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See also what KeithP & Co. does in -CURRENT. This is their to do list. Release notes.

See also what KeithP & Co. does in -CURRENT. This is their to do list. Release notes.

It's more or less the same. The X.org is just a branch of Xfree 4.4rc3 before the license change.

If you want bleeding edge try the freedesktop X Server.

Gstreamer is a complete open source media framework. It is being adopted by the KDE and Gnome desktop projects, making it the defacto standard for media applications in Linux/*BSD.

Gstreamer's plugin system is ideal for making a proprietary codec such as Real available to open source players, without having to open source or give up control of your codec. The benefit to you is that all of the codecs supported by the current Gstreamer plugins would be available to Helix player, without any additional work by your developers.

Gstreamer developers have approached the Helix developers and offered to cooperate in the past, but received only an absurd response about "splintering".

Cooperation between Helix and other media frameworks would be mutually beneficial. Lack of cooperation only ensures that Real's codec will marginalized on Linux and eventually obsoleted.

How about this? Or this? That took only about a minute of googling to find.

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Maybe I should've said "translucency". All I meant was how in Gnome at least, the panel and the terminal windows can have transparency. The problem is that it's not "true" tranpsarency. If you put a window behind one of those objects, you won't see it. The way that the fake transparency works is that it takes a picture of your background and sets that as the background for that particular window. Thereby giving the illusion of transparency. The fd.o Xserver supports true transparency. Click here for an example of what I'm saying.

Adobe's not gonna give you RPMs, sorry.

Why not? That is the LSB standard for installing applications on Linux.

People here bitch about Microsoft, then rip them off by stealing their taskbar, "start menu", integrated filesystem and net browser, and so forth.

Did Microsoft "innovate" these things? No - they "stole" them from other operating systems. Did you call Microsoft out for that too, or is it only Gnome and KDE developers who can't borrow ideas from other desktops? Look at this article for an example of Gnome developers trying to innovate a bit and what do you get - flames away!

One sane programming library

Right, just like the one library that exists in Mac OSX or Windows. Ooops, they have multiple libraries too. And have you noticed the freedesktop.org project to unite some of the technology behind Gnome and KDE?

The removal of X

This is such a crock of BS, and every person who tries to to explain why X should be removed comes off as someone who doesn't understand history and is doomed to repeat it. Ever wonder why every X "replacement" has flopped? Furthermore, X isn't stainding still - check X.org.

Finally, an ATTITUDE CHANGE

If you are getting flamed by zealots then maybe you need to get away from #linuxn00bs (and slashdot) and notice that there is a large mature community that uses Linux for work, and is more interested in pragmatisim than zealotry. Yes, there are zealots, but most of them are not in a real position to influence Linux adoption.

but the average user who actually buys news hardware and drivers, installs new applications and removes them, does homework, and all the other things the average computer user does these days will have tough times compared to the much easier Windows XP

Finally, something that makes sense. People are working on ideas for this, but quite frankly with device manufacturers only releasing Windows drivers and no specs it is a very difficult problem to solve. But I suppose you have ideas to contribute instead of just complaints?

Things are much better for me more recently though, now I have built X.Org R6.7 and my Radeon Mobility 9700 is all good to go too.

If you don't want to build your own kernels, you needn't do that either. The latest Knoppix includes an option to boot a 2.6 kernel (type "knopix26" at the boot prompt), and I have seen success stories discussed on the Debian Laptop mailing list as well, using the standard Debian 2.6 kernel.

With the Debian kernel you have to add "acpi=on" to the Grub/Lilo command line, but that isn't needed for Knoppix.

Get your patch for MacOSX here.

oh and here..

oh and here.. and here...oh and over there!

