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Cygwin/XFree86 Leaving XFree86.org
An anonymous reader writes "The Cygwin/XFree86 project is leaving XFree86.org. For those that don't know, Cygwin/XFree86 is a port of the X Window System to Cygwin (which provides a *nix-like API on Windows). Here is the announcement and the start of the trouble. The XFree86 project has pushed away more developers than most projects ever have - is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?"
umm..
no.. The reason the push developers away is that many of these guys are trying to bloat xfree to hell.. if they didn't it would be 20x worse than windows..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
If developers are leaving the XFree86 arena, where are they flocking to? Is there a replacement readily available or is one in the works?
I'll certainly say that Xfree86 isn't going anywhere for a while, as it is all over the place now. But I do feel (and others probably do too) that it's about time we 'started again' with something like X but a whole lot neater and simpler.
slashdot story on the topic.
These guys seem to care more about being able to brag about their commit access in their email signatures than streamlining development of their software and making things as easy as possible for those willing to devote their time and talent to the project.
If ever a project was in need of a fork, and if ever some project developers were in need of an attitude readjustment - this is it.
And he presented his case well. These other XFree86 guys sound like the cast from Othello... way too serious for what is, after all, something that's supposed to be fun: working on an open source project.
You know, what kind of nut must it be to crack to get X running atop of Windows? You'd think they'd give Harry some slack just out of the complexity of what he's doing.
Another poster mentioned that it's the fault of the tools, and I think this is a good point. A truly usable code management system would allow for Bozo the Clown to have commit privileges and it wouldn't impact the overall effort at all.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I have been using XFree86 since it's inception and this is indeed discouraging news. Sounds like nothing but a big pissing match to me.
What this means for XFree86
Some will say nothing. Some will say good riddance. Some will say this is the beginning of the end. Who knows? Who cares? Let /. figure it out.
So uhhhhh... who wants to tackle this one? ;-)
Can anyone comment on how active/alive Xouvert is?
I think it would be best if all these projects that left Xfree86.org united - the Cygwin/Xfree86 folks, Keith Packard, and pull their resources to come up with a workable development model (yeah, and a workable X - all major projects - Gnome, KDE - are waiting for long promised features that all modern graphical subsystems exhibit except for X.)
No.
KFG
Maybe I'm just too much of a noob,
but what else is there besides XFree86?
Is there anything with a legit chance to
take over?
Or are we destined to code something new?
thanks
how many XFree86 users are using Cygwin port? 1 percent? Let us face it, it is not the "beginning of the end" but is rather the "end of the beginning of the end".
Don't get me wrong, XFree86 is great and all, but I wish there was a replacement. I would be willing to wager that >75% of those of us who run a Linux desktop don't need hardly *any* of the advanced features in the X Windows server. I would like to see a completely modular, X-windows core-compatible windowing system for Linux. Want to use some of the advanced features? Add in the module, recompile, and go!
What this means for XFree86
/. figure it out.
Some will say nothing. Some will say good riddance. Some will say this is the beginning of the end. Who knows? Who cares? Let
Fellowship 9/11
The XFree86 project has pushed away more developers than most projects ever have - is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?
I think not and here's why: I've been working as a consultant for one of the top banks in the US for the last 10 years. One of my roles is to maintain the COBOL-emulator for the VAX systems that we store customer data in. One of the integral pieces, as you may guess, is CygWin. We actively add elements and integrate third-party products with CygWin since it is the best at what it does.
The greatest challenge for our team is to enhance the Win32 abstraction layer so that it no longer interferes with the HAL on a multi-processor layer. We've made some progress and thanks to CygWin we're close to completion.
Which is nice.
One thing that arguably sparsely resourced open source groups need is more fracturing. Now, in addition to doing the porting work, the cygwin/xfree86 porters will need to deal with source and site maintenance. That's just time wasted essentially.
The XFree86 project has pushed away more developers than most projects ever have - is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?
Why the scaremongering, anonymous submitter? Just because one project isn't getting access to XF86's CVS tree and will have to maintain one of their own somewhere else, doesn't mean that everyone will abandon XF86. It's mature, has a ton of features, and has no viable replacement; who is gonna leave and where are they gonna go?
the coolest club on
Thanks. I still have no idea what this is.
I do know what X is (more or less). OK, I get that Gygwin is trying to make Windows users have Linux/Unix tools (I think that's what that says). So what is Xfree86 and what are we loosing?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I mean, who in their right mind would use a free X windows implemetation on the platform that 95% of the world's computers run?
Geez!
Like anyone needs to Xdisplay applications to a Windows box from a Unix box. Nobody does that anymore!
cool...thanks
I've been trying to figure out how to get this fullscreen patch for Cygwin/X into the dist, but the xfree86 dev list tells me to submit to bugzilla. So what, I'm supposed to invent a bug and then solve it? Its a new feature and it would be nice to have a real place to discuss and enhance it (the xfree86 dev list is very aloof and hasn't been kind to me at all as a newbie x developer). I think it's a good move for Cygwin...
