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Slackware Chooses X.org Server Over XFree86
Ananamous Coward writes "Some big distros had already dumped XFree86 for X.org for license reasons, but now Slackware, one of the most classical and stable ones, has announced in its changelog for slackware-current that they are switching to X.org, mostly for compatibility reasons. Looks like X.org is now the future of X for Linux ..."
There are people running Slackware that use a GUI?
I thought they were one and the same.
Shows what I know..
an oops: already dumped XFree86 for X.org link in Related Links bar for this article points to: http://slashdot.org/__SLASHLINK__ which is obviously a 404 error.
This rocks, I've been using X.org on my slackware-current system all along. With kernel 2.6.6, even. Works fantastic. I just played a few rounds of UT2004 as well. Woo hoo!
FLR
Internal Politics triumphed over project development in the XFree86. The future of open source X windows system lies is xorg branch, plus they'll be integrating pretty exciting stuff from Keith P's exciting new FD.o project which will be able to give longhorn run for it's money. I am really looking forward to the kdrive stuff. So Xfree has grown out of it's usefulness and like any rudiments in evolutionary process, it must wither away.
Activists United
One of the things the XFree86 tyrant touted was that Slackware still used his 'stuff' - i wonder what he'll do now.
If you look at the current page of distros using XFree86 you'll be hard pressed to find one that is in common usage - pretty sad considering that until the moron decided to mess around with license it was the defacto standard on every Linux distribution
Goes to show you...don't mess around with licenses....Freedom is Freedom and that's what FOSS is all about.
All the device drivers for ati and nvidia are written for XFree86. These enable 3d acceleration and I'm not sure they are compatible with X.org... Does this mean that we will have to get the already hesitant ati to start new drivers after x months of slow but steady improvement?
The Television Wiki
Switched to X11R6.7.0 from X.Org. Thanks to those who sent comments to /pub/slackware/unsupported/ directory on the FTP site.
x@slackware.com. Seems the community has spoken, because the opinions were
more than 4 to 1 in favor of using the X.Org release as the default version
of X. I think I've heard just about every side to this issue now, and it was
only after careful consideration and testing that this decision was made.
It's primarily (as is usual around here) a technical decision. Nearly
everyone else is going with X.Org and it seems to me that sticking with
XFree86 it spite of this would be asking for compatibility trouble (indeed,
we saw some issues between X.Org and XFree86 4.4.0 until a few things in
XFree86 were patched). I also noticed that the ATI Radeon binary drivers
designed for XFree86 4.3.0 do not work with XFree86 4.4.0, but do work with
the X.Org release. Something I'm *not* in favor of is dragging around two
nearly identical projects, so XFree86 4.4.0 has been moved to the
I'd like to take this moment to thank the XFree86 Project for all the truly
amazing work they've done all these years, and to wish the project the best
of luck. Slackware owes the XFree86 Project a debt of gratitude and will
always include the XFree86 acknowledgement, even if we are no longer
shipping XFree86.
it seems the reason is for compatibility since other distros are moving to X.org too, not because of the license change
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
The long national nightmare is over! Finally, I can sleep easily, knowing that all those years of intensive study have been recognized, and in some way, appreciated.
It did indeed fork but this is a good thing for compatability.
I don't understand what Dawes' problem is. Why would he change the license such that a) no distros want to use the software, and b) no one wants to develop the software? It seems to me like he signed his own death warrant.
Why didn't he just back down? It is totally boggling to me, since it is quite obvious that within a year the XFree86.org X server will now not only not be in use by anyone, but also be totally obsolete.
Why did Slackware and NetBSD stick to XFree98 4.4.0 to begin with ?
Sunny Dubey
Apparently ATI drivers from XFree 4.3.0 work with X.Org
Which version of X does OS X use?
My primary concern would of course be diverging X releases. While some may adopt X.org I would bet many will continue on using xfree86. In fact the majority that do oppose the new license will most likely keep their own fork in house. Will all this divergence lead to good or just confusion?
:(){
I run X with fluxbox on my laptop, but the rest of my machines at home don't even have monitors or keyboards. ;-)
At any rate, can't be surprised with this decision. Power to the people, down with crappy licenses.
Slackware... The official Linux distro of the Klingon Empire!
This was in Slackware-current, the development branch of Slackware.
Slackware 9.1 (the last official release of Slackware) uses XFree86 4.3.0.
