Slashdot Mirror
Keith Packard's Xfree86 Fork Officially Started
Reivec writes "I was having a discussion with Keith Packard on IRC about the current developments in the XFree86 Saga and
politics already discussed here earlier, and I learned many interesting things. The project has a new website, xwin, and things are getting underway. 'We're in the process of building community, from that we can construct a government. It's a hard process to construct a representative system from what we have now, so it will take a bit of time. Weeks, not months. --Keith'" Read on for some more details. Update: 04/13 03:30 GMT by T : Reader Khalid points to this informative interview with Packard at Linux Weekly News, too.
"
The site is has only been up a day or so and there isn't a lot on it right now, but he would like to see a lot of community involvement on the site and many user submitted stories to get conversation rolling. A french site has already taken
notice and posted some information on xwin as well. Since such a fork could make a large impact on many *NIX users, I felt the need to ask, 'assuming you had an active fork under development, how interchangable would you expect it to be with Xfree (assuming release builds). Do you think distros would be quick to change if it offered improvements? Or could they
provide both and have the user choose upon installation?' Keith replied, 'Given that distros will have input into how it gets built, I expect they'd be interested in a version closer to what they need. And, given that RH and Debian maintainers are both actively encouraging changes, it's hard to see how they wouldn't want to follow. (or lead).' So if you have had any interest at all in the XFree86 development, this is definitely a community site you should
take advantage of."
Wow, It's been a long time since something comparable happened. I guess the glibc/libc split is probably the closest. That settled out reasonably quickly, (though it left some freakish version numbers that still cause trouble). I suppose one can hope for something similar here.
/. interview?
X development has been somewhat slow, but it seems like the really big issue has always been drivers -- is there any way that new leadership can help get specs from manufacturers?
Editors: can we get Keith for a
Oh, and, FSP? (first substantive post)
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
It seems to me that if they are going to fork they might as well do something right from the ground up. They could build something like Quartz Extreme and then add the old version of X11 on top of it like Apple has done with OS X. Lots of possibilities!
Actually, it's strangely democratic. Seriously, the vast majority of successful Open Source projects have a single maintainer. X hasn't, and some might speculate that that's part of it's problem. I guess this has to be done to attract a large number of old X developers, but I really wonder if a benevolent dictator could make things work better (and if not, just use XFree86).
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
If I were to guess, several months ago, what fundamental OSS project would fork next, I would've picked XFree86. The signs were all there. Slow pace of development. Closed inner development core. Bugs left unfixed.
I'm about to upgrade my machines. The new release comes with XFree86 4.3.0. I'm already aware of some stuff that works in 4.2 but is broken in 4.3. There was no response to a couple of bug reports that I sent in last year, so it's not a surprise to me.
I'm waiting the obvious forthcomming trolling, from the peanut gallery, about the fork, and how its going to be fodder for the OSS lobby. I do not find it a problem. I see it as a natural evolution of things. It's just like 4-5 years ago, when RMS was dragging his feet on gcc development, egcs got forked, and eventually became the new gcc. Right now, gcc 3.2 is a damn good compiler, and I doubt that we'd have it, without that fork.
I went to xwin.org but could not find any type of list of what they hope to achieve. Not a good start for a project. Perhaps they haven't quite got around to posting the list.
Here's what I'd like to see done:
1. Performance. There needs to be some serious performance boosting. Rip out a whole lot of fluff. Honestly, how often do you need remote xwindows? Yes, there is a use for it, but that should be a seperate build altogether.
2. Standardization. Flexibility is nice, but having every damn program do things differently is annoying. It's also a very bad thing if you are trying to break into the mainstream.
3. Easier configuration. It can be a real bitch to get xwindows running properly. Considering the huge amount of differing hardware in the wild, I'm not so sure it would be possible to simplify it too much. Oh, well.
My 2 cents.
-- Will program for bandwidth
There is no "fluff" there. X11 runs as a separate user-mode process from applications. That means that commands to it need to go from the user process to the display process. X11 uses an asynchronous protocol and a mixture of shared memory and UNIX-domain sockets. And for games and other applications, there is DRI.
It happens to be the case that the X11 protocol and semantics are well-enough defined that the same protocol works over fast networks, but you don't pay anything for that.
