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Fedora Prepares For Xorg Instead of XFree86

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sea-change-or-teapot-tempest dept.

ZuperDee writes "I noticed in the development branch of Fedora today that they appear to be in the process of creating new xorg RPMs, and from the looks of the changelogs in those RPMs, it looks like their ultimate plan is to switch from XFree86 to the XOrg Foundation's implementation of X11. Anyone else here think this could signal the beginning of a new trend in Linux distributions, and that XOrg could end up becoming the new de-facto X11 implementation?" (See this earlier story,too.)

5 of 491 comments (clear)

  1. De Facto Standards by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's just become another standard - not the de facto one. De facto implies that it is, in fact, the standard, as opposed to, say, de jure, which is a legal standard (cf. "laws more honoured in the breach").

    Fedora switching just means we have more choice. This is a good thing, just like KDE vs. Gnome is a good thing.

    Most people will settle for whatever comes with their distro, so maybe this will give an impetus for the X group to clean up the licensing issue :-)

  2. If it's compatible, they will use it ... by molarmass192 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    XOrg could end up becoming the new de-facto X11 implementation

    It's a little early to make that kind of prediction. However, the key is compatibility. If XORG maintains full compatibility such that it's still X11 and we can just a recompile and go on our merry way, then anything is possible. Personally, I don't think people care which code base their X server uses so long as it's an X11 server. Reality is that the XF86 group will wake up an smell the coffee sooner rather than later, they're expendable, they just don't know it yet.

    --

    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  3. Re:drivers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think this thread proves that freedesktop.org need to hire a marketing director.

  4. Would NVidia follow RedHat or XFree86. by ron_ivi · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If RedHat switched, I think a better question is will NVidia keep supporting the XFree86 version?

    I think they'll follow whoever the biggest commercial Linux distros, and today that means RedHat and Novell/SuSE.

    Why support XFree86 if the big distros are dropping it?

  5. A good explanation by eean · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I good explanation for it that I read at osnews.com was that the XFree86 and the Distros (commercial and community alike) started to increasingly have differences in priorities and culture. The license change was a like message from XFree86 to the distros that they didn't care one way or another for their support. The distros response is logical. Additionally while most of the distros have pleny of software incompatible with the GPL, it is not ideal to have something as central to an operating system as the X server to be GPL-incompatible.