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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?"
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?
If I had a dollar for every time I heard that X was going away, I'd be a very wealthy man.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
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? ;-)
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.)
Actually it was less to do with "Bloating it" and more to do with fixing bugs.
But then I read it.
CJC
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
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;
I wonder... do people say "X is going away" because they think it is, or becasue they hope it is?
#define DRM chmod 000
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.
Let's just say they make *BSD look alive.
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
"Kentucky Fried... Grapes? :)"
Kathmandu Fried Greens.
KFG
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.
Wow. It's obvious that you've been following this really closely. Bloat like updated drivers, bugfixes, and other fetures that everyone else has certainly do not belong in XFree86. I hope the XFree86 developers stick by their guns and refuse evil bloatware like back-buffers, vector graphics, and portability.
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
...because XFree86 isn't bloated at all, no, of course not ;)
disclaimer: this is not a troll post! i'm running Xfree86 right now!!
But he never said X was going away ;)
He said one implementation, XFree86, may be going away. Unmentioned was that it may be destined to be superceded by a fork, such as Keith Packard's, or one of the others.
The reason the push developers away is that many of these guys are trying to bloat xfree to hell
Have any proof to back that statement up?
Harold was requesting CVS commit access only for bugs that pertained to Cygwin only -- they had no impact on other platforms. Hell, if properly ifdef'd they wouldn't even compile into the binaries on other platforms. That doesn't mean they're not bugs though, and it doesn't mean they shouldn't be fixed in the main tree.
We're not talking about features here. And there's a long line of people that have tried to get XFree86 to fix bugs -- either in the core or in drivers -- that have not only been denied commit access but also had their fixes ignored, their questions ignored, and been passively shoved aside when trying to get things fixed. The number of actually active developers (i.e. - number of people with commit access and are actually spending time on the project) on XFree86 is absurdly low for the size of the project.
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
Bloating X is a problem that is handled by the X Consortium, which is very clear about what should be, and what should not be in a X server.
Problems with X Free are the following : they do not care about quite a lot of feature in X at all (such as a 32 bits mode allowing transparencies, and no, this is not a bloat). They refuse to accept pretty good set of drivers for no apparent reason (DRI anyone). And they often radically change the way they implement this or that without telling anyone who is not a close friend. Leading to quite a lot of fun if you are in a low level project(such as LibXCB for example, but DRI people are having fun too).
Kha
Actually, from what I see, hardware device support in Linux has been catching up. True, it still lags behind, but I don't see that "always" being the case. Lots of improvement should come with the 2.6 kernel, and with MS's next OS not coming out for 2-3 years, Linux device drivers should be able to catch up.
As far as applications go, well, as long as developers focus on MS compatibility, the apps will always lag behind for the simple reason that compatability for new Office "features" can't be added until they've been released by MS. The only way around that issue is for developers to concentrate on re-thinking the functionality of desktop apps and implementing their own features to compete with MS.
That may not be practical yet, because of the large installed base that needs that MS compatibility to migrate to Linux and to communicate the "WinWorld". But I do think hardware support will be just as up to date and cutting edge as Windows within a couple years. It's almost there now, and what is supported is usually more stable once it's configured correctly.
X.org on the legal side.
Xouvert on the coding side.
Freedesktop.org on the idealogy side.
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.
XFree86 is the implementation of X commonly used for Linux, BSD... It was the obvious choice for cygwin (which is after all named after cygnus a consulting arm of RedHat and the commmercial version is owned by RedHat). No one is losing much of anything. What's happening is that the free software X developer community and the XFree86 developer community are more and more becoming distinct groups.
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."
my dual monitor is limping along 800x600
I'm reluctant to even ask, but what kind of video card do you have? One of the problems with Debian's stable release is that it has an old version of X on it. The server code is lacking a lot of driver updates that appeared recently.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I haven't really been using it lately, but there was a time when I was using Cygwin/XFree86 for remote X. It's really pretty useful, and appears to be the only free X server for Windows.