Macintosh (as far a I can tell) works the same way: a display server, user mode applicatins, and some IPC mechanism connecting them. The only reason remote display for the Mac doesn't work like X11 is because it lacks some high-level primitives.
Windows used to start out as a frame buffer library, but it, too, works pretty much like X11 these days: asynchronous communications between user-mode processes and a display server running in a separate address space. The only thing NT/XP do differently is that the display server runs i the kernel. You could put an X11 server in the kernel, but it probably wouldn't make a big difference in performance (and it would be a headache).
When a particular X11 implementatin is slow, it's usually because of bad drivers or bad configuration. With comparable drivers, X11 performance is top-notch--usually better than Macintosh and comparable to Windows. And many X11 applications are slow or inefficient because their developers assumed they were programming a frame buffer--an assumption that is wrong on all major GUI platforms these days.
In short, this "X is slow because of network transparency" is wrong in multiple ways. First, X11 is not slow compared to other popular windowing systems. Second, nobody has ever been able to describe a way in which X11 could be made faster by choosing a different IPC mechanism. People who criticize X11 for using IPC usually assume incorrectly that other systems don't use IPC, but they do.
2. Standardization. Flexibility is nice, but having every damn program do things differently is annoying. It's also a very bad thing if you are trying to break into the mainstream.
X11 is standardized. What is not standardized is GUI environments and toolkits. But there is a reason for that: people are still figuring it out. It's software evolution in action. And it's not like Windows or Macintosh have figured that one out either: on Windows, people use dozens of different toolkits, several of which come from Microsoft Similarly for Macintosh. Gnome and KDE are making an effort to interoperate, and that's all you can ask for.
Also, there are plenty of programs that need to "o things differently". X11 is not just a desktop window system, it's used for scientific and engineering applications, customer terminals, ATMs, banking workstations, embedded systems, and lots of other applications. Those environments should not look like a regular desktop.
3. Easier configuration. It can be a real bitch to get xwindows running properly. Considering the huge amount of differing hardware in the wild, I'm not so sure it would be possible to simplify it too much. Oh, well.
I think people are doing as well as they can, given limited information from manufacturers.
But because X11 is standardized, you can always buy a commercially supported X11 server. Those usually run very well on the latest hardware. If you are using XFree86, you are using something that's both free and experimental.
As far as I can tell, "the split" is over none of these issues. Both branches will remain network transparent window systems, they will remain compatible, and they will continue not to force toolkits or desktop software on users. If they tried to, they would cease being X11 implementations. What Keith probably will do is accelerate bug fixing and bringing extensions into the X11 server. And that's what really matters.
From the GCC FAQ
In April 1999 the Free Software Foundation officially halted development on the gcc2 compiler and appointed the EGCS project as the official GCC maintainers. The net result was a single project which carries forward GCC development under the ultimate control of the GCC Steering Committee
As pointed out elsewhere, network transparency is virtually free, especially when the clients and server run on the same machine.
Simply put, clients must talk to the X server in order to make requests, read keyboard/mouse input, etc.
How would you suggest the clients and server communicate with each other?
I'd probably look for a mature communications mechanism which has been pounded to hell and back by as many users as possible in as many environments as possible. You're writing a cross-platform windowing environment, so portability is a concern.
Can anyone suggest a cross-platform, mature communications mechanism that doesn't impose any more overhead than necessary?
Let's see -- X could either use a highly-refined, well-defined communications mechanism which damned near (if not EVERY) OS vendor supplies (in the form of IP and UNIX domain sockets where available), or it could define its own communications mechanism which would probably not work nearly as well on nearly as many platforms.
And the parent is modded 3? Is there a "+1, unjustified crap" rating I somehow haven't noticed?
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
This is another American lie. Keith Packard, American official, is NOT free, he was easily subjugated by our dauntless troops. And he possessed not a fork, but a knife of mass destruction.
Note: I rewrote this message because some infidelic moderator modded it as offtopic. But I have no fear. Will trench my post and resist to the negative mods.
The remote ability of X does force design decisions in the protocol and interface, but you cannot remove these, because you would make "remote" impossible. Then you would have two display interfaces, one for local and one for remote.
You could make an argument that these design decisions are hurting X and that "remote" should be completely eradicated. That would be a logical argument (though I personally disagree).