I really would like to see some serious co-operation with KDE and GNOME teams, for example, to get their software working more uniform way

• Looking Glass uses the Damage and Composite extensions that Keith Packard's experimental X server utilizes
• The "scene manager" (what Sun is calling their compositing manager) is written in Java, and Looking Glass very heavily utilizes the Java3D API
• Most of the pieces of the platform are already X-licensed, and Sun's representatives claim that they will be "opening the source" to Looking Glass when they release the SDK in a few months
• The presentation was mostly done by Hideya Kawahura, with some lower-level technical details provided by Deron Johnson
• More info on the X Developers Conference is available at freedesktop.org

You've just described what DCOP does in KDE. Contact info is offered by the address book component, which can be queried by the email suite, the IM tool, etc. The entire desktop is built upon this approach, in fact.

The Freedesktop group has begun working on a generalization of DCOP called D-BUS, primarily geared toward exchanging message between backend (hardware detection...) and frontend (desktop environment), if I got it right, but I think that GNOME will also eventually be able to use it to tap into KDE components as well. This would be really nice.

Historically you are correct, but an office should select which apps users run. One thing to select on is conformance with Freedesktop.org standards. KDE and GNOME both follow this, as do most other modern X apps (which is a minority I grant)

Where is the transparency though?

Seriously.. Windows has had it since 2000, and MacOS X breathes on it.

The oldest computer in my house supports it, and my new computer supports it even better.

It's one of biggest new things, but applications for Linux that want to use it have to wait for XFree86 to support it.

It isn't Linux's fault - check out Keith's Screenshots

I do appreciate the work that the project has done in the past. It does work. Unfortunately, XFree86 as it is right now is making it harder to create an appealing UI for Linux than is necessary. It therefore should be replaced by a project that is nimble enough to adapt to the times.

And yes, XFree86 crashes. Alt-Ctrl-Backspace is there for a reason.

1. Find its fonts without having to edit the XF86Config file 189 times and install some half-working font server for the other three fonts.
This seems to be in work now: X.org release notes
2. Upgrade Gnome and KDE applications without having to install yet ANOTHER version of glibc. That or statically link everything and quit pursuing dynamically-linked utopia. I think there's enough disk space now.
This system was first installed 2 years ago and I have only one version of glibc installed ( 2.3.2-r9)
3. Have a file manager that isn't linked to every single library on the system, so that if one library is upgraded/replaced, it doesn't make the file manager useless.
ROX rocks
4. Make it so these problems can be fixed without changing distributions. Your current distro being Windows 2000 or Windows XP?

I too have updated to the latest Cygwin/X Xorg stuff. I noticed in the release notes that this was included:

Initial version of indirect 3D acceleration by mapping GLX to Win32's OpenGL implementation. (Alexander Gottwald, Harold L Hunt II)

But I can't seem to get accelerated opengl running. glxgears still uses Mesa and gets about 81 FPS. Anyone know how to enable the accelerated OpenGL? I've been waiting for this for a long time and I'm excited it's finally in there, just wish I knew how to make it work properly.

Saw something about linking with "-opengl32", but not sure where that should be done, I'd assume the XWin.exe included in Cygwin/X was built with that.

• Comments on suggested representatives:

  KDE - Why? They only deal with QT, not X. Trolltech might be a good choice.

  Gnome - Why? They only deal with GTK, not X. Maybe you mean the GTK devs.

More info on the clipboard mess here.

I take that to mean that 'right now...kdrive itself is not intended to be a replacement for XFree86.' That would certainly be a true statement. However, I think the overall goal is that the advancements in the fd.o X server will be mainlined when they are done. Whether that is accomplished by making kdrive a stable replacement for xfree86/x.org or whether the advancements in kdrive will be ported to xfree86/x.org remains to be seen. Remember that all the X server codebases that we're talking about are related, so if kdrive continues to remain experimental, the changes can be ported to the stable servers. Indeed, the XDamage and XFixes extensions have already been ported to X.org's CVS branch.