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
After spending 6 hours at a Linux Install Fest with 2 Linux guru's, my dual monitor is limping along 800x600. Windows config took 15 minutes. What good is great software if the bar for entry is too high? Perhaps it is just Debian. I did have more luck with RedHat. I guess it is another 6 hours for me. Argh. The good news is the echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep worked.
Linux is still the best server O/S. Hardware device and applications will probably always lag on Linux.
j00 are teh ghey n00b
I can understand their decision. XFree has matured to be a really broken pile of software which is badly maintained after all. There is a known CMS and XLIB locking problem in XFree 4.3.0 and upwards which they reject to fix (and this is known for many months now). Even patches and fixes exist for it and they still reject to fix it. When you use GTK+ 2.3.0 on it then it heavily crashes.
Read here the fixes
I can imagine that there are to many trouble but I think that the remaining people working on XFree are fucking dumbasses and the primary troublemakers here. They threw the major leading developers out, those that liked to bring XFree up to new roots, fix many bugs, make it modern. And what do we have now ?
Xouvert as lame fork with people who may not be able to deal with it.
XFree as a lameass project full of bugs they not gonna fix, full of people who slowly develop it and who use old versions of xcursor, freetype, fontconfig and stuff like this. Ignore bugreports and fixes
FreeDesktop org as last bastion for people like Keith Packard and Jim Gettys to fix all the stuff.
I think we should start to boycott XFree.
This will trigger 100 posts that mistakenly refer to it as X Windows.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
Java, emacs and XML all suck.
illegitimii non ingravare
those of us who run a Linux desktop don't need hardly *any*
Sorry, I can't help myself. "Don't need hardly any", you say? Bleh! What would your gradeschool english teacher say about this? I imagine not hardly nothing no good!
(grrr.)
check out www.fresco.org it seems like _the_ replacement - and it also seems they could use some more develpers....
Remember when Gnome split from KDE? They fully intended to end KDE, yet today both are powerful desktop systems that have benifited from each other. (Last I cheked you can't even complile KDE with a couple GNOME libs - code reuse in action)
For that matter, linux was the end of BSD, or perhaps we should say OpenBSD was the end of NetBSD. Take your pick of history, BSD is alive in well despite what some anonymous cowards would have you believe.
This is a good thing, XFree86 has gotten a lot of criticism, let the critics go their own speerate ways and each prove their way is best. In the end the best way wins, or if there is no best way, all survive, and each focuses on the areas where its way of doing things is best.
No.
That was easy! Ask me another one!
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
From the Xouvert HOWTO on the very link you posted above:
--
1.1 What is Xouvert?
Contrary to popular opinion, Xouvert is not a fork of the XFree86 project.
Xouvert wishes to provide a development branch of XFree86. What this means is, Xouvert is an attempt to create, implement, test, and bring new features and ideas to XFree86 sooner.
Xouvert has now just started. Currently, Xouvert simply is XFree86. The purpose of this document is to help people get to a point where they can help contribute to Xouvert.
-><- no
I like Xfree. But it's still basically X. The problem I have with X is that it's overkill for most client desktops. It's nice that X allows remote windowing. But how many users actually need that? (I'm ignoring the security implications this has as well.) The reality is that 99.9% of X applications have both the client application and X server on the same machine. So why have such a complicated networking layer to draw a window on a screen? Seems like a lot of unnecessary overhead to me.
I seem to remember there was a move to streamline X given this new reality. But I don't know what it's called. Could someone fill me in?
When all else fails, run.
BSD is dying, and now XFree86 is too. Have fun, trolls!
Follow the adventures of the new wandering jews
Xouvert is a development branch of the Xfree86 source tree. It's purpose is to provide wide testing and integration for third party patches, and to test and stabilize innovative new ideas for submission to the main Xfree86 branch.
It's an interesting phenomenon associated with free software: enough talented developers get the perception that the current people in control are being unreasonable about release schedules, overall direction, features, bugs, indenting styles, etc. and fork their own branch.
A closely-related parallel here is how the egcs folks wanted greater ability to change the gcc codebase than the gcc developers wanted to do.
Then, the egcs branch took off so famously that later it essentially became the gcc development branch.
May the best X branch become the tree trunk.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
"So, please take this as kindly as possible when I say: Go fuck yourself."
So Harold is a bit upset with you, but there's no need to draw additional attention, is there?
The problem with the XFree86's so-called "core" developers is that they appear to prefer keeping a high ego over better XFree86 products by allowing more, better quality developers like Harold to have CVS access.
As some people might experience /. problems on mail-archive:
What happens when I assign patches in the "Cygwin Xserver" project to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"? Does an email go out to everyone with CVS commit access? Is there a single person that receives this email? Should I be assigning patches to a specific person to ensure timely commits?
I realize that a feature freeze is in place now... this is a general questions for "normal" times so that I know how to assign my bugs to when I want them to get committed.
Harold
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
I don't know why, but I do. I'm going to think of a reason, and then I'll come back and post, and I'll be like: "Yeah man, but you ARE WRONG and here's why:" and then on the end of the post, I'll be like: "Suck on that, smartass".
Yeah, you'll see.
