Pogo Linux: 1GHz for under $1000

Graphics and XFree86 Setup

Pogo's XFree86 installation uses the XFree86 4.0.1 RPMS from Red Hat 7.0 combined with the NVIDIA 0.9-5 drivers from NVIDIA's site. XFree86 4.0.2 and the NVIDIA 0.9-6 drivers had not been released when we received this machine. Note that we have written about this combination in each of our previous Linux articles. See our Linux Video Card Comparison for more information on how it compares to other XFree86/DRI supported cards.

The /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file was a slightly modified version of the one created by the Red Hat 7.0 installer, Anaconda. In fact, they even left the Load "dri" line in the Modules section. DRI, which stands for Direct Rendering Infrastructure, is an architecture for allowing direct hardware access to the video card for proper 3D acceleration. It is supported by several XFree86 drivers including the Matrox, 3Dfx and ATI drivers. However, NVIDIA and SGI developed their own architecture. The fact that this module was loaded doesn't actually affect operation, it just adds a complaint about the "nvidia" driver not exporting a DRI symbol to the error log. XFree86 will still function the same as without it.

The most common problem users have with 3D acceleration is mixed up libGL.so versions. Given that there are Mesa/DRI and NVIDIA libGL.so's available, each of which must match the rendering architecture to work, many users hit this pitfall and experience software only rendering when expecting hardware acceleration. Pogo did remove the libGL.so files (DRI specific) that come with Red Hat 7.0 and replace them with NVIDIA's properly. However, they left the libGL.a file from Red Hat 7.0. Most users won't hit this problem, but if an application is compiled statically, it will not run with 3D acceleration on this machine, only on machines using DRI based drivers. We asked Pogo about this and they mentioned that their newer machines ship with XFree86 4.0.2, which does not need NVIDIA's drivers to work with the GeForce2 based cards. While this is true, the NVIDIA drivers perform markedly better than the XFree86 drivers, which don't support 3D acceleration at all due to lack of released hardware information from NVIDIA. Whichever drivers are shipped, it's an easy upgrade for the end user.

We also noticed a few errors in /var/log/XFree86.0.log, XFree86's incredibly useful file listing everything about your graphics system and then some. First, "GLcore" and "v4l" modules couldn't properly load. GLcore is moved with NVIDIA's drivers, and probably could not be found by the module loader. V4L should not have been loaded at all in the first place, as V4L (Video 4 Linux, an interface for TV cards and other video input devices) support was disabled in Pogo's kernel.

The result of all this probing is that graphically, this machine works and works well. These small details we just mentioned are not show-stoppers and the machine will function nicely out of the box.