The Nvidia driver is *not * open-source, although the company has allowed an open-source driver to be developed. AFAIK The open-source driver (NV) was created by Mark Vojkovich and he maintains it himself. *This page is not for that driver. * The new proprietary driver from Nvidia is easier to install than prior versions as Nvidia has shifted to a single file for installation. They have attempted to make the setup as simple as possible with the installation script attempting to determine which kernel version you need. This has helped a lot but there are still some common problems. The best place to look for information about the Nvidia driver is Nvidia's website.

The Release Notes say "The module loader was modified to accept either XFree86 generated modules or X.Org generated modules". I wonder if this means that the Nvidia module will work?

http://freedesktop.org/~xorg/X11R6.7.0/doc/RELNOTE S3.html

If it's no big deal, then why is it nearly impossible for me to get a standard way for installing softwre on linux? I understand that most distros come with a packaging manager, but if I want to write a program, allow downloads from my site, then (to the best of my knowledge) there's no way for it to easily be installed and have menu shortcuts etc set up....

Follow this and your menu entries will show up for KDE and GNOME. Users of other DEs normally have enough nouse to add menu entries themselves (or their DEs can load GNOME/KDE menus).

As for installers, at wort you can just statically compile into an rpm - no dependency issues then. As long as you provide a source tar ball as well then most everyone will be happy (and if your program is any good, it'll get included in the package repositories of the various distributions).

If that doesn't appeal, you could always support autopackage.

Jedidiah.

You could always try this one. It is still in beta really, but works for most QT themes very well. Makes mixing apps between desktops a lot easier too.

Jedidiah.

"And you are saying that if litestep was a bit more successful (say more than 1% of win desktops) that it would not hurt windows?"

Well, yes.

Windows Media Player is the default media player in Windows. WinAmp is very popular. WinAmp gives people choice. In what way did WinAmp hurt Windows? I don't hear anybody complaining!
How does being able to choose between Fort, Renault, Peugot, Volkswagen, etc. hurt the car market?

"Every manual for the simplest of tasks would soon start with "now, depending on your windowmanager...""

Which wouldn't be necessary if all window managers are compatible and interoperable. Luckily more and mroe window managers are EWMH and ICCCM-compliant.

Again, the right solution is to make everything compatible and interoperable.

Exactly. There's choice on the desktop area because people disagree! Forcing one implementation down everyone's throat will make about 50% of the userbase unhappy. Do you really want to pay that price just for the sake of avoiding potential confusing?

The top parent post is yet another example of critics proposing the wrong solution to a problem.
What we need is interoperability and compatibility. Don't try to make a dictatorship, encourage effords like Freedesktop.org instead.

Luckily interoperability is improving more and more. I don't know about KDE but both GNOME 2.6 and ROX have adopted the Freedesktop.org MIME standard. All desktops have already adopted the Xdnd standard quite a while ago. KDE 3.0+ has adopted the clipboard standard. GNOME 2, and I believe KDE 3.2 too, have adopted the menu vFolder standard. This list goes on and on.

What people really want is to be able to write software that can integrate in every desktop. They want to write for one standard and work anywhere.
That's exactly why we need interoperability and compatibility, not a single implementation.

This is a typical example of critics proposing the wrong solution to a problem.

We don't need one implementation, we need implementations to be compatible and interoperable! Instead of trying to make a dictatorship, go support effords like Freedesktop.org.

GTK has C++ bindings and QT has C bindings, so it doesn't matter what language you use.

"The linux people need to understand that ONE half-assed product is better than the choice between TWO superb products."

What?! Being forced to use one car that breaks down every week is better than being able to choose between two cars that don't break down for years?
Being forced to use DOS as a server OS is better than being able to choose between Linux and Solaris?
You are heavily underestimating peoples' intelligence and their ability to choose.

Again, we need interoperability and compatibility, not a dictatorship.

Longhorn is going to be entirely .NET and include things like Avalon, Indigo, WinFS, and so on. I guess what I'm saying is Microsoft is actually pushing to do a revolutionary release--this will be the same kind of change going from Windows 3.1 to 95 was.

