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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.
Is this the same thing as Xouvert, or something new?
Can someone give a ten second summary of the differences in the goals and developers of XFree86, Xouvert and Xorg?
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 :-)
I think the XOrg codebase is pretty much the last pre-license-change (4.4rc2) release, plus work done by the folks recently run out of XFree86 by Dawes.
While I don't think the X world will turn on its ear just because Fedora may start using Xorg, I think the fact that one or more distributions are currently/going-to try it out is A Good Thing(tm).
Both NVidia and ATI keep their driver sources and hardware-level programming information closely guarded secrets. This means unless NVidia and ATI decide to support the new X server, we're gonna be stuck with lousy 2-d drivers, maybe with accelerated blitting if the mfgrs decide to throw us a few crumbs.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
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.
Of course, Gosling was never an X architect. Those were Scheifler, Gettys and Newman. Gosling was the architect of NeWS, a competing windowing system that ultimately lost out to X. Yes, IHBT. Thank you and good night.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Anyone else think that these personal comments at the end of news posts are irrelevant and should be marked -1 Redundant?
Of course this marks the start of a new trend, Red Hat just beat Mandrake to it. After the announcement last month about XFree86's license change and the very negative response for everyone, this was expected. It's only surprising because it happened so quick
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
It's X, X is for the most part X whichever X you run. If feature y on server z of X doesn't make it the standard, what make anyone think license clause w for server v will?
Having two equally used Xes would be better I'd think, after all they follow the same X standard.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
That's what the XRender and Xft are for! They are full replacements for the old rendering model and font subsystem.
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
C'mon now...
Besides, if you never read the articles, and just look at the exceprts, you'd never know about the asparagus. What asparagus, I hear you ask? My point exactly.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
There are two Xservers at freedesktop.org, the one this FAQ goes to is not the one implemented in Fedora core. The one in Fedora core is a fork of XFree. The one this FAQ is for is a newer and interesting one albeit not ready for prime time yet.
Who modded up this as "Insightful"? It's nothing more than clueless bashing.
X11 is a standard, not an implementation! Just like HTML is a standard!
That distro A uses XFree86 and distro B uses XOrg means absolutely nothing to end users. Everything's still interoperable because X11 is a standard. Everything will still Just Work(tm) and the end user won't even notice something has changed.
That's why we have the X11 protocol -- so there can be multiple implementations that remain compatible. The end user will never be aware of the switch, assuming the previous and current X server correctly implements the protocol.
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. Only in there case, its all closed so you aren't aware of it. In all liklihood, the MS situation is worse, since it leads to bloat and security risks.
Just because open source development airs its dirty laundry in the wind does not mean it yeilds worse software than closed source development. Quite the contrary, I think if you researched your position you would find better software.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
You state that the end user won't even notice AFTER USING HTML as an example?
Let's go back a bit and look at the history of browsers implenting the HTML standards differently. Differing implementations can make a tremendous difference to end users and also (especially) to developers.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
OK ... for the benefit of those of us who don't hack X in our spare time: is the Xorg implementation the same as the "freedesktop.org" implementation (at http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/xserver) or are they separate and distinct? (Or maybe just separate?)
Either way, how about brainstorming-up a better project name? I personally like "Product X" but that may already be taken.
N
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
Alright, there's been a shitload of ignorant posts here.
First off, this new server is a snapshot of XFree86 just prior to the licence change. Basically a fork.
Second, it basically has nothing to do with X.org - I don't know why they call it that, most likely due to the licence.
Third, X11 is the protocol that X servers speak nowadays. X version 11 release 6.6 to be more precise.
Fourth, nvidia and ati drivers will work.
I hope this clears it up somewhat.
I guess that is why MS and others are still replicating one of X' most important features, being usable over a network to provide a remote desktop. Don't get me wrong, it is definitely time to kick out some outdated stuff or at least bring in replacement for many of the things X does when used locally, but generally X is very usefull and there is no reason to throw that away.