#!/
"So, please take this as kindly as possible when I say: Go fuck yourself."
If you actually followed X or even the discussion linked to for 5 minutes you'd realized that it is NOT the problem at all.
The problem as cited through the list is that the core developers do not allow external commits by major commiters like the entire Xwin cygwin port.
These people have to wait weeks for any changes to possibly show up in the CVS because the core developers don't have time for it.
The core dev's answer: Shut up and stop complaining we are doing the best we can.
This has nothing to do with bloat and everything to do with control and workload.
Bye!
Matrox G400 dual head. Worked fine on XFree86 4.1. Problems started when I went to 4.2.1. It won't load DRI on the 2nd monitor. The resolution was great on single monitor. I can send you the config offline if you want to peek.
This is a quote from a posting online about X that sums up a lot...
o ntpath
e e86-compat-modules (from disk2)
I just remembered Harry Larry's own description of installing X, which he
recorded on his Wiki site. Mergingthe packages he mentions to mine, this
becomes the list of rpms needed to install X:
perl
freetype
XFree86-libs
XFree86-xfs
chkf
XFree86-75dpi-fonts
Xaw3d
Mesa
As I stated before, it would be nice to remove perl, but it's used in the
source code for XFree86-4.1.0, & ends up getting added with the network
package.
Chkfontpath is a small & odd package. According to RH's documentation, it
does about the same thing the kpathsea libraries do (which help manage
font files), & end up being installed anyway if the user works with LaTeX,
postscript, or dvi files. Since it's only half a MB, we can ignore it.
Xaw3d, freetype & Mesa are another cases entirely. Since we're agreed on
Mesa, let me focus on the first two. Yes, Xaw3d & freetype improve the
look of any GUI, but RH requires freetype to be installed, & doesn't
complain if we forget XFree86-*-fonts; Xaw3d is also required, even though
one could make do with the default Athena look -- or do as I do, & substitute
the NeXtaw toolkit. (Which is being maintained.)
After this point, this is what Xconfigurator requires:
gtk+
libjpeg
libpng
libtiff
gdk-pixbuf
XFr
XFree86-SVGA (from disk2)
A lot of packages for a progam most users will only see two or three times,
neh?
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
So Harold is a bit upset with you, but there's no need to draw additional attention, is there?
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
how many XFree86 users are using Cygwin port?
Uh... I can see 1 FreeBSD box, 1 Linux box and 1 Windows box that runs Cygwin / XFree86 from where I'm sitting. There are probably more users than you think.
Anyway, since when did ignoring support for a platform become the cool thing to do? Software projects are either expanding and growing - or they're shrinking and on their way out.
Great one there XFree86 - start ignoring contributers trying to commit bug fixes to the codebase. It gives me great incentive to try and fix bugs myself. Morons. The sooner XFree is dead, buried and replaced the better.
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.
However, all of them (except one, depending on your graphics hardware) are packages that will be used for the rest of the installation's lifetime.
The original poster seems to be laboring under the misconception that packages and libraries don't get reused.
DNA just wants to be free...
well, if you have to use windows, and want to use actually usefull tools.. then you use xfree86/cygwin. It runs on the root window you know. user138
I wonder... do people say "X is going away" because they think it is, or becasue they hope it is?
I'd wager my bet on that in general people don't have a slightest clue..
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
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.
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
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.
You need to be specific. Is this...
end of the (beginning of the end)
or
(end of the beginning) of the end
???
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
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.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
Has keith packard actually done anything toward his project yet? All I found was his portal at xwin.org and something about a government or ruling the world or something like that :)
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.
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.