The next release of slackware will be using X.org's X server.
It's a great pity for XFree86 developers as more and more people are switching to X.org odd job. X.org is stuck with XFree86 4.4 rc2 and I see no development of this project expect for the community hype about the license change of XFree86. Who develops X.org? Who?? XFree86 is about to issue 4.5 alpha soon and why should I be glad that my distro decided to go with outdated but licensely well X server?
Now that we've got a stable, mature, and well rounded XServer...
:)
Fuck it, let's make a new one.
I know everything you can possibly flame me for in this post, It's a joke. mod me funny
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
That wierd sort of rattling? Yeah. That's the sound of the open source development process functioning properly... ^_^
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
They're just being conservative, they don't like to change things that work without making sure the replacement works as well.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that the 1.1 license is incompatible with the BSD license, and since NetBSD is under that license there is no problem, it may change later on to use Xorg and I'm sure it will because no operating system is really using XFree 4.4.
As for Slackware, I think they were going to change to Xorg anyway, but I think they weren't in a hurry to but the users speed up the change.
I think he did the only logical thing and purposely sabotaged the project. When he saw the abysmal state of XFree86 development compared to the rest of the free software community, and the exodus of mindshare to various other projects, he decided to sink the ship and get all those on board to a different project with a better community.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
technological progress goes "boink"
Absolute bull feathers. I'd pick Red SHat dead last, and slack is always my first choice, when I have one.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
And have the first Naba Barkakati IDG book right here, Linux Secrets, with the flames. Great book, still refer to it.
Tried RedHat (InfoMagic Workgroup Server, where is that guy?), Suse, LibraNet, still go back to Slackware, it just works. Luv it for my business, ties all those nasty Windows versions together.
Slackware's a great distro for the hacker set to pull a custom machine together with.
I use it all the time, generally just to get a base linux system on a box, and then customize from there.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Yeah, the upgrade system for Slack either wasn't thought out very well or is a bare bones solution waiting for something better. Swaret is what I use as the upgrading and dependency finding solution. Happy Slacking!
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
Widespread adoption of X.org Server could also lead to the full integration of auxilliary X.org projects, such as Xinerama, into X11 as standard features.
X.org Server is the MIT/X license's flagship product (in an inverse sort of way), so I think it's also a good possibility that the systematic proliferation of X.org's server may magnify the popularity of its license among OSS developers in general (it's an interesting license!).
they still work but their still pitiful. Frankly this is off topic but I just wish that ATI could just put more heart into their drivers like Nvidia does. I've read that they are writing from scratch the win32 opengl driver. Is it that hard to get some crazy linux driver developpers?
I'm glad that slack switched to X.org. Doing the DropLine-Gnome update, I accepted to update everything thus replacing Xfree 4.4 by X.org and everything works smoothly, and I for one welcome our new and improved system to remind them that I am satisfied.
I had to upgrade my FreeBSD desktop from XFree86 4.3 to 4.4 to get my Radeon 9200 to work. Know what? It took about ten minutes and entailed downloading a bunch of packages and running the install script. Not a big problem.
It's true that noobies and most people who don't really care about the GUI will stick with whatever is the default but I'm simply not worried about compatibility. As always (in the *nix world) we have a choice.
From user land, are there any visible differences?
Steve
STEP ONE: Arbitrarily switch from something that works fine to something that also works fine.
STEP TWO: ???
STEP THREE: Profit!
Just what we need, another rift between OSS projects, making it a potential PR nightmare "see, those OSS guys cant cooperate on anything and have multiple subsystem 'standards'" "choose us, we have one consistent standard ".
" they even cant decide on their desktop, they have silly looking feet and strange K-menus " " and a thousand other incompatible, duplicated efforts "
And yes I realize both X's are from the same code base TODAY.. but that will slowly change over time as they go down different paths.
Disclaimer: I'm a FBSD user, and do use KDE... but I can see how this can be twisted around easily in the press.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Nope. Fonts are in /usr/share/fonts instead of usr/lib/X11R6/fonts (or whatever it was), and the config file in /etc/X11/ is named xorg.conf instead, but these aren't things a typical user will notice or care about.
The only overt difference is that it seems slightly faster.