What WILL it take to wake them up?
Furthermore, should we care any more? With XOrg, xserver and xouvert all at different and useful stages of maturity, and apparently enough developers now working on each to guarantee that they won't stagnate too soon, XF86 is looking increasingly irrelevant.
Umm ok
First its based on XFree86 4.4 just before the change, with the non-contaminated further changes added and other stuff not in XFree 4.4
Secondly it has a _lot_ to do with X.org. The wheel has turned full cicle from when years back OpenGroup/X.org tried to change the license and XFree basically told them to go away to today where X.org is doing the same thing the other way around and keeping it free. X.orgi is part of this now.
NVidia and ATI drivers may work. The Nvidia ones at least are reported ot do so, although they have chronic problems working with the preferred kernel build settings like 4K stacks.
Funny, but it seems that really don't need bad reviews, freezes, or crashes to end the life of your software project. All you need it a sucky license.
As I understand it, Xfree changed their license to make sure more credit is given to its developers. But who gives a crap when no one will use because of the license itself.
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
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.
Ther is at least an option in the X marketplace, uptill now (or whenever) there was no option to Xfree86 for all unix based distro's.Now with the xfree86 messing up the license theres some hope for a Mandrake and his buddies, don't you think? ;-)
Lord of the Binges.
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 are two X servers at freedesktop.org now, both with stupid and confusing names but hey :)
1) Xserver - this is the new experimental one that does pretty drop shadows and stuff. Not really mainstream yet. This is the fork of kdrive.
2) Xorg - this is the fork of XFree before the licensing change. It's not experimental and is usable just like XFree is.
Hope that helps
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
(yes, I know that X is hardly Linux-specific...)
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
As if Fedora has controlling market share to sway any level of adoption preference by the entire community.
No, FC2 is already in beta, so they are at the stage of getting rid of bugs.
New features will be saved for FC3.
...these aren't my real teeth.
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?
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.
If it doesn't have accelerated support for video card X (and forking the tree will have that effect as development resources get divided), I don't care how open it is.
Does is matter how far you can open the hood of the car? I'd rather be able to open it three quarters of the way open to see a nice eight cylinder 450 than to be able to open it compeletely and see the hamster and his wheel.
Agile Artisans
For the user, OSX it is a dream. But for developers, it's a wet dream. Creating slick interfaces is simple, the PDF-inspired graphical model is a breath of fresh air, and the interfaces inherit impressive functionality automatically. Because its code-development process leverages effort powerfully, perhaps more so than for the comparable GNOME/KDE tools, I think OSX offers good potential for the open-source movement, given well-fashioned attitudes and licenses.
I make these remarks with some trepidation, since I think the fragmentation across GNOME and KDE dilutes developer momentum. Also, I make these remarks to evoke discussion by those more technically-aware than myself.
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.
...the folly of relying on binary-only drivers.
Please refrain from using overly simplistic arguments to support your cause. In my opinion, it wasn't JUST the license change that lead to this seemingly spiralling downfall, but the head developers of XFree86 itself (David Dawes, to be specific).
/.) and the man strikes me as positively arrogant, with no respect for the opinions of others (unless he was actually majorly outnumbered, and sometimes not even then). He has repeatedly ignored input from other people including his own co-developers and loves to portray himself as the righteous leader. His posts are nothing short of antagonistic and he has very selective memory.
I've read and re-read various threads on the XFree86 mailing list (please look it up in archives and past posts on
Would that be sufficient reason for a project to fail? In this case, I would say so. He insists on having and keeping all control of the project to himself. If he had good sense, that wouldn't be a problem, but he's already shown that all he's interested in is recognition and retaining control over the project (rather than the project's welfare).
Past posts have shown that several suggestions and patches had been ignored which led to the project's stagnation. You may argue that the project is successful and works even now, but the point is it could have been so much better under a different type of leadership.
The recent license change is but one manifestation of how callous the head developers are.
