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Fedora Prepares For Xorg Instead of XFree86
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.)
I don't know enough about Xorg to know if this is good or not.
Is the driver support there? Will NVidia's and ATI's binary drivers work with the Xorg server? It could be a real problem if FC2 won't be able to do accelerated 3d under NVidia or ATI cards.
Could somone go over the diffrences between X11 and Xorg? Is it just a license issue, or are there other differences?
Thank you.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
That's one of the reasons I like the open-source market. There is no de facto, its pragmatic.
At least, in theory.
No, I doubt it too. What WILL it take to wake them up?
X is not just a Linux thing. A major free version of X should be designed to work on BSD as well. BSD users do not want to have to put their codebase closer to the GPL than it already is.
Plus, I like the idea of standardizing on MAS. In some ways inferior to Jack, but anything that gets a lower-latency sound daemon to be a standard i'm for.
This is a good thing, just like KDE vs. Gnome is a good thing.
This rant may be slightly off topic, but I can't beleive this gets said anymore.
There is exactly one thing holding Linux back from mainstream corporate and personal use: the lack of any unified and consistent message.
Now, when I first discovered Linux and open source I thought the diversity was great. But, as time has passed, I've given up this opinion and think proper analysis shows its flaws.
First, lets take some sucessful open source projects: Linux (kernel) and Apache. If we had two competing Linux implementations, similar to the BSD world, you would see a lot less progress and corporate backing than you do now. Apache sees its high penetration rates because it is seen as the "one true" open source web server, in addition to the fact that it is technically superior. Yes, there are other web servers, but they target niche markets.
Now, why is Windows (or to a lesser extent Mac OS X) sucessful? Because people can point at it and refer to its characteristics. Developers can write an app and be reasonably confident as to how it will run, what environment it will run in, etc.
You cannot say that as long as this whole KDE vs. GNOME thing is raging on. For one thing, I usually need both installed if I want to be able to run any application without too many problems (and people complain about Windows bloat, two desktops is my definition of bloat). In addition, the Linux development I do rarely has any graphical front end, because I'm at a loss of what front end to support (and no I don't want to support two).
The fact becomes more important when a corporation is paying me to do the work. Personal things are one thing, corporate development is another. This is a real double edged sword, as it means we will see less development of commercial applications, and in the case that we do, the interface is not going to be consistent or friendly. As soon as corporations realise the support nightmares this generates, they are likely to cease development all together.
So, to conclude this meandering ramble, I must say to everyone that if you really want to see Linux take off on the desktop, put petty squabbles aside and focus on creating a consistent and standard desktop experience.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
I'm waiting for Y-Windows, personally. They've been making great strides on their core widget set. They plan an initial X compatibility layer, but other than that it's a completely rewrite abandoning X all together.
I wouldn't dare to imagine the number of times that MS has replaced or retrofitted (read: ugly hacks) technologies found in previous versions of Windows.
What about X? That's 20+ years, and now extensions are beginning to conflict with each other. For instance, Xinerama broke XVideo. Solution? XVideo only works on the primary display. Look at the complexity of ICCCM, or the fact that Xine simulates a shift key press every 30 seconds to disable the screensaver since it gave up trying to figure out the window manager it's running under. Yes, Virgina, sometimes endless choice is bad.
These examples, of course, were taken from the Y-Windows paper describing all the reasons to get rid of X and replace it with Y (which is also network transparent). I fully expect Y to be the superior replacement to X. They're at 0.2 now and are targetting a 1.0 release in a year.
So how many developers are going to continue working on the newly licensed XFree86 project vs jumping to this new forked version?
What distros will continue to use XFree86? Any?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
"There is exactly one thing holding Linux back from mainstream corporate and personal use: the lack of any unified and consistent message."
... um... more Linuxish."
And thus it should stay. No, really.