Does it have a userland src/ tree and a bsd-like ports/ tree that you can rebuild much of the system from and keep in sync with slackware.com? I hate having to install a base system from scratch all the time. Seems like you can't get away from that with windows and linux. Gentoo is crap.
Just as an alternative (not Slackware related) data point, I'm using X.org on Fedora 2 x86-64 with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 and XVideo overlay DOES work, although it's much slower than it was on Fedora 1 using ATI's proprietary drivers. Unfortunately ATI has not yet seen fit to release 64-bit linux drivers. That said, I'm pretty happy that XV works at all... on my last laptop, it took several months before XV support for that card made it into XFree86.
With the recent changes and the inclusion of a 2.6 kernel (and udev) I would anticipate a new Slackware release in the next month. (good or bad) Gnome 2.6 was included a few weeks ago. Shortly afterwards, the 2.6.6 kernel and udev. Now X.org...I see Slackware 10.0
As for a reason WHY still use Slackware? I can download and install two CDs (just slightly over 1). The configuration makes sense. While the community isn't quite as strong as the Gentoo users, there is a decent group at www.linuxpackages.net and on the irc channel. It does NOT default to a graphical boot screen. Withing 30 minutes on a relatively fast machine I can have a fully functional system. Windows would still be at the detection stage, Fedora/Redhat? Hell it might be asking for disk 399/500.
Yes I'll keep my simple distro. I've been a Slacker since 94...tried others but keep coming back to the best distro around...
Tiger's a bit soon. Apple's release cycles are long and they don't react very quickly to events in the UNIX world.
However, Mac OS X is pegged at least to some degree to FreeBSD. They lag a little bit but they do try to make an effort to keep at least a consistent distance from the software in the current FreeBSD for all the UNIX software in Darwin. If FreeBSD goes with X.org, Apple will follow.
I use cygwin on a daily basis, was nice to see that on an upgrade it removed all of Xfree and upgraded to X.org X11 server.
Seems everyone is ditching Xfree. (About damn time too!)
BTW, those use mentioned screen because they don't want to use a mouse. There are X window managers like EvilWM or Ratpoison that are mouseless. Though, my favorite WM is IceWM with the PicoGUI theme. Though I like to modify it with additional buttons. Freshmeat has a ton of themes for it.
Not that I don't agree with switching to Xorg, because I do. I think Xorg is the way to go and xfree is totally dying.
BUT
Isn't it funny that a very small license change in a free program like Xfree drives everyone away within months. But NVidia binary drivers, which I use and love, have a license 10 times worse. But people don't avoid using them. In fact just from the gentoo forums there are tons of people trying to get said drivers to work with Xorg! Most have actually had great success.
Funny stuff.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I think the main point behind the post was not the popularity or "bleeding edge" factor of Slackware. It was that Slackware is, in fact, intentionally *not* bleeding edge. The reason that it has a loyal user base is that it's extremely stable and covers mostly just the fundamentals. For a distribution like this to switch to X.org instead of XFree86, says something about the stability and "standardness" (making up words is fun) of X.org.
I have tried many other distros. I personally stick with slackware because it is somuch easier to set up and configure the way that I want to. I don't have to worry about breaking crap all the time and it isn't released until it is stable, unlike most of the other bug ridden distros. If you haven't used slack in five years you have no clue what you are talking about.
Im am a novice linux user and i use slackware because i find it to be the most refined and easiest to use. What will using XOrg instead of XF86 change for people like me?
10 bucks says you never booted any Linux distro in your life.
Do linux desktop edvelopers take pride in being different? Some things are different to the point that are incompatible. And thats' not good enought if linux wants to suceed in desktop
I migrated from xfree86 to X.org easily following the guide here. Basically, unmerge xfree and xfs, emerge xfs and xorg-x11, and copy XF86config into /etc/xorg.conf
Install from scratch instructions can be found here.
It's jost not good enougth if linux wants to suceed in desktop.
Gentoo already did it Fedora did it now Slackware...didn't Debian already? who's next?
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Slackware was fine when there was nothing else available, but unless it's changed a lot (something tells me it hasn't), it's definitely a hacked-together system. I would NEVER recommend anyone, including my worst enemy, use Slackware in a production environment. Package management and dependency controls used to be non-existent, unless you call a tgz tarball a package. The thing I remember most about Slackware is having to reinstall every 6 months or so because my system go so fucked up and out of whack with dependency hell that when I wanted to install something new it was easier to just wipe and reload. I NEVER have that problem with Red Hat or Debian anymore.
