[ydl-gen] Accelerated Xorg

[Warren Nagourney]

Many of you are probably aware that some very bright people who  
inhabit the ps2dev forums have found a way to (legally) "hack" the  
PS3 graphics processor (RSX) and accelerate both 2D and 3D  
operations.  The 3D stuff has gotten a fair amount of publicity  
lately, though it is not that interesting to me since I have no  
intention of writing games in linux.

The 2D hack, on the other hand, is very interesting since it provides  
an accelerated Xorg which makes one's day to day use of the ps3 a  
much more enjoyable experience. I have installed the accelerated Xorg  
and I can say that the difference is night and day. All of the  
redrawing artifacts I formerly observed when moving windows are now  
gone as are the delays when one clicks on a background window. The  
ps3 feels like a "modern" computer now, rather than some sluggish  
first generation windowing system from the 80's.

Although I have been a loyal YDL customer, I needed to use Ubuntu  
since the hacks required a more recent Xorg and glibc than is  
currently available in YDL. However, the ps2dev hackers have very  
recently remedied this lack and have provided a patch to allow one to  
use a kernel which supports the 3D optimizations in YDL 5.01. The  
diuscussion is here

http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=9473

I am not sure whether this allows one to use the accelerated Xorg,  
but that can't be far away. One can probably do it now by installing  
a more recent glibc and Xorg, though the soon-to-be-released newer  
YDL 6 should provider all of the necessary tools.

One thing left out in the ps2dev instructions is the necessity of  
running xcompmgr (with no arguments) to eliminate the redraw  
artifacts. This should run in the background, as X will be stopped if  
one kills xcompmgr or pauses it.

Good luck.