On other distribututions, rpm (yes, rpm) works fine. it doesn't strip binaries it shouldn't touch (arm for instance in an x86 package), it doesn't add depenedencies it doesn't need, it basically just works as advertised.
Have you used the 'AutoReqProv: no' line in RPM? Works fine for me in preventing spurious dependancies.
there is no such thing as a minimal redhat9 installation. all we wanted was to build packages for redhat9, 2gig was as small as I could get the build.
Have we not heard of "Select individual packages?" I routinely build RH9 and FC1 boxes in the 800-900MB range. Could probably do with less if I really wanted to.
There are also the configs, the different command usages, etc. etc.
When you're using any package management system there are bound to be configs that are placed in automatically. Aside from RH basically not using
Redhat: new users and coporate users needing a good backup plan.
etc...
Blah blah blah. It's certainly as possible to tune a RH system for low-fussness, or for high performance (i386 packages don't make that much of a difference!) just as it is to mis-configure any of the other distros. Use what works for you.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
"Steve Jobs said two years ago that X was braindead and would be gone within two years. He was half right." - Dennis Ritche.
I'm expecting that the majority of distros will very quickly follow Fedora.
I know for a fact that Debian, Gentoo, and a few others are specifically NOT touching XFree86 4.4 (i.e. post-license-change), and are looking for alternatives.
X.org sounds like it is currently the most mature alternative, and will likely have the marketshare XFree86 does within months, unless David Dawes pulls his head out of his ass and stops shooting himself in the foot. He doesn't seem to realize that his license change is going to make XFree86 a defunct project VERY quickly.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
What have you done for Free Software?
I'm the maintainer of CSCVS, a tool for breaking CVS repositories into changesets, reporting on them, and importing those changsets into TLA. As such, my familiarity with CVS (and Arch) goes beyond that of the average user.
Now, about the issues that Arch is designed to fix: Revisioning renames and moves is not something that comes up only infrequently. Revisioning metadata is not something that comes up only infrequently. Mutually merged branches are not something that come up only infrequently. Taking forever to do a "cvs update" on a 10,000 file tree because the tree needs to be walked to look for updates is not something that comes up only infrequently. I've had the lead developer at work bitching in my direction because CVS is coming up with spurious conflicts that Arch would ignore.
I have a leg to stand on right now, and if you'd care to stand up and try to argue your position on its merits rather than firing off some angry rant, I'd absolutely love to do so.
Hmmm, let's review a little history here...
For some time now, I have been able to login to a Solaris box from a Linux box, start an Xterm on one and display it on the other. *Gasp* Interoperability! And these don't even have much common history (except, of course, the Solaris distros that use XFree86, before some pedant points it out). And you know what, the exact same thing works with Tru64 Unix... and NT X servers... gosh, just about the whole X11 world is interoperable! Conspiracy theorists, arise!
And these are only the ones that I've actually tried.
As for driver compatibility, do you expect Linux kernel drivers to work on BSD? Do you expect Dia plugins to work in OO.o? Of course not. They are parts of different projects. Saying this is going to confuse Joe User is ridiculous. What, one day Joe User just decides to download the source to an XFree86 video driver and compile it, and finds it doesn't work in his FD.O X server... I'm not seeing a realistic scenario here. As if some clueless user who can't tell the difference between a BMW and a Peugeot might try to install a BMW engine in his Mercedes...
Think before you post. I do it and, believe it or not, this post actually got a lot nicer to you after doing so.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
anyhow, i would like to see another serious option besides xfree86
xfree86 crashes quite frequently for me> Perhaps now XFree86 decided to go GPL-incompatible, some even say
> non-practical even while free, it would be time to go LGPL or
> even GPL? Thus proprietary vendors would have to either stick
> with XFree86 and its advertising clause, or pay and thus help
> develop (X.org|XOuvert|FreeDesktopX).
Proprietary vendors and the *BSDs would prefer the advertising clause.
In the case of proprietary companies; why pay/help for another
implementation with a more illiberal license?