That this might actually be the beginning of the end for linux, what with this, SCO suing (Or threatening everyone with a lawsuit), Mandrake Linux 9.2 Destroying Drives "Yes I know it was a defective drive, but this still looks bad for linux", I love linux as much as any geek on /., but let's be realistic here, all it would take now is for someone to bri^h^h^hlobby Republican Washington to pass a law against Linux because it's "a form of terrorism", and that's all it would take, and of course Micro$hit and $CO will be behind it full force.
Lets just make a fork and be done with it, its over! Let them work with Rest in Peace Xfree86, Enter Xouvert.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
XUOVERT is that replacement. Let Xfree86 burn in hell and lets make a fork. I'm sick of reading stories about how the Xfree core people are preventing drivers from being commited and closing themselves off to the world, if they dont want developer support we should fork Xfree86 and compete with them, if they are so good at coding that they make a better Xfree86 than the community does well props to them, but if they don't, well they lose. Survival of the fittest. XOUVERT
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Lets Ignore Xfree86.org and make them completely irrelivent and focus on Y Windows and XUOVERT, why do we need Xfree86? They must think they are bigger than the community now, its their own elitism thats helping to kill Linux.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The complete refusal to use a higher level intermediate language, because they are afraid others it will make it easier to build proprietary compilers using GCC frontends, is hurting GCC performance ... the present GCC architecture prohibits efficient intermodule optimization.
I hate web forums or mailing lists that only let you look at one message at a time. It makes it very difficult to navigate, especially when it's slashdotted. I was going to try to mirrow it here, but I'm now getting connection refused errors...
Among XFree86's other problems is the apparent lack of any sort of regression testing. I only upgrade XFree86 when I'm forced to because of upgrading my Linux distribution, and over the years, about half the time this has caused something to break that used to work, causing me to lose many hours and days over the course of weeks trying to fix the problem.
It's because of that gay Bishop in New Hampshire, isn't it.
No, the problem you imagine simply does not exist because X already has the "shared memory extension" to make it possible to write directly into the X-server's graphics memory bypassing the socket communications. In any case, XFree86 uses domain sockets for all local communications. Domain sockets are implemented extremely efficient on Linux. It is definitely not sockets that are causing any delays you may see on your user-interface. It is likely you are using a GNOME or KDE application which is badly implemented whether in itself or in the toolkit on which it is based.
"security implications this has as well"
No, there is no security problem. X defaults to have closed network access. Every PC should also use a firewall which provides a separate stronger access control mechanism. Nobody should be able to access your X-server remotely unless you have explicitly given them permission.
Scroogle
I'm not Thomas. All I have to say is he maintains various projects on his spare time, like Lynx, XTerm, ncurses, dialog, and others. Since I use all, he's God. Please take the time to apologize. I love you too.
Perhaps this should serve as a cautionary tale on how open source development is _not_ the panacea it's sold to be.
In theory, capitalism is a Columbus' egg: competing firms will strive to satisfy the customer, thus maximizing social welfare. But just as lack of competition begets corporate mammoths like our friends from Seattle (I'm talking about Sub Pop, I swear! Nirvana, Soundgarden, et cetera), an established reputation might beget open source initiative monoliths.
I'm not up to date enough to claim with a reasonable degree of certainty that the XFree86 group has become a stagnant monolith, but that's a theoretical possibility I've been fiddling with for a while.
Mainstream public sector economics has been developing the idea that government departments and autarchies compete for influence and budgeting, and perhaps it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to imagine open source projects compete for user-base share and reputation. And while that can be good for the same reasons free market competition is good - Linux distros keep one-upping each other - the presence of an open source standard might lead to a great concentration of power in the hands of project maintainers, swollen egos and entire project deaths.
Sure, it's open source, but I'm surely not getting to hack the Linux kernel in a long time, since I actually have a life and professional uses for the only computer I own. Should the "official" development of the Linux kernel stall (sp. at a point where there are serious bugs), I could choose one of the BSDs - monolithic developer groups themselves.
Solutions lie in the projects' group development rules, and having little experience in working with them, I don't have a lot of solutions. But wouldn't the story of RMS itself show that even the Elders have egos and can screw things up?
Open source just isn't a solution per se, and I feel the really important game is not in the licensing models, but in the group development models. Perhaps they need a bit of standardising and a few cool acronyms right now.
What advice can you give us developers on how to handle this? You have alot of experience with things such as this as I have been watching your mailing list for a while. Maybe you'd like to volunteer to help lead the Xfree86 fork? Maybe you can help in some way, you are as popular and as respected as Linus himself, so an interview on this subject where you can give advice would be useful in mobilizing the developer base.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
What do you plan to do about it?
XFree-cygwin is definitely not propping the project up, nor are they the primary users.
Isn't that laughable? As if the switching of the Cyg-win userbase would cripple X. Why is it that GNU sees the need to fork *everything*? Is their problem with X that they don't release under the GPL? And who are these myriad other developers that have been turned off by the X group?
I can see arguments that X is unwieldy and archaic, fine - but why the general "I'm taking my toys and going home" attitude here?