Meanwhile there are various Linux/UNIX projects such as Storage, ReiserFS, Cairo, and Keith Packard's Xserver. It will be interesting to see which set of projects finishes first.

Jedidiah.

Longhorn is going to be entirely .NET and include things like Avalon, Indigo, WinFS, and so on. I guess what I'm saying is Microsoft is actually pushing to do a revolutionary release--this will be the same kind of change going from Windows 3.1 to 95 was.

Meanwhile there are various Linux/UNIX projects such as Storage, ReiserFS, Cairo, and Keith Packard's Xserver. It will be interesting to see which set of projects finishes first.

Jedidiah.

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME defines the base directory relative to which user specific configuration files should be stored. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or empty, a default equal to $HOME/.config should be used.

# One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
# A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
# Icons on the desktop

Shared menu's, shared icon themes

# A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps

Shared window manager specs, so any app will be known to a taskbar which supports the spec, and will be controllable by it.

# Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
# A clock over on the right

Shared system tray

# A file manager
# A web browser
# An email app

All of these use shared communication protocols (http, imap, pop, smtp) or file formats (bookmarks.html, mbox). The only thing not common (yet) is the ioslave/gnomevfs duality.

Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.

Shared mime database, shared default key bindings (that last one is in the planning stage)

The difference between gnome and kde is getting to be quite minimal. I fully expect there to come a point where the two desktops will just be two skins on the same backend.

# One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
# A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
# Icons on the desktop

Shared menu's, shared icon themes

# A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps

Shared window manager specs, so any app will be known to a taskbar which supports the spec, and will be controllable by it.

# Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
# A clock over on the right

Shared system tray

# A file manager
# A web browser
# An email app

All of these use shared communication protocols (http, imap, pop, smtp) or file formats (bookmarks.html, mbox). The only thing not common (yet) is the ioslave/gnomevfs duality.

Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.

Shared mime database, shared default key bindings (that last one is in the planning stage)

The difference between gnome and kde is getting to be quite minimal. I fully expect there to come a point where the two desktops will just be two skins on the same backend.

# One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
# A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
# Icons on the desktop

Shared menu's, shared icon themes

# A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps

Shared window manager specs, so any app will be known to a taskbar which supports the spec, and will be controllable by it.

# Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
# A clock over on the right

Shared system tray

# A file manager
# A web browser
# An email app

All of these use shared communication protocols (http, imap, pop, smtp) or file formats (bookmarks.html, mbox). The only thing not common (yet) is the ioslave/gnomevfs duality.

Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.

Shared mime database, shared default key bindings (that last one is in the planning stage)

The difference between gnome and kde is getting to be quite minimal. I fully expect there to come a point where the two desktops will just be two skins on the same backend.

# One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
# A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
# Icons on the desktop

Shared menu's, shared icon themes

# A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps

Shared window manager specs, so any app will be known to a taskbar which supports the spec, and will be controllable by it.

# Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
# A clock over on the right

Shared system tray

# A file manager
# A web browser
# An email app

All of these use shared communication protocols (http, imap, pop, smtp) or file formats (bookmarks.html, mbox). The only thing not common (yet) is the ioslave/gnomevfs duality.

Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.

Shared mime database, shared default key bindings (that last one is in the planning stage)

The difference between gnome and kde is getting to be quite minimal. I fully expect there to come a point where the two desktops will just be two skins on the same backend.

# One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
# A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
# Icons on the desktop

Shared menu's, shared icon themes

# A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps

Shared window manager specs, so any app will be known to a taskbar which supports the spec, and will be controllable by it.

# Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
# A clock over on the right

Shared system tray

# A file manager
# A web browser
# An email app

All of these use shared communication protocols (http, imap, pop, smtp) or file formats (bookmarks.html, mbox). The only thing not common (yet) is the ioslave/gnomevfs duality.

Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.

Shared mime database, shared default key bindings (that last one is in the planning stage)

The difference between gnome and kde is getting to be quite minimal. I fully expect there to come a point where the two desktops will just be two skins on the same backend.

# One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
# A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
# Icons on the desktop

Shared menu's, shared icon themes

# A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps

Shared window manager specs, so any app will be known to a taskbar which supports the spec, and will be controllable by it.

# Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
# A clock over on the right

Shared system tray

# A file manager
# A web browser
# An email app

All of these use shared communication protocols (http, imap, pop, smtp) or file formats (bookmarks.html, mbox). The only thing not common (yet) is the ioslave/gnomevfs duality.

Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.

Shared mime database, shared default key bindings (that last one is in the planning stage)

The difference between gnome and kde is getting to be quite minimal. I fully expect there to come a point where the two desktops will just be two skins on the same backend.

I wonder what this major result is going to be? KPanel? Metaciwin? Konqilus?

How about throwing some weight behind the development of this project? It wouldn't take too much effort to have this remarkably robust and efficient (it already works very well for all basic Qt themes, but struggles a bit with more complicated ones - Mosfet's liquid themes etc.), and having that done you could quite easily claim a unified look for all apps without any hassle - plus a single point at which to change themes - change the KDE style and it automatically effects all GTK apps.

There are plenty of good easy goals to aim for here.

Jedidiah.

I imagine this isn't about so much look and feel but more about desktop integration. Imagine using Evolution to open an attachment using the default app settings confiured in KControl. Or saving the image you just edited in the GIMP directly to a remote server using the FTP KIO slave in the KDE file dialog. Or scripting office procedures using the desktop agnostic D-BUS (KDE's admitted DCOP successor).

There's so much more that just theming. Look at freedesktop.org to get a feel of the potential.

According to the freedesktop.org page, XOrg is x.org. I quote: "The XOrg Foundation, (a.k.a. X.org) has ...". Of course, X.org is not "The XOrg Foundation", it's "The X.Org Foundation".

If I'm not mistaken, XOrg and X.org are one and the same. People are just leaving out a ".".

It certainly does a lot to make some aspects of configuring easier. But it will continue to take a lot of maintanance.

The CFG framework seems to be a superior approach as it already addressed the issues raised with Yast and its cousins.

RhythmBox uses the GStreamer media framework, so I suspect your problems lie there. You can use OSS, ALSA, ESD and ArTs (IIRC) with GStreamer.

I wish this were clearer in RhythmBox - it isn't very obvious how to configure sound output in it (gstreamer-properties, btw). However once I realised what was going on I prefered the central configuration.

Daniel Stone: the various x trees: an explanation

OK, listen up kids, 'cause I'm only going to say this once. I think.

DIX: Driver-Indepdent X. Anything that isn't server-specific (extensions, core functions/structures, et al), goes in here.
DDX: Device-Dependent X; the inverse of the above.
XFree86: They still exist. They just released 4.4. The XFree86 distribution contains a DIX, a DDX, X libraries, X apps, fonts, and docs.
X.Org: They have a tree forked from XFree86 that contains all the same stuff, and still uses imake. They're working on a release. They're open and stuff now.
xserver: The freedesktop.org xserver project has a DIX and three DDXes - KDrive, Xizzle, and XWin. That's it.
KDrive: 'Keith's Driver', formerly known as TinyX. A completely separate DDX to XFree86 - very small, used as a testbed for stuff like RandR, Composite, Damage and Fixes. Good for embedded machines.
Xizzle: A fork of the XFree86 DDX, built with autotools, et al. Only just starting to link an actual binary, doesn't work yet, but is moving very, very quickly. Also, the binary is half the size of XFree86's. Pronounced 'shizzle'; mea culpa.
XWin: Cygwin's server for Windows.
freedesktop.org: We have xserver for the server, xlibs for the libs, and xapps for the applications. Everything's modular: the release schedule of the ATI driver is no longer tied to that of the X wire protocol, or some random fonts. Word.