The other day, for the first time that I can recall, I bought a new piece of hardware that prominently advertised its Linux compatibility on the box, along with Windows and Mac support: a Samsung ML-1710 laser printer. It even had an automatic driver setup disk for Linux*, which worked very well, though it insisted on replacing the link to lpr with its own version. (The original was still there and still worked; I changed the link back to point to it.) In my case, I first had to recompile the kernel to add USB printer support, but that's only because I'm running a custom kernel -- if I'd been using the one that came with my distro, it would've had the drivers built as modules already. Anyway, I was very impressed with all this.
But back when I first bought my current system (in 2000), I chose all the pieces from the Linux Hardware Compatibility list. When I got it, I popped in a Mandrake CD, and it set everything up automatically. Checking the HCL first is the only sensible way to go if you're planning to run anything other than Windows.
* Only one actual CD came with the printer, presumably covering all three supported systems; but when I stuck it in, it cleverly came up with only the Linux files showing. I haven't tried it from Windows yet, nor tried to access the Windows files from Linux.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Bloat! There is a x86 emulator in the XFree86 source. The source is in .../xc/extras/x86emu.
Being the fool that I am - I told Keith Packard that my new fast box would build the xfree86 xserver in 25 min. He then showed me that his old 300Mhz laptop could build his version of the xserver in 5 min. He said it was because he didn't have a lot of bloat - no x86 emulator or unicode conversion. His xserver is also a lot smaller.
Yeah, guys like Keith Packard were just bloating Xfree!
In fact, it seems that KP was just about the only guy who was passionate about Xfree and REALLY worked on it. I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry when I saw KP being flamed by David Wexelblat (one of the founder of Xfree) in Xfree mailinglist. It was sad/funny because while Wexelblat was busy flaming KP, he also mentioned that he does not even use Xfree there days, let alone hack it! He uses Windows these days!
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?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
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.
Don't forget, even old versions of Word can't read documents made by later ones. Not because they're full of snazzy new features, but because Microsoft intentionally breaks compatibility, trying both to force everyone to upgrade, and to keep down competitors (like Open Office).
Not if you buy from the supported list. If you don't, you have only yourself to blame. Yeah, Windows "just works", but only because the hardware manufacturers make it so, and don't bother to do so for Linux -- because of their respective market shares. (Catch-22.) But as I've seen from my recent printer purchase, that seems to be changing.
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http://freedesktop.org/Software/xserver
---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
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
Or a linux distro like Red Hat.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
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.
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.
"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.
I can send you the config offline if you want to peek.
I doubt I can add anything. I've become intimately familiar with the problems with nVidia's driver recently. Supposedly, 4.3.0 has support for the newer nVidia cards without nVidia's driver. I need to get it loaded to be sure.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
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.
Another reason might be that these guys are paranoid about WHO commits patches, not because it screws a build up, but because they may attempt to submit code that might cause a lawsuit and/or proprietary source to get in the tree. More "SCO like" antics.
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"
The rootless and multiwindow modes have gotten quite good; you may want to check out a devel build.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
I would. I do. Both at home and at work. Cygwin's X server makes a great remote terminal for a Linux machine. Cygwin X even has clipboard support (though it's a little goofy) -- I can copy text from an X app being run on a remote Linux machine and displayed locally, and paste that text into a Windows app running locally. And, vice-versa. Cygwin's X server even does a good job displaying all of KDE in windowless mode. One minute my monitor will look just like it's hooked directly to the Linux machine running KDE -- then I press the Windows key and my Windows taskbar appears. From there I can click the "show desktop" icon and all of a sudden the Cygwin X display is shuffled to the back and I'm only looking at my local Windows stuff. Of course you can have mixed X and Windows windows overlapping as well. It's really pretty cool.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
ow many XFree86 users are using Cygwin port? 1 percent?
Well, in my shop, all of the sysadmins and quite a few of the developers are using it. About 20 people that I know of, and there's probably quite a few that I don't know about. Especially when we found the version of Exceed that our company purchased for Win2K wouldn't run on XP.