Linux -- aw hell, just for the ability to distinguish between the kernel and the OS in this post, let me throw my lot in with RMS and say, "GNU/Linux" -- is not a platform, it's a concept. The concept is "you take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and add it to the Linux kernel and it looks a whole lot like UNIX, but
That's all GNU/Linux is. Now let me ask you a follow-up question: What is Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Aha! You know that, don't you? You can point at a THING and say "I know what this is, and what its message is." Red Hat Enterprise Linux should have a message. GNU/Linux should not. Get the difference?
It's good, therefore, that GNU/Linux is targetted by both Gnome and KDE (as well as other desktops of varying quality, scope and goals). It's good because the operating systems that start with GNU/Linux (e.g. FC1, RHEL, SuSE, Debian, etc.) can take from those what they please, and leave what they do not. Red Hat, for the most part, stresses Gnome as the desktop where, for example, Mandrake does not.
This is what defines a distribution: what tools it includes, what it emphasises and what it contributes to. You may think Debian is too generic and will never gain mainstream adoption. That's cool, because that's not Debian's goal. Debian's goal is to be a haven for free software. It does this admirably. And you can say that about every distribution, only it's a different set of priorities which are and which are not met by each.
"I must say to everyone that if you really want to see Linux take off on the desktop"
No one wants to see GNU/Linux on the desktop any more than Microsoft wants to see Spyglass Mosaic on the desktop. That just happens to be the software that IE started out life as, but it's not MS' goal to put Spyglass on the desktop. It's not Fedora's goal to put GNU/Linux on the desktop, just Fedora.
PS: Posted from a Linux desktop in a company staffed almost entirely by people who use nothing else. We're fine with the state of affairs today, thanks. Oh, and no the only thing holding back Linux on the desktop is distribution and supply channels which are locked in by MS and will take a decade or more to unlock.
As if Fedora has controlling market share to sway any level of adoption preference by the entire community.
Most projects haven't even begun to support XF86 4.4 and since X.org is is based on a release of XF86 4.4 prior to the license change, it is certainly going to be almost as easy to move from XF86 4.3 to X.org as it would be to move to XF86 4.4...
To be honest, the only difference between XF86 4.4 and X.org (that I can tell) at this time is the new XF86 license...
So, as to how all of this will pan out...it will be left to the individual distros and developers. If they see promise and innovation in the X.org project, they will go with it, and on they other hand, the new license shouldn't cause a problem for any distro that already includes Apache...because the change to the XF86 license is pretty much the same thing as the Apache license requires.
Hmm...I've used CVS for years and years and have NEVER had problems like that. Heck, I used RCS before that. The only time I've ever seen people have problems is when they screwed it up themselves.
Chances are, you should look in the mirror, shoot your self, and shutup, 'cause, it's very doubtful you have the fogiest idea of what you're talking about. In other words, look no further than your self if you insist on faulting something.
CVS works as advertised. Sure, it's not the best in the world, but it works and it works well for what it is. In fact, it works exactly as it's supposed to, bug free even, for years.
Grow up and learn to take a bullet when you screw up. Stop blaming it on everything else.
You must be looking for GNUstep then.
It doesn't have many developers but it's just as well since although hoards of developers have made not one but two half-assed clones of Windows the small number of developers working on GNUstep are nearly finished implementing OpenStep true to specifications.
What's exciting about GNUstep is that Cocoa is also an implementation of OpenStep with some additions. With a little spit and polish GNUstep running on Linux would make a great clone of OS X.
However, OS X is not all about the GUI. OS X also has some kernel facilities and user tools to go with it which make the OS more suitable for desktop use. For one thing, Apple has a devfs so devices show up in a sane manner and there are no extraneous entries. There is also the automounter and associated tools (comamnd line and GUI) to go with it.
Probably the most important thing about OS X that should be brought to Linux is the BSD style of an administrators group. On OS X you can have multiple admin level accounts which can sudo things as root. The root account doesn't even have a password and is entirely disabled. This makes it easier for joe user. Joe can run as an "administrator" which is actualy a fairly unpriviledged account which can gain access only if Joe enters his own password. That makes one less password for Joe to remember and prevents Joe from just giving up and running as root all the time.