And this is a legit question, not a flame.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I'm glad you got modded 5, your post should be modded 10! This is exactly what we need to do, we just need to get the publicity and the leadership to do this. We need someone to come along and do it, are you going to be the guy to unite them? Keith Packard is a good coder, one of the best i've ever seen, but hes not a very good leader and hes terrible with the press.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Seems clear that that David Dawes guy is just an egomaniac jerk... If I was working on that project, and he was acting in that manner in representing the project, I'd sure as hell quit the project.
I sure hope the project does die, and Mr. David Dawes can be king of his sandcastle, with nobody to play with... What an attitude.
Its a start yes, but I think we need to do something bigger, we something big, huge, like KDE, or Gnome, something where hundreds or even thousands of developers are involved from every Linux company, lug, etc. Kinda like the Kernal.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I tell you, *BSD is really dying. Soon they will join forces with a networking company to pull each other down into the tarpits too. I can see it down *BSD and Banyan. Building a better tomorrow...today.
Alot of companies, alot of developers, alot of users want to contribute. Xfree86 is more important than Mozilla, more important than Gnome, KDE and ranks up there next to the Linux Kernel itself. There will be no shortage of support if we have good leadership, hell I'm willing to pay cash, real money to BUY support, you could set it up like transgaming, you could set up a place for us to donate cash to sponser developers like Freenet does, you can find ways to do this but to just do nothing at all gets us absolutely no where.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
In the open source community when something is wrong you fix it, you get off your lazy ass and you do something about it. Boycotts are what Windows users try to use against Microsoft, thats your world, keep using Windows kid. We shouldnt boycott Xfree, we should replace it with something better.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The X network layer is not a "bloated" bolt-on kit or added feature that someone wedged into X as a gimmick... X is itself just a specification for a data stream, like umpteen other protocols you have in your /etc/services file. At its core it is really quite simple and lightweight.
Furthermore, when the client and server are on the same machine, the data stream is NOT sent over the network, but is routed through local UNIX sockets or shared memory, making X essentially as slow or as fast as your system bus and graphics hardware. Only when you actually separate client and server on to different machines does X use the network sockets.
Overhead is simply not a factor on an average Linux desktop.
This feature bloat everyone is frightened of is in other places, like for example the KDE and GNOME architectures and the desire of most users to drown in pixmaps and theme engines.
With that said, on my own Linux desktop (a lowly 900MHz PIII) I use KDE 3 and play Quake III and so on and I don't find it to be any slower than Windows 2000.
Maybe there is just a small crowd (the ones who keep submitting "3D site" or "hardware site" stories) who won't feel elite at LAN parties until their Linux box can beat Windows boxen by at least 6fps in frame rate tests, 403fps. vs. 397fps.... and they're somehow convinced that if they can just get rid of that damn protocol and somehow drop "abstract" graphic ideas directly into video memory rather than organizing and processing them, that extra 6fps will be forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the rest of us continue to use the god-send network features of X to administer large installations from a single point of access, or to deploy narrow-application thin clients at greatly reduced cost.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
X has lots of problems, but the network transparency is NOT one of them. This is a myth that comes up all the time, by amateurs that somehow picture it calling a central server at MIT for every graphics call.
On a mondern system (with security) there HAS to be a context switch some time between a user program producing the graphics and the system drawing on the screen. The network transparency adds zero overhead on any modern system, in fact it encourages reduction of overhead by forcing the batching of requests into single context switches. When anybody says that Windows can do each call in 1 context switch, I have to point out that X (if it was properly designed to not require so damn many syncrhonous calls) can do tens of thousands of calls in 2 context switches.
X's #1 problem is the bad graphics model which means that drawing anything more complicated that 1985 graphics (such as anti-aliased shapes) requires you to draw an image and send it, which is going to be slow even if the app could draw directly into the on-screen image buffer.
X's #2 problem, and really the cause of perceived slowness, is that seperate window manager, and people are going to have to face reality and move the window borders and resizing and all other drawing into the app's toolkit, so that synchronization between that and the rest of the app's display can be preserved. Notice that nobody complains that moving things inside the apps is slow.
Mirror of the trouble-starter thread.
---OFF-TOPIC---
Are you a fascist or is it a joke? Your name that is...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Is it me, or does david dawes come accross as a c*nt in that thread?
While were on the topic, what alternatives are they're for Linux (other than commerical X)? Anything faster? Anything smaller and faster that could be used for a dashpc (www.dashpc.com) thanks all
Jeez, this is incredible. A linux project getting factionalized and splintering apart (and possibly even fading from relevance). We've never seen that before.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
"Have any proof to back that statement up?"
Yes, I have the double-secret meetings the "bloat" committee had where we all agreed to bloat XFree86 to hell.
Look, every program gains features and bloat over time. This is a natural purge process wherebye the new branch either flourishes and the old dies, or vice-versa.
Either way, its very healthy for the computing organism for this to happen.
So just chill out. "Do you have any proof". What would you accept anyway... secret pictures? Secret movies? I mean, you talk like you're tought and its just nonsense. Pull yourself to gether and argue logically. Stop being so sophmoric!
You know it's a sweet project when it generates IRC logs like this one.
http://www.xouvert.org/irc/2003/10/27
Are you?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Here we go again. It's not the more common argument about X in general, but a variation of that argument looming on this topic. Is it too late to tell all those who don't understand X that Xfree IS NOT X windows? Reguardless of X and any problems it may have, XFree is an implementation of X. Please critizise XFree is you must, but this post doesn't deal with X directly....
oops...too late. The comments have already begun.