Thankfully people are working on this, or at least part of the problem.

AIUI in response to this article by Havoc Pennington a project called HAL was started. This will hopefully form the userspace part of stack for convenient automounting behaviour. It's worth looking at the current (0.2) spec for the detail, but essentially you should be able to plug in an iPod and have RhythmBox detect that (via HAL, communicating using dbus).

Thankfully people are working on this, or at least part of the problem.

AIUI in response to this article by Havoc Pennington a project called HAL was started. This will hopefully form the userspace part of stack for convenient automounting behaviour. It's worth looking at the current (0.2) spec for the detail, but essentially you should be able to plug in an iPod and have RhythmBox detect that (via HAL, communicating using dbus).

Wrong. XOrg != XServer.

XOrg is the fork of XFree86 4.4 RC2 which every distribution will be using.

XServer
is the KDrive based experimental server where the compositing, damage and fixes extension (plus other interesting things) are being created.

Wrong. XOrg != XServer.

XOrg is the fork of XFree86 4.4 RC2 which every distribution will be using.

XServer
is the KDrive based experimental server where the compositing, damage and fixes extension (plus other interesting things) are being created.

Ok kids, here's the quick summary to get everyone up to speed.

XFree86 and FreeDesktop.org's X server are both X11R6-compatible X servers. The FreeDesktop.org server (herein known as XOrg) is a fork of an old XFree86 project called the KDrive.

The KDrive was a tiny X server implementation originally designed for PDAs and such. When you compile it the binary comes out to about 700kB and it requires hardly anything else to function. The author of the KDrive took (read: forked) it from XFree86's tree and started adding onto it, and it became XOrg.

So X11R6 applications and libraries work almost exactly the same under XOrg. The XFree86-specific extensions to drivers and shit need to be ported but most apps don't use those.

Gentoo, RedHat, I think SuSE and Debian and soon to be more Linux distros are all slowly switching to XOrg. Until then they'll be shipping XFree86 4.3.99.902 and below as those are the ones without the evil licensing changes.

This has been in the works for some time people, so it's not a rumor or a guess.

Note: XOrg isn't the real name of the server, I just call it that cuz im lazy. XOrg is the name of a foundation that puts out this FD.O Xserver. Info here.

Ok kids, here's the quick summary to get everyone up to speed.

XFree86 and FreeDesktop.org's X server are both X11R6-compatible X servers. The FreeDesktop.org server (herein known as XOrg) is a fork of an old XFree86 project called the KDrive.

The KDrive was a tiny X server implementation originally designed for PDAs and such. When you compile it the binary comes out to about 700kB and it requires hardly anything else to function. The author of the KDrive took (read: forked) it from XFree86's tree and started adding onto it, and it became XOrg.

So X11R6 applications and libraries work almost exactly the same under XOrg. The XFree86-specific extensions to drivers and shit need to be ported but most apps don't use those.

Gentoo, RedHat, I think SuSE and Debian and soon to be more Linux distros are all slowly switching to XOrg. Until then they'll be shipping XFree86 4.3.99.902 and below as those are the ones without the evil licensing changes.

This has been in the works for some time people, so it's not a rumor or a guess.

Note: XOrg isn't the real name of the server, I just call it that cuz im lazy. XOrg is the name of a foundation that puts out this FD.O Xserver. Info here.

Maybe we need a high performance network enabled version of Gtk.

The problem is not on Gtk. Gtk makes use of a double buffer to avoid flickering. That's not bad, but it brings an X Window design decission to the surface.

When using X over a network, it always transfers ALL the screen to the clients, even the static parts.

The addition of the XDamage extension to X servers allows the X protocol to transfer _only_ the screen changes over the network. Less transferred data, less network use, more speed.

I can't wait for the Freedesktop X server to be production quality.