But saying "remote should be an option" as though that is a physically possible solution is just wrong.
....what happens first.
Forks often rejoin the root tree once they've accomplished their goals, either intentionally or otherwise.
I have a gut feeling that unless the xwin project really refactors (i hate that word) a LOT of stuff, it's not going to be something that people are dying to install, except for the bleeding edge/at-work beta tester (these guys really piss me off, they spend more time recovering from crashes than actually working) types.
Wait it out - software development (especially in larger projects) is a meritocracy -- no one pays attention to you unless you accomplish something that makes a difference. Given what I've read about the reputation of this guy, he's probably going to bring a lot of good, but lets just wait for it to happen instead of getting all reactionary, eh? You're just wasting your time. Parade or throw tomatoes when something *really* big happens.
Check out their statement:
:: signatures clipped ::
A sizeable group of developers from the two leading free software
projects developing desktops based on the X Window System, KDE and
GNOME, have been discussing the current situation among themselves
and decided to draft and release this document.
We acknowledge the dedication of the XFree86 project in providing us a
free and innovative implementation of the X11 industry standard,
something we benefit from on a daily basis. Therefore, we want to
share our joint point of view with the community.
1. XFree86's recent technical progress, culminating in the 4.3
release, brought significant advancements to the X desktop. Prior
X Window System implementations were lagging behind the needs of
modern desktop users.
Cursor theming, simplified font configuration, dynamic screen
resizing, and so on address long-overdue usability issues with X
desktops. XFree86's robust solutions in these areas have been
invaluable.
However, the work is not done. Our goal is to provide the
community with desktop systems far beyond what anyone offers
today. We are ready to take advantage of an X Window System
implementation that continues to innovate.
2. GNOME and KDE have two interests in X:
- We would like to have a single organization where X innovation
occurs. By innovation, we mean the definition of new APIs,
specifications, and features - new additions to the foundations
that KDE and GNOME rely on.
- We would like to have a frequently-released, robust, stable,
open source implementation of these APIs, specifications, and
features.
We are explicitly distinguishing innovation from implementation,
because standards should be adequate to allow multiple
fully-interoperable implementations.
Within the development organization responsible for defining and
crafting new features to be adopted as standards, innovation
should happen in the open, with all affected parties able to
participate early in the process.
3. We do not want to take sides on the recent political wrangling of
who did what when and who should be in charge. Our hope is that as
a community we can find a way to involve everyone in X's
development and move forward with solving technical challenges.
4. It makes sense to us if the organization responsible for X
innovation also develops the most widely used open source
reference implementation. This ensures an emphasis on working
code, and provides a pool of active technical expertise.
5. We would like to see this forum work toward a unified
organization, governed by active contributors, that implements,
deploys, and standardizes new X innovations.
We do not want to take an a priori position on how this
organization should be organized or governed - that is a
conversation we're trying to start, rather than one we're trying
to end. We trust and will support the X community as they work to
address this issue.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
One major thing that seems to be needed is a detailed, up-to-date guide on how to develop fast graphical apps for xfree86. So many comments here saying "X is slow" are followed by comments blaming the toolkit/app developers.
A set of guidelines for modern xfree86 on how to get the best performance would help a huge fraction of the open-source world and improve the appearance of Unices on the desktop.
...what I would like to see is BOTH a local DRI (perhaps using SHM) AND continued network transparency.
Aside from that first time running Linux Doom over the network back in 1994 just to see how slow it would be, I have never had the desire to run a bandwidth-intensive X application over the network.
Yet, I still use X applications remotely, day after day---XEmacs, xmms, xterm, you name it---and I'm not about to stop.
Come to think of it, we already HAVE the two things I've listed above, so in fact, I'm already happy. Half-life under Wine plays frickin' fast, as does the native version of Wolfenstein 3D, and I can still run my other apps remotely.
I'd still be interested in seeing what Keith comes up with.
Finally, it sounds to me (from the older article that was linked to above) like David can go fuck off: if he doesn't use X anymore, then he should give up his spot on the XFree86 steering committee to someone with a stake in XFree's future. At a minimum, this should be someone who uses the damn thing!
Go, Keith! Some of the best applications in existence (XEmacs, gcc-3.x, and XFree86 itself) were adversarial forks.
Cheers,
Kyle
[ home ]