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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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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"