And the tgz packages are more than a simple tarball, and I would rather have the ability to ignore dependencies than go through the hell of rpms with their dependency hell.
I noticed that I am getting better performance with my Radeon Mobile 9200 with X.org than with XFree86.
Mak'tal shree lok'tak mek'ta sa'tak Oz! - Daniel Jackson
I live near the ATi headquarters and ATi are currently recruiting a lot of programmer roles. Almost all of these are for linux developers.
Today Nmap confirmed that Xfree86 is dying....
(Someone had to do it)
hey man sendmail is the best MTA ever coded.
Props to GNAA!
Jaguar, Panther, Tiger... They've "Lynx" and "Cougar" to rely on, but how can they utilize "Mountain Lion" without dulling the impact of "Lion"? And where can they go after that?
I do both. I have an old Pentium 200 MMX running as a "firewall". I term it that because Purdue University forbids us to connect two computers up to the ResNet ethernet. We can't have routers, either. So, what this box is doing is acting as my firewall, as well as running some services on which for me to do web development. Then, on my primary computer (which happens to be a laptop), I'm dual-booting Windows and Slackware (with a GUI). On that, I use Dropline Gnome. Dropline is really sweet-looking, and I've got it customized to my liking. I like it more than KDE. Maybe I'm used to it now... but before, I used KDE and liked that as well. I'm not trying to flame either, but both are respectable desktop environments, and I'm just more acquainted with Gnome at the moment. And yes, as some other comments suggest, ncurses is a nice GUI. =P (The "firewall" computer can't really run X anyway... it's kind of sluggish. It has acceptable performance with Blackbox (or any blackbox-like clone), but chokes horribly when running anything else, including a Counter-Strike server for more than 2 people. =D
The license is the userland difference. Don't you get what Free Software is supposed to be about?
Especially given Dawes' apparently grating personality (not a recommended trait for your project leader)
Hell, I thought a grating personality was a requirement for being a project leader.
Or maybe I've just been really unlucky with my career choices. ;^)
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
No clue what you're doing there, but I've got one production box that's about 4 years old. I've never been in dependency hell with it, or any other of my younger Slackware systems. When in doubt, read the build scripts, or just get the latest Slackware package.
It's definitely not hacked-together. It's simple, and therefore easy to maintain (if you've got a clue how a GNU system works).
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
I also purchased an ATI Radeon 9200 for the sole reason that it was (a few months ago when I purchased it) the fastest 3d card well-supported by open source drivers.
I suspect that few people are interested in such a standard, but I hope that video card vendors will take note -- there are at least a few of us out there who value having open source drivers.
May we never see th
Name one other Linux distro (heck, even one other *operating system*) that can do automatic hardware detection on as many different architectures as Debian does.
Sorry, I love debian but they are just too far behind to be nearly as relevant as they were a few years ago.
That's simply not true. (see below)
Hopefully they'll release before the end of this year and they can show people linux in all it's 2002 glory!
Sigh. "stable" releases aren't for desktop users who want cutting-edge; they're for users who want extensively-tested software. Run "unstable" or "testing" if you want up-to-the-minute software. Really. Honest. I mean it. Lots of people do.
Just to keep things in perspective.. According to the Google Zeitgeist Linux is still at only around 1% of the desktop market share. That's roughly the same as the number of Windows 95 users. Yes, Linux users might arguably be more into high end graphics cards and games.. But if I were ATI, I'd be more focused on beating Nvidia in price and performance on Windows, with little regard to the 1% of users on Linux.
So.. keep converting desktop users to linux, and let ATI know how you feel I guess.
Peace.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
While Slackware's decision to use x.o may be a compatibility issue, the fact still remains that many other distros have ditched xfree86 for the licensing issue. What basically happens is that everyone starts using something new, because everyone is using something new. I think three things contributed to slackware's decision. 1) The ATI driver situation. 2) Compatibility between distros. 3) The licensing. I am fairly certain that 3, while not mentioned, had at least a minor role in the decision. It is the proverbial "elephant in the room".
I hate sigs.
Downloaded all the X11R6.7.0-src[1-7].tar.gz.
Extracted, went in an did "make World".