"but overall almost any windows program will work on any windows version, and there is no recompiling ever!"
You're kidding (or trolling), right?
I have an entire drawer full of old games of which maybe 20% run without serious hacking. Do you not remember how most Win95 games wouldn't run at all, or ran poorly under WinNT and later Win2K?
A lot of the old info isn't around anymore, but check out http://www.ntcompatible.com/ for a modern example (and compatibility is much better now than it was five years ago).
Of course there's no recompiling... there's no source code -to- recompile. If it doesn't work anymore you're just screwed.
It is well known that Cygnus (whose name was chosen because it has "GNU" in the middle) eats, lives, sleeps and breathes the GPL. Is this the real reason they forked the project? It's interesting: The GPL "faithful" claim that forking is a bad thing and that their license prevents it (a claim which has never been demonstrated to be true), yet they certainly seem to have no compunctions about forking a project to bring it under the GPL!
..now that WiFi is getting used more and more. Now that handhelds type systems are made that could easely do (Tiny-)X? Or would you want to use VNC? here probably will be a time where you want to use that handheld outside your own WiFi-AP range. Then you would rely on your slow 'broad-band' connection. VNC needs a lot more bytes than X, if you want to actually use it.
On the other hand, I guess you propose a hack that will directly render your QT/GTK/whatever programs instead of going thrue the TCP/IP stack. So you could always say to your QT/GTK/.. programs to render via TCP/IP this time. But that could open the doors to things that will be 'implemented for network transparency in the future'.
I think it is time we make a more userfriendly, windowmanager-specific GUI for Linux/FreeBSD/etc. Make a unified interface for linux and other derivatives, then see if it is accepted. Make it like windows where all you see the whole time is the user interface, to make it better for the desktop world, some say that choice is good, and the ability to run programs remotely is good, but now days for the average desktop user, this is not very practical, and choice is becoming randomness since there is no standard user interface guideline for Linux. Lets make someone like MacOS X for x86, but based on Linux: fast, easy, etc. I could help with UI development, etc if anyone is interested in starting a project, I'm not much for coding though. Linux needs somthing original.
Sig: I stole this sig.
The XFree86 project has pushed away more developers than most projects ever have - is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?
One can only hope.
Anyone looking for lightweight X ? Try XGGI ! Works directly on framebugger, or even better, on KGI !
I probably agree with this guy, but he flies off the handle a bit much. In several of his responses he is swearing at people, demanding that they never reply to him, etc. He came across, to me, as a total prima donna. He issued his ultimatum on Oct 22, and demanded CVS access in two months, or else he'd take his toys and go home... but then apparently shortened the deadline to five days. (?)
That said, the X development model seems pretty fucked up...
Why is xfree86 called xfree86
Does the 86 mean 1986? That's the connotation that always springs to my mind, in these days of "95","98","millenium","2000" and "2003"
is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?
And in other news, BSD is dead.
Gnome is the end of KDE. That and it's
relationship with Trolltech/SCO/Canopy.
"The core dev's answer: Shut up and stop complaining we are doing the best we can."
The Cyg/X maintainer's frustration with this is totally understandable. And it comes out in an ugly way. His comment, "Let me make direct commits within 2 months, or I will pull out of the project altogether" isn't exactly dressed for success. Making threats, seriously or not, never gets people to come to your way of thinking.
This is not Open Source/Free Software's proudest moment. With luck, perhaps it will be a moment that will lead to a better X.
I think hard-working open-source developers are often neglected, particularly for things like this, which started over adamant refusal of CVS access to someone effectively maintaining a platform.
CVS access is like giving someone the keys to the T-Bird. Everyone's excited to get it, but the parents are always terrified the kid will crash into a tree...and wreck the T-Bird (aww, don't worry, the kid will be FINE...). But CVS has this marvelous feature. You can create tags, and still quickly get around botched commits.
I work on an open-source game (I'm not going to plug it), and most of my commits revolve around a particular area, but occasionally I go over and revamp the configure.in/Makefile.am system and rip out all of the cruft. Ah, there's something nice about that efficiency, but...I could just as easily make it unusable if I made a large commit and didn't check everything first.
But that comes to my other point. You have to appreciate HOW much time each developer puts in. Some will only put in an hour every month or two, while some will simply stay and work on something, a dozen hours a day (or equivilent for their busy life), until it's done, even if small, like autoconf/automake files. Even a relatively unnoticable change from a user's perspective can have huge developer benefits, and people often forget that. Some developers will go for every last user-noticable feature, and some, perhaps like me, will often help out the other developers as much as they can, so that they can be more productive. Project leads often don't realize what a difference that makes until six months after a commit. *grins sheepishly at her 'boss'*
I've tried just submitting a bug report to XFree, and get nothing back. I've treid submitting the bug report to the owner of the driver, one of the posters in that email thread, and it was ignored. I have to turn off hardware accelerated 3D support in a very mass-market chipset to run at 1280x1024, and the project and the individual developer ignore well constructed, easily repeatable bug reports.