And for *BSD; why change all the dependencies for BSD ports that
currently depend on XFree to instead depend on a different X server
with a different license? After all most *BSDers are pretty much
license agnostic and don't like unneccessary work.
BTW/FWIW, I've seen no discussion about the Xfree license change on
the primary FreeBSD newsgroup. I don't think it's anything we lose
any sleep over, it's not in the base system so it doesn't really matter.
If the functionality of the differing X servers changed to any
degree, then folks would jump on the more featureful
What the posts here seem to indicate is that Linux users seem to
think most of the time that they are the only people who use
X/XFree, they're not! They're the only ones who go through
prolonged & tortured discussions about the licensing of it.
The Machine stops.
I currently installed the rpms by Mike Harris from redhat/fedora on my Fedora Core 2 Test install and it works great. I simply had to reinstall my nvidia drivers, which work fine for everyone out there worried they won't work, and it runs fine. I for one am glad they are making this transition. It is time that X be open and maintained by a community with bugzilla. As more and more patches are sent and applied more companies may produce patches for their hardware since they are actually being accepted. This in my opinion is going to do nothing but help and improve a users experience with linux.
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
it would be a nice demonstration of the claim that opensource software can adapt quickly to 'breaks' in incompatable licenses (and unwanted behaviour).
Lets see how flawless this comes off -- will it cause confusion or can RedHat (the leading distro) make the change, leaving others, will it 'fork' and provide two distinct servers or will One Fail?
Should be interesting to watch.
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!
It would be a nice demonstration of the claim that opensource software can adapt quickly to 'breaks' in incompatable licenses (and unwanted behaviour).
This is not all (directly) about licenses. Keith Packard has done most of the new, interesting functionality in XFree86 for some time. By going with him, they are aiming for more modern functionality in their X server. XFree86 is very conservative about new functionality.
May we never see th
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).
Sorry, the 11 is a version. From "man X":
I'm guessing your megapixel*MIPS was a retcon. Some of us are actually old enough to barely remember when X10 was just passing out of relevance, and I'd imagine a few of us remember before that. Versions before X10 were never really relevant outside of MIT. X10 was 1986, X11 was 1987, and there's been various X11R*s since then. Today, we use X11R6.4, but many programs want lots of extensions on top of it (eg, XRender). Since many of these have only been implemented on XFree86, that's now a de-facto standard.
X.org is the more conventional fork (and Xserver is the fancy one with transparency, drop shadows, etc), both at freedesktop.org.
Keith Packard is, I believe, the freedesktop.org guy -- he's the guy that's pushed forward most of the new XFree86 functionality for the last few years, until his falling out with Dawes.
This is an annoyance for packagers. It will also mean that transitions to Xserver or features coming across from Xserver are more likely, which is good all around for Linux folks.
May we never see th
It's not one of the "greatest technologies ever created in computer world." You've got to be kidding me. Then you go into a long advertising spiel on X11.
Anyway, here are the reasons listed in Mark's paper:
"The X Window System [23] is the de facto standard graphical user interface (GUI) system on UNIX and UNIX-like platforms such as GNU/Linux. However, as X approaches its 20th year, signs of its age are beginning to show. Commonly cited problems with X include:
Aside from the user interface inconsistency, the lack of standard components also makes internationalisation difficult, particularly for languages which require a complex input method.
Although the X protocol supports extensions very well, some of the latest extensions have begun to interfere with each other. For example, when Xinerama (the extension which allows X desktops to span multiple monitors) was first released, it broke XVideo (the extension which allows X to use hardware accelerated overlays for video play back). The 'fix' for this was to allow XVideo to only work on the primary display. The latest extension, XRandR (Rotate and Resize), is also known to break many older applications which assume that the screen size will never change.
Further, the internal design of X itself is outdated. Even adding a simple feature, such a stranslucent windows, requires large changes to the server [17]. Because of the requirement to be backwardly compatible, these features must be implemented for everything that X works on, including two-colour displays.