. You are welcome to run Xconfigurator --preferxf4 if you prefer the XFree86 4.x driver, and it works for you. As long as we ship XFree86 4.x and 3.3.6 together, the Millenium driver will default to 3.3.6 unless I spot changlog entries indicating the bugs have been fixed. That said, it is very likely that 3.3.6 will be dropped from the distribution in the not to distant future, and all hardware will then either use 4.x, or be completely unsupported if 4.x doesn't function.