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XFree86 Fork Gets a Name, Website

Piethein Strengholt writes "Today the Xfree86 fork is a fact. A new project has started and is located at: xouvert.org. Xouvert has been started due to the corporate structure and the slow development of XFree86. They hope to reduce the risk to XFree86 of incorporating new drivers and features."

12 of 647 comments (clear)

  1. For those who don't know... by nomis80 · · Score: 5, Informative

    "ouvert" means "open" in French.

  2. Re:xwin.org by gaj · · Score: 3, Informative
    Apparently you didn't bother to actually read much of anything while over at xwin.org. xwin.org is, to quote the page (including the page title) "just a website".

    Xouvert is the project that xwin.org was put in place to instegate.

  3. Re:Excellent by SilverSun · · Score: 4, Informative

    Drop the network transparency, make it run framebuffer and XFree is obsolete on desktop.

    Why do people not realize, that X-Windows is NOT sucking because of network transparancy! Any possible design of a clean API for a windowing system will more or less be automatically network transparent. The only this which is not network transparent are stupid ugly hacks. That said, we all know how X sucks, but it is has definitively nothing to do with network transparancy.

    Cheers

    --

    KdenLive/PIAVE - non-linear video editing

  4. Re:Excellent by divec · · Score: 5, Informative
    However, X11's network transparency is just as creaky and obsolete as the rest of the beast. [...] the bandwidth and latency is just obscene when compared to Citrix Metaframe.

    See my previous comment on NX compression. I'm typing this on Galeon running at work, displaying on my home computer over a 56K modem, because it's faster web browsing like this than running the browser locally. NX has to be seen to be believed.

    The interesting thing is, this level of compression is only possible because of the high-level nature of X's network transparency - Citrix / RDP / VNC doesn't run anywhere near as fast.

    --

    perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'

  5. Re:I hope they integrate NX compression by listen · · Score: 4, Informative

    Only the proxy is GPLed, the Xlib stuff is X11. The proxy is a separate program, so thats ok.

    What is really needed is a driver for the XServer that will duplicate the current X command stream. This could then be sent to the NX proxy, and actually use it as a remote desktop. Also could use VNC, and it could also be useful for providing desktop pagers with full update capability.

  6. Drop XFree86, use Y instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Frankly, it may be worth jettisoning a lot of the XFree86 baggage and starting anew.

    Y, an X Windows replacement, looks extremely well designed and this guy wrote a pretty complete implementation for his thesis.

    Why not port the useful bits of X - like the hardware drivers - over to this already-established well-designed base instead of trying to hack XFree86 into something of similar quality?

    (Well, the obvious answer, ``to keep the applications`` is fair enough. But a compatibility module wouldn't be too hard, and worth the benefit in the long run.)

  7. Re:On the first line of the page. by mhesseltine · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, it's starting as an experimental branch from XFree. Other experimentals include:

    • GCC/EGCS
    • Emacs/XEmacs
    • Minix/Linux
    • BSD4.4/OpenBSD/NetBSD/FreeBSD
    See a pattern yet? They are doing their own source tree, their own code control, etc. This is not a branch of the official XFree86 project. This is a fork, which will be maintained independently of XFree86. It seems that one of two things will happen here.
    1. The graphics development community splits, with some supporting this project, others supporting XFree (thus reducing the amount of development getting done)
    2. One of these projects will die out either from a mass exodus of developers (everyone leaves the XFree project) or lack of interest (no one moves to this new project)

    While I'm not against going out on a limb and doing something innovative, I just wonder if it would have been better to try and accomplish this within the project that currently exists?

    --
    Overrated / Underrated : Moderation :: Anonymous Coward : Posting
  8. Re:Well then.. by FooBarWidget · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you've ever managed a reasonably large open source project then you know that making everything public from the beginning won't necessarily be a good thing!
    You can't just dump some stuff somewhere on the net and then expect people to contribute. You have to prepare a lot of things, so that people can easily contribute without getting lost in the mess!

    And I don't know who moderated you up but those moderators certainly didn't read the website. I quote:
    "Sat Aug 16 00:59:49 PDT 2003 - You can't download anything yet. We have this website, XWIN is providing Wiki space, and Savannah is providing mailing list and bug tracking services. We are importing the Xfree86 source code into an arch repository right now; the current job is making a script to tag the source files every time a CVS checkout is done. The IRC logging bot still needs to be set up, and code written to archive the logs daily."
    The website has only been up since yesterday! Accusing them for "keeping it secret" and shoot down their image is just stupid, when they've just started recently.

  9. Re:xwin.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    It was referencing comments on Mosfet (a ex-KDE developer who was kicked off the KDE development team)'s personal webpage. Mosfet himself said that it wasn't true after talking with more people (e.g, Havoc) later on his webpage (mosfet.org/mosfet.arklinux.org, which is down currently-- moving)

  10. Re:Uhmmm... by FooBarWidget · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes it's compatible. X11 is a protocol, not an implementation. XFree86 is an implementation. Xouvert will be another implementation of the same protocol.

  11. Re:I hope they integrate NX compression by iserlohn · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe you are looking for this-

    http://xf4vnc.sourceforge.net/

  12. Re:That's nice, but... by kasperd · · Score: 3, Informative

    Linux is pronounced LIE-nucks.

    On kernel.org you can find the correct pronunciation.

    --

    Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?