Its worth remembering that people like NVidia don't just sit around on proprietary drivers, but in the 2D space are active contributors to XFree86. They have their finger pretyt much on the ball, they are not as clueless as some people seem to think.
I wish they and ATI would do open source 3D but thats not going to happen for the later cards until people like Intel simply commoditze them and turn them into the next version of the SGI graphics division or until software gets so fast that we don't care about 3d accelerators any more 8)
Well, I think Cairo is meant to be an SVG-based answer to DisplayPDF. Future versions of GTK+ are going to (be able to?) use it as a backend, so we will get some benefit from there. I imagine KDE will join the party too, if they haven't already. Additionally, some more MacOSXy goodness comes in the form of freedesktop.org's kdrive-based X-Server (not to be confused with what this article is about), which will provide us with the ability to transparent and such.
I'm pretty sure that the two together gives us the technology to make things like Expos'e possible.
So in short: It's happening, but it's not going to be read tomorrow.
Look out!
[A] 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.
Yup, there is only one development team that is more of a pain in the ass than XFree86. But in mplayer's case they actually have kept up with the evolving needs of their users and developers. XFree86 seems to have been stuck in a timewarp for a few years now. That's not to belittle the past accomplishements, but standing still is not an option. The licensing change is just something concrete to point to when recruiting developers for your fork. I for one have been waiting for a good fork for a few years... um, now I gotta get back to coding... and then deciding which fork to patch...
I felt the same way about David Dawes: he seemed arrogant, obstinate and difficult to carry a meaninfgul debate with. He even admitted that he doesn't even run X anymore: he uses Windows. Therefore it seems reasonable to suggest that his opinion on X is of less significance now than it was a few years ago.
But before jumping all over DD, have a quick look at the CVS commits for XFree86 over the years. He certainly has contributed a lot to the free X Server we have been using for years. Despite his abrasiveness I don't think it's fair for all his hard work to be disregarded.
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
X11 was X11 right from the start as far as I remember. The 11 stands for one megapixel (as in a display 1000x1000) and one MIP (million instructions per second). At the time X11 was conceived this theoretical platform spec was thought to be about 5-10 in the future (ie mid 1980s) but actually such a machine was available in only 2 yrs.
X11 is a great example of designing for a theortical platform in the future so you're not tied to hardware constraints which results in sw with good longevity as it is to some extent, future proof (hence X11 last 20yrs beyond it's original design). Games designers have to do this all the time - MS Windows didn't do this in the past hence had to be rewritten from the ground up several times while X11 is (design wise) largely unchanged. MS Windows advantage is better performance generally (because it's is designed each time with the hardware more in mind) but much shorter life between rewrites.
This has also been a drawback of X11 requiring to take advantage of hw technology especially in the last 5-8 years - starting with SGIs GLX extensions and many more since then - some done nicely and some not.
pithy comment
The cross-platform development success stories, like GNUMail.app, are inspiring and the latest CVS of GORM (Interface Builder clone) is getting awfully close to how IB works in OS X. But we probably aren't going to see a real imitation of the OS X window server. The project was threatened by Apple attack-lawyers a few years ago and people are (understandably) nervous about ripping off Apple look and feel. There is a patch to offer a (NeXT-ish looking) horizontal menu like Apple has always used.
That X.org would do something like 3-D desktop or Microsoft Bob clone :) Seriously though, I recently switched to Fedora Core 1 from Mandrake 9.2 ( previously I switched from Redhat 7.2 to Mandrake 9.0 and stayed with Mandrake until the switch mentioned above ). Anyhow, despite the opinion the FC is just a free beta testing bed for Red Had AS, I do find it does everything I need it to do, except games, but I have a Windows XP box for that :).
If they switch the X11 framework out, I will go support them all the way, one of the main reasons I decided to go Open Source for my main OS ( Windows is on one box of 5 ) is freedom of choice, and the ability to change even the video system out is a good example that freedom.
I can't afford a sig!
According to this, four distros are continuing to use XFree86 despite the license change. They are Ark Linux, OpenNA Linux, Plamo Linux, and NetBSD. Does anyone know of any others or is everyone else switching?