Xfree86 sucks, and always has, every fscking time I've installed it from 11 Slackware floppy discs in 1994 with a Trident POS to my present "emerge xfree" on an Intel 845. Everytime I get a new graphics adapter, no matter how mass market, I still end up contacting the developer of the driver to find the secret sauce to make it stable.
That being said, Xfree86 has performed a great service by bringing this code out for us to abuse. Still there is much more work that they could do. The childlike behavior I saw on that mailing list (telling someone "when you get a job", my god) makes me fear that I'll never see a more stable GUI for Linux.
-- Jack
(You Have Been Teased)
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
So this IS the end then.
Wooo hooo, you issued a complaint and that makes you an expert on XF86 develpment? Your friends in Redmond would be proud of you.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I believe some people in XFree86 have some social problems. Ego phenomenon, call it.
I remember when we wanted to add our national keyboard to XFree86. Our patch was unnoticed for months, not even given a sight or a comment from a developer. We mailed developers personally -- NO answer.
Only after I met one XFree86 personally and after several weeks, we were able to put our keyboard inside. We had it in major distributions through patches for months, used by lots of people, but still not in main XFree86.org tree.
It really is a pain to get code submitted to XFree86. These people play blind. Setting aside ego and opening mind would really help this project.
that's one project I'd never try to contribute to.
Egomania extravaganza!!!
Meep.
This is a problem with a lot of GNU programs running on Cygwin. The Cygwin developers want everyone to treat them like just another platform and adjust their projects to make up for the horrendous shortcomings of Windows. They refuse to add any more translation/emulation functions to Cygwin than they deem necessary, relying on the individual projects to adjust to compensate for retarded things like 8.3 character filenames.
I suppose they're trying to squeeze all the performance they can out of Linux/Windows, but, quite frankly, I (and most others) don't care if Linux software runs quickly on Windows or not. In the end, it makes all of the major applications for Linux and *BSD worse to be beholden to the design failures of a proprietary OS that decided to implement only the bare minimum Posix standards. If the Cygwin developers would maintain their own patchsets and make Cygwin at least emulate a few of the extended features of Linux instead of insisting that the community integrate all of their changes, this wouldn't be an issue.
To put it simply, I wouldn't just point fingers and blame XFree without examining all the facts. Maybe this is how it should have been done to begin with.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
When I started using X, it was on a machine 500 times slower than the one I use today, with 1/64
as much memory, and a network ten times slower. If the overhead wasn't too much for that, it's nothing today.
My X server uses less than 1% of the CPU time, none of my programs is limited by graphical speed, and I use it across the network all the time. And my machine wasn't even state-of-the-art when I bought it two years ago. So unless "most client desktops" suddenly means playing real-time games while watching 5 DVDs at once, and doing that on a remote machine, the efficiency of X should be the least of our worries.
You mean, like ncurses...
It had the best games (moria, angband, nethack), the best browser (lynx) and the best enviroment (command line).
I've never been modded more than 1 for any comment I've ever made on /.
perhaps I should start my on newsgroup...cry
It is an interesting read, I wonder how Linus would have reacted?
The end pretty much happened earlier this year when the most talented and prolific developers forked to form the xouvert
Er, which? Not Keith P, not Mike Harris, not Brenden and not Daniel Stone. Good luck to the Xouvert guys but they've got a lot to prove before they attract the people they want to the project.
"even if the app could draw directly into the
No, an X application can always write directly into the X-server memory by using the Shared Memory Extension which is an even faster method than the already very fast default method of using unix domain sockets. I don't agree that slowness is caused by the design of X. You are probably basing your judgement on the performance you get using the XFree86 server, an implementation of X whose graphics card drivers are mostly without the benefit of full optimisation. This is because XFree86 writes its own graphics card drivers and the graphics card manufacturers have often not provided programming information on their products. This situation will change at some point as the manufacturers see Linux desktop usage continue its steady increase.
"perceived slowness [due to] separate window manager"
It is not the design of X itself including the positive feature of window management which causes any slowness. Firstly, XFree86 suffers from having non-optimised graphics card drivers (see previous paragraph). Secondly, window management is typically performed by a window manager, most of which were not written with graphics optimisation in mind. For example, I don't know of any open-source window manager which actually uses the shared memory extension although that would especially help speed up the dragging of large windows. It is unfair to criticise non-optimised window managers for being slow.
You are also wrong to criticise X for making the window management concept possible. If you don't like window managers, don't use them! X does not require you to use a window manager. Also, do not confuse "window manager" with "window management". Window management is required in X as it is in MS-Windows. However, the difference in X is that window management can be done by any or all of: X applications, toolkits, the X server, or separate window manager(s). Only X gives you that amazing choice!
Scroogle
Since X11 structurally requires huge, non-standardized (in the sense that there are a number of non-compatible toolkits out there) external toolkits to function like a modern windowing system, it seems entirely appropriate to place the blame for bloat squarely on X11's shoulders.