Fails with this:
ftfuncs.c: In function `FreeTypeRasteriseGlyph':
ftfuncs.c:962: `FT_GLYPH_FORMAT_BITMAP' undeclared (first use in this function)
ftfuncs.c:962: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
ftfuncs.c:962: for each function it appears in.)
ftfuncs.c:1085: `FT_RENDER_MODE_MONO' undeclared (first use in this function)
make[5]: *** [ftfuncs.o] Error 1
make[5]: Leaving directory `/tmp/x.org/xc/lib/font/FreeType'
make[4]: *** [FreeType] Error 2
make[4]: Leaving directory `/tmp/x.org/xc/lib/font'
make[3]: *** [all] Error 2
make[3]: Leaving directory `/tmp/x.org/xc/lib'
make[2]: *** [all] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/x.org/xc'
make[1]: *** [World] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/x.org/xc'
make: *** [World] Error 2
I tried download a new version of freetype2, building and installing that (freetype-2.1.8.tar.bz2) but that didn't help.
Web sight is unbelievably sketchy. Will my GeForce 2 MX work? Will nvidia's drivers work? What sort of hardware support is there? 3D acceleration? Does it integrate with DRM/DRI on linux?
My god, four cliches in one sentence.
No comment.
Yeah, a butterfly, animated dog or paperclip or similar is soooo much more mature/useful. *Kaplonk*
X.org has lame little dropshadows everywhere.
.Xresources will use the core cursor functionality rather than alternate alpha-blended cursors.
XFree86 has RENDER capabilities as well. In any event, these are toggleable.
Xcursor.core: true in your
From the same guy that fucked up Xft.
Keith Packard *designed* Xft, so if you don't like his work, you don't like Xft. I think that few people would complain too much about Xft/fontconfig -- it provides significant functionality that the old X11 stuff didn't, including more advanced rendering, user-installable fonts, a font-selection system that doesn't scare regular users, etc.
May we never see th
Back in the day, Apple did a series of time/motion studies regarding mousng vs. command keys and command lines. They showed that (for the tasks they studied, of course) in IIRC all casees, the GUI was faster, however the command line users thought they were faster. The explanation de jure was that because your mind is more involved in typing, it seems like less time even though it's more.
Naturally, it depends on what you're doing. I once watched a saleswoman with exactly 1 month's training on computers use the NeXT Interface Builder to build a complete calculator application with working buttons in about 15 minutes, including generating the necessary C functions. All that had to be done to complete the project was to put stuff like "return (B*A);" into the function for multiply, etc. OTOH, using a GUI to compose the algorithm for a complex physics function would probably be counterproductive.
This was back in the early-mid 1980's so I really don't recall the details.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
After more better reading, the above link is not the official project, but the MAC OS X version of XFree86 "recieves integral support from" xdarwin according to the docs...
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
I think that few people would complain too much about Xft/fontconfig -- it provides significant functionality that the old X11 stuff didn't, including more advanced rendering, user-installable fonts, a font-selection system that doesn't scare regular users, etc.
Not only that, you don't have to restart xft (and possibly X too) for new fonts to become available.
This kind of stuff happens all the time with proprietary software. Sudenly, the company has a new "vision", and you no longer seem to be part of it. But with proprietary software you are screwed. You can try to keep using the software, even though either the license, pricing structure or direction of development is no longer a good match for your need. Or you can change to an entirely different product, which can be very expensive in retraining.
UTTER BULLSHIT
> I don't understand what Dawes' problem is. Why would he change the license...
My pet theory is a payoff from Microsoft.
But more fun than my conspiracy theory is imagining what this incident means to Bill Gates.
Whether or not he paid to create this situation, the ease with which the Open Source community got around the problem is the type of thing that must be giving Gates nightmares. How can he put roadblocks in our way if we just keep driving around them?
X.org can even use XF86Config files if it doesn't find an xorg.conf file, so switching is very painless.
Eat the rich.
Yes. Slackware works with any oddball hardware I care to throw together. I tried Mandrake (pretty but draggy), Debian (couldn't get it to run right), etc. Slackware is my home. As for the GUI, I'm quite democratic. Right now, I'm on Win/IE. Earlier, I was here in Slack/KDE/Konqueror. Yesterday, I checked in with Slack-console/Lynx. I do what I want to do, and if a feature is there, I'll probably use it. But I'm not likely to change from XFree86 just to be "on the edge". Unless there's a real advantage, I don't see the point.
