Slashdot Mirror
Xfree86 4.2.0 Out
According to david_eliasson,
Xfree86 v4.2.0 is out, but it'll probably be awhile before all
the mirror sites have sycned up with the release, so you may want
to just enjoy reading that changelog for a couple days before you
bother getting the whole archive.
... lots and lots of bugfixes. Glancing through the changelog extract linked to from the story, nothing really *new* jumped out at me. Not that this is a bad thing, bugfixes and increased stability/driver support is always nice. :-) I noticed a lot of things having to do with the Xprt server and having to do with 3d accel (drm, OpenGL man pages, nv driver tuning, etc.).
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I think we have had our share of this discussion.. =)
But what the hell, let's do it again!
There's nothing wrong with your suggestion. That'd be probably the right thing to to.. If we didn't have such a shitload of X11 applications.
Actually there is nothing _fundamentally_ wrong with X11. As you can observe, even that old architecture has lived far,far longer than anyone would have expected. What it is, 20-30 years now?
The power of X11 is in it's extensibility, XRENDER was added and traparency & antialization is now possible, Even over network, any network. TrueType fonts were needed and were added. XFree86 even had sub-pixel antialization before Windows ever had (those loonies just forgot to mention it anywhere).
X11 is perfect example of OO separation between different tasks. Server does drawing and client does it's own things. And message passing comes 'builtin'.
So what is really wrong with X11? You tell me.
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
Here's what's wrong: Deployment. The reason X has a bad image is that most Linux distros by default *don't* have good fonts. Not every app has antialiased text (although with Mozilla and KDE desktops, things are starting to change). There are a lot of technologies out there that, while technologically sound, have a bad image just because they're deployed poorly. If some upstart Linux distributor built a completely solid desktop experience (WITH *good* TrueType fonts, not just allowing you to import them from your Windows install), the whole image of X would change.
LKML has 1-2k emails per week. We have Kernel Traffic, Linux Weekly News kernel summary, kerneltrap.com, #kernelnewbies and there is generally one kernel update per day on linuxtoday.com. There are tons and tons of other articles about kernel development on Linux websites.
Compiling and installing a new kernel is easy enough that people are doing it on linuxnewbie.org
As a result the Linux kernel is one of the greatest pieces of software that exists today. People are willing to do a phenomenal amount of work to have their code included into the kernel.
We are at the point where even the most excelent code has to compete to be included. There were at least three different scheduler implementations for 2.5, two different VMs, and two different asynchronous io implementations. It is very good to be in the position where you can pick and choose what code will go into the kernel at this level.
On the other hand for Xfree had a closed email list until a year or so ago. There are about 250 emails per week to the Xpert mailing list. There are few websites with Xfree development articles.
Compiling and installing Xfree is difficult.
People constantly complain about X needing to be replaced. While there are real problems with Xfree, most of the stuff that people complain about to slashdot is complete crap.
To me this suggests that Xfree needs to concentrate on their PR skills. Xfree guys need to make development easier for newbies. Key developers need to have more interviews. They need to prove that developing X is just as cool as developing the kernel. There need to be more frequent updates--posted to linuxtoday hopefully.
Compiling and installing Xfree needs to be easier. I think about it this way, once you compile something, you are only one step away from developing. All it takes after that is to open up an editor and change something.
To me Xfree is as important as the kernel. Without it I would not use Linux. This is true for the great majority of Linux users. Xfree deserves more attention and credit than it currently gets.