And another Squealhead is heard from....
http://www.microwindows.org/
has xlib support, with very little or no bloat.
gonna try to use it for either an included app or and add-on to my floppy based distro (it's only a 100k server)
The main problem with XFree86 is the developers are trying to create a closed environment for a somewhat open project, they dont want any changes besides their own. even if the suggested changes are better than anything the developers could ever pull out of their asses, and they do this whilst adding features no one will really ever use, I dont see too many people even using X as a network graphics system, people usually use a vnc to do all their work with, people use X as a local graphics system, so, what's needed is that someone needs to include a graphics system that does what a graphics system should do. run graphical apps, xfree runs just about anything under the sun.
there's some functions I like in xfree, but, a lot of them I see as useless.
and that's what many "outside" developers think, and when they try to make a change, or add a new feature or even try to optimise the code, they get told to shut the hell up and go back to fiddling with their little bits of code.
Basically, the Xfree86 devs are afraid of any change that isnt their own. Afraid the change will break their work or put them out of the spotlight of ego, basically their position on the project.
Fresco has been bogged down in Alpha status for the last 5 years. Some people think that the only reason it is so slow in development is because no-one knows about it.
But the real reason is because Fresco sucks and no one wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole. If you think X is bloated, Fresco is 10 times worse. Its an over-engineered solution heavily reliant on C++, CORBA, GGI, and other crap.
X does suck, but 90% of the basic design of X is excellent. A new windowing system should focus on keeping the basic design, while (a) eliminating legacy crap that no one needs anymore, and (b) adding the stuff we DO need like Drag and Drop, Transparency, AA fonts, 3D, etc.
-- LD
Here is an article about a Xfree86 fork.
That must have been one of the stupidest mailing-list exchanges I've ever read (and I'm on the OpenBSD mailing list, so I've seen a few stupid ones...)
The guy contributes for an extended period of time and asks for CVS access so that his work will be easier and so that the other devs don't have to babysit him, and they basically tell him "piss off" or just ignore him? He had a lot more patience with that crap than I would have. After the first denial (or after two weeks of being ignored, whichever came first) I would have posted an email to the list stating that Cygwin/XFree86 would no longer be collaborating with XFree86 and that would have been the end of it.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Actually, there is nothing wrong with Aryans as a civilization. They DID exist (they didn't come from India but from somewhere north, probably modern day Russia). They were basically the ancestors of Europeans and their descendents (i.e. white people). So, Aryans as people are fine...
The problem is with Nazis and various others who claim that Aryans are superior to others. Also, the whole notion of blue-eyed, blonde whites are mostly a bunch of lies (even Hitler was neither blonde nor blue-eyed). Furthermore, Nazis like to claim certain people are Aryans while others aren't, when in fact they are all the same (eg. French are not Aryans according to Nazis but Germans are; Italians aren't but British are; etc).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
what is it really that is going on here, ...
...
:
you've got the system for total control
so is there anybody out there,
now watch us suffer, cause we can't go
what is it really that is in your head,
what little life that you had just died
i'm gonna be the one that's taking over,
now this is what it's like when worlds collide
are you ready to go - cause i'm ready to go - what you gonna do baby - baby
are you going with me - cause i'm going with you - it's the end of all time
what is it really that motivates you, the need to fly or this fear to stop
i'll go along for the ride but surprise, when we get there is say 9 of 10 drop
now who's the light and who is the devil, you can't decide so i'll be your guide
and one by one they will be hand chosen,
now this is what it's like when worlds collide
are you ready to go - cause i'm ready to go - what you gonna do baby - baby
are you going with me - cause i'm going with you - it's the end of all time
what is it really when they're falling over,
everything that you thought was denied
i'm gonna be the one that's takin over,
now this is what it's like when worlds collide
So really, its what its like when EGO's collide
Thomas Dickey wrote:
On Sun, 26 Oct 2003, Peter "Firefly" Lund wrote:
On Sun, 26 Oct 2003, David Dawes wrote:
When I discussed this with you privately a while ago all I got were
disrespectful and insulting responses. Now there is more of the same.
Err... No.
He was quite reasonable, in my opinion.
He thought he was, but when I get email from people phrased that way,
I don't appreciate it.
Thomas Dickey,
You sent me the biggest insult I have ever received in my life. How can you not realize that? How can you do anything except apologize for your extremely rude message? Please, never, ever, respond to another word that I write until you correct yourself.
Harold
When a project reaches a certain size, some red tape must be expected. Requiring that all patches are associated with a specific change request seem very modest to me.
Bugzilla is, despite its name, not just about bugs. It is just that Change Requestzilla isn't a very catchy name.
"The X color model is not designed around color matching or to-print color."
No, that's not true. X has excellent color management support. It's one of the best things about the design of X. You seem like so many other X critics highly confused about the design of X including the key concepts of an X server and an X application because you continue in your comment by criticising an application better known as xterm, which has absolutely nothing to do with the design of an X server. You are comparing apples and oranges. It is meaningless to compare X applications with X servers. Please read the design documentation for X. People who have not read the design documentation for X, wrongly believe they understand the design just by reading the man pages for X and then wrongly think they can produce valid criticisms of X.
