[Openchrome-users] [NEWBIE] Where to start?

[Xavier Bachelot]

Kevin DeGraaf wrote:
> Everyone,
> 
> I have a VIA EPIA M10000 (Nehemiah) box that I'd like to get working 
> with MythTV.  I've googled all the EPIA, Unichrome, OpenChrome, etc. 
> stuff that I can find, but I'm not sure how to proceed.  My 
> understanding is that I want DRI/DRM to work, as well as hardware MPEG2 
> acceleration (XvMC?) and 3D graphics (OpenGL?).
> 
> 1. My understanding is that OpenChrome is somewhat bleeding-edge and 
> that I might be better served by using the drivers in X.org 
> <http://X.org> or the old Unichrome project.  All I'm looking for is 
> stable functionality for the things previously listed.  Should I even be 
> here?
> 
for a M10K, xorg 6.9/7.0 should be just fine out-of-the-box.
Openchrome has support for a broader range of hardware (unichrome pro, 
tv encoders...) and more features (EXA,...)
Unichrome is just useless now that there is no mpeg2 accel anymore.

> 2. If all I need is X.org <http://X.org>, can I just install my vendor's 
> (Slackware) packages and have everything "just work"?  Or would I need 
> to grab the XvMC and GL libraries from somewhere?
> 
AFAIK, Slack only has 6.8.2 at the moment. Please correct me if I'm 
wrong or if there are updated version available in the wild.
XvMC comes from openchrome. 3D acceleration comes from mesa3D.org.

> 3. If I need to use OpenChrome or UniChrome, do I need to compile these 
> things against X.org <http://X.org> CVS?  Or a released X.org 
> <http://X.org> package?  Is there up-to-date documentation on this?  The 
> README on this wiki says it's an old import...
> 
Any xorg tree should be ok to compile against.
The wiki page is an old import that would need to have a lot more 
details, but it's still valide. I'll try to update this doc as time 
permit. It just wasn't there at all a few days ago ;-)

> Although I'm not a Linux newbie, I really don't understand how all this 
> Unichrome stuff fits together and I would appreciate it if someone could 
> set me straight.  Perhaps I'm not even asking the right questions... :-)
> 
This page could enlight you :
http://wiki.openchrome.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=How+all+driver+components+fit+together

Hope this helps,

Xavier