While it still has a few rough edges, it's still a damned useful tool. I sure hope it this doesn't jepordize the project. I was looking forward to the efforts to the completion of the efforts to get KDE and Gnome running on it.
is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?
And in other news, BSD is dead.
"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
Fresco can be used over the network, as it is built on CORBA.
DNA just wants to be free...
Actually, the issue at hand is not whether the Cygwin port is important or not, but the royal jerkiness of the XFree86 core developers.
I did read the thread and still cannot believe what a**holes people like David Dawes and Thomas Dickey truly are. Inflated egos and the infatuated attitude of "mine is bigger than yours" are totally unwarranted when looking at what the original poster really asked.
If this is the attitude of the core developers, then really XFree86 is in trouble in the long run.
Serban
I use it every day. I use it for remote X from my linux box upstairs. It's extremely useful, and more importantly free (student, yay). It's really the only option.
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
(You Have Been Teased)
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
So this IS the end then.
that's one project I'd never try to contribute to.
Egomania extravaganza!!!
Meep.
I use cygwin both at work and at home. At work, I have to use Windows (2000 workstation). cygwin makes it bearable.
BTW, when Windows 2000 boots, it says "Based on Windows NT Technology". Isn't that a warning mandated by the government, similar to the warning on cigarette packs?
This is the Constitution.This is the Constitution under the Bush administration. Any questions?
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).
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.
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
The developers are using it at my company currently and I'm looking at deploying it in the texturing department coming up. The problem is, we have a bunch of artists bound to photoshop that have to run rendering software on a linux cluster. The easiest way I can see to do this is through cygwin.
Disney recently addressed this problem by paying Crossover to get photoshop running smoothly under linux. We're going the other way and will probably use cygwin to glue the two parts together.
(This could change however, because there may be other departments that just move to linux because they are not bound to photoshop)
Life would be great if Adobe would simply (ha!) release a native linux port of Photoshop.
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.
Seriously, if someone on a project of mine would show an attitude like this asshole he would be off the team before the first reply to his insult drops in.
Once upon a time I was developing stuff for the Diamond Stealth S220 (rendition verte 2200 chipset) for BeOS. A developer found my random postings about my driver and contacted me asking to develop for XFree86. I sent a response to the developers and never heard a thing back from them. I think this is the real reason why X still sucks after years of development. After reading Harry's post, I agree with his actions..
-dk
"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
Especially when we found the version of Exceed that our company purchased for Win2K wouldn't run on XP.
Eeek! Yet another reason for me to never, ever, 'upgrade' to XP.
A Good Intro to NetBS
The main reason I bought this printer is that it was only $100 after rebate. (That was at Office Depot, but the same deal is at Best Buy this week.) It has limitations: It's USB-only (no parallel port) and GDI-only. (Samsung has another model, the ML-1750, which is very similar but includes a parallel port and PCL6; but it doesn't seem to have the rebate.) Normally I'd shy away from such a unit, but the promise of Linux compatibility on the box helped persuade me. And it's turned out well so far, being by far the fastest printer I've ever had.
I run Mandrake on a desktop system where suspend mode seems largely useless -- it leaves a loud fan running -- so I can't comment much on that. ISTR that not everything came back up properly when I tried it, but that was a long time ago (long before the current distro and kernel).
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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
I am by no means an avid reader of this list, but I did read the list pertaining to the subject at hand. From what I can see of this project, it is an open source project in name only. This project is more of a Cathedral than a Bazaar--only this Cathedral allows people to see the building structure and workings.
Harold, or his successor (he wants to spend more time with family), should take the Cygwin XFree86 tree elsewhere. He has committed 3 years, the last two years I guess he's been the leader of the Cygwin branch, of his own time to developing and fixing the Cygwin branch, and he can't even get CVS commit access to the Cygwin branch! The only rude people in the list were the main developers with commit privilages.
I say that alll the developers who have been scorned by these wannabe open source primadonas should get together and fork the XFree86 project and they should make the project a true open source project.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
>>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