Both the design of X and the implementation in XFree86 provide a very flexible and powerful color model based on color science. Here is not the right place for a tutorial on color science. Please read the excellent book by G.Wyszecki and W.S.Stiles, "Color Science: Concepts and Methods, Quantitative Data and Formulas", 2nd edition, 1982, published by Wiley, New York. Only after you are confident you have understood the theory of color science, please then read the X design document from "Chapter 6: Color Management Functions [in X]"
You are again wrong and confused in your criticism of xterm's color management. xterm like any X application built on Xlib/Xaw/Xt has the usual excellent color management support. You just don't understand how to use it. Read the X documentation for how to specify colors in a color space and how to specify a calibration for a color device. Also, you appear to be hopelessly confused about the differences between "visuals" and "colormaps" in X. Read the X design documents.
This is untrue. Serialisation and context-switching have insignificant effects on the speed of a locally displayed application. Did you really read my post? How do you know serialisation and context-switching are to blame for alleged high latency? Did you measure anything? Did you recompile X with profiling enabled and do a breakdown of the profiling results component by component? Properly written X applications running on a local X display can usually run as fast as MS-Windows applications. Amazingly some 2d graphics operations are faster in X than in some versions of MS-Windows. Some X applications would benefit from optimised graphics drivers which are only available for MS-Windows. XFree86 does not have optimised graphics drivers because the graphics card manufacturers have not provided programming information for their products. However, properly written X applications running on a local X display can usually run as fast as MS-Windows applications. Unfortunately, many toolkit libraries are not written to use X very well.
Scroogle
Experience
SuSE Nurnberg, Germany. (10/99-present)
Senior Software Engineer
Enhanced the XFree86 implementation of the X Window System. Designed and implemented a new
rendering extension. Built a new X driver architecture for embedded devices. Wrote and presented
numerous papers at technical and industry conferences. Worked with other hardware and software
vendors on X related projects, including the Linux port for the Compaq iPAQ.
Managed technical relations between SuSE and Intel. Worked with Intel on joint press relations,
SuSE release schedules and to provide technical information to other developers working on unreleased
Intel hardware. Worked with system-level hardware vendors, board-level hardware vendors
and software providers to diagnose compatibility and portability issues for Itanium systems.
Network Computing Devices MountainView, California (6/92-10/99)
Senior Software Engineer
Designed and implemented software for X terminals using both VxWorks and an in-house OS.
Worked closely with hardware designers at all stages of product development. Designed and implemented
multi-user NT drivers for graphics, audio and floppy access using both existing and newly
designed network protocols. Wrote a Windows-based X server. Worked directly with marketing,
sales and customers in product planning, sales and support. Presented several technical papers.
MIT X Consortium Cambridge, Massachusetts (3/88-5/92)
Senior Member, Research Staff
Senior member of a small group (2-7) of people directed by Robert Scheifler responsible for the
development and standardization of the X Window System. Involved in almost all of the related standards
efforts, both within the X Consortium and with national standards bodies (ANSI, IEEE). In
charge of X server development at MIT for release 3, 4 and 5. Presented many technical papers and
tutorials at an international collection of X-related conferences.
Tektronix Inc. Wilsonville, Oregon (12/83-3/88)
Software Design Engineer III
Was a member of a team designing a line of X terminals and Unix workstations. Worked closely
with hardware engineers to develop the graphics system for this product. Responsible for porting
X11 to this platform, for developing the hardware-specific Unix software, and for negotiating with
the Unix vendor. Worked on an integrated C programming environment for X10, including user
interface software and an incremental C compiler based on PCC.
Recent Publications
Nickle: Language Principles and Pragmatics
Details the design and implementation of a programming language focused on algorithm prototyping.
Presented at Usenix, 2001 with Bart Massey, winning the Best Paper award in the Freenix track.
Design and Implementation of the X Rendering Extension
Discusses the process of designing the X Rendering Extension, describes how and why it works the
way it does. Presented at Usenix 2001.
The X Resize and Rotate Extension - RandR
Presents the X Resize and Rotate extension, provides rationale and future directions. Presented at
Usenix 2001 with Jim Gettys.
Translucent Windows in X
Proposes an extension to X for window-level compositing. Describes a prototype implementation
exploring semantics and uses. Presented at the 2000 Annual Linux Showcase.
Keith Packard
Efficiently Scheduling X Clients
Presents a new scheduling algorithm for use inside the X server. Includes objective measurements of
scheduling performance and discussion on failings in the original scheduling mechanisms. Presented
at Usenix 2000.
A New Rendering Model for X
Outlines directions for design of a new rendering system for X. Documents functionality required by
existing applications and deficiencies in the original rendering architecture. Presented at Usenix
2000.
XFree86 standards
X Resize and Rotate Extension - RandR An X extension allowing changes to the screen size, rotation and
number of colors. With Jim Gettys.
X Rendering Extension A complet
While Harold Hunt's intent and concerns were valid, he was unable to convey his concerns in a respectable manner. OTOH, David Dawes didn't seem very respectable, either.
This sort of event was a petty argument, and should be acknowleged as nothing more... I can't believe this was slashdotted...
--Tim
>>So, Guys like Keith Packard get kicked out, while useless deadbeats like David Wexelblat are members of the core-team. What's wrong with this picture?
is it David Wexelblat?
-pyrrho
There's no need for racial jealousy