The world is my oyster. That's why it's always in a stew.
ATI on OSX has enormous problems. If you check couple of new games patches release notes, all includes ATI fix or something.
The last one was, Apple was not able to play DVD if ATI card installed. CC Generals runs 5 fps, ww2 online has purple trees (psychedelic) etc. All with ATI.
ATI's driver department has problems imho. Not just Linux.
I agree with you. Slackware Linux is user-friendly. I haven't used Gentoo Linux so I can't say anything about it but I have installed FreeBSD and is definitively user-friendly. According to this www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=openbsd
XFree86 4.4.0 is on OpenBSD 3.5. I'm not using OpenBSD 3.5, so I might be wrong.
I have used XFree86 4.4.0 on Slackware Linux and it was OK. I hope they include XFree 4.4.0 on FreeBSD.
Once again, isn't the GPL a problem?
Nope. They aren't the same. Sometimes the X Window System is called X for shorter. The XFree86 Project produces a freely redistributable open-source implementation of the X Window System. BTW, imagine what had happened if back in the day there were no XFree86 Project. No KDE, no GNOME, no desktop Linux, no X.org, ... and in a few days many people is forgetting about what the XFree86 Project has done and is keep doing... Well, NetBSD hasn't forgetted it as they're shipping it (among others). Patrick has thanked XFree for everything they have done. And don't forget that Slackware Linux has recently changed to X.org
The punters are voting with their feet, and walking away. Time to revise that licence, that scares the masses.
When does Slack 10.0 come out?
xb0x
"A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something"
Damn, i knew i left my car keys somewhere.
> According to the Google Zeitgeist Linux is still
> at only around 1% of the desktop market share.
I wonder actually, whether Google only counts you in these stats if you have cookies enabled (I don't and Linux users are far more apt to "Deny - Remember this decision"). Sent Google e-mail but got no answer in that regard.
> hey man sendmail is the best MTA ever coded.
:-)
Yeah, and so is its config file
...another article about Slackware adopting X.org and another swaret --search xorg which returns no results.
Useless!
Dependancy this, dependancy that, whine, whine, whine! I compile my own software, have little interest in using packages beyond a base system, and Slackware is absolutely perfect for me at home and our companies servers. That you cannot administer a system without screwing it every six months is not an issue, learn what you doing or use Redhat/Windows or any other system designed primarily as a desktop.
Thanks.
Sendmail was coded? I thought it was just the result of an accident with a cat and keyboard.
Now the "most open" awared probably goes to Via/S3, who have released full driver source for the S3 Savage & Twister chipsets, and the Via MPEG-2 decoder. SiS come in a close second with good support for the third-party cross platform SiS Xabre driver.
My GNU system works wonderfully and currently it's running Debian Sid. What I'm saying is that people that run Slackware generally love to compile shit from scratch and install it and you get libraries and binaries all over the place on the system. I can't even imagine how you cleanly upgrade glibc versions on slackware without having 5 different versions hanging around.
damn why didnt i see how this could be a slashdot article when i was reading the daily slackware changelog updates!
You are misinformed about Slackware.
The "stock" package tools
Automagic updater that checks dependencies:I never install anything on my Slack systems without package management, so there's no orphan files lying around anywhere. People get the misconception that just because the package format is a simple, easy to manipulate tgz file that it doesn't work. Like everything in Slackware, its simplicity is a blessing to those over the learning curve.
I agree. I have never understood why they don't package Postfix. It is stable, secure, and easy to configure.
Just the right fit for Slackware.
I don't get this line. Does it mean that all the packages are old as hell or that its one of the most stable distributions as in uptime? If the latter is the case, I object! Thre are hundreds of distros, who has tested all of them for stability? Not this character I'm sure.
He has mentioned a couple of times that after his MBA, he might not go back to do kernel stuff but work on X instead. Imagine Alan Cox and Keith Packard working together in a sanely organized development community! X.org might really take off.
They showed that (for the tasks they studied, of course) in IIRC all casees, the GUI was faster, however the command line users thought they were faster. [my emphasis]
And that's exactly it. It really depends on the task at hand, and how well you know your tools.
If you're a sysadmin and need to add a couple of hundred URLs or usernames to a blacklist, or if you're adding a large amount of filters to a firewall configuration, command line tools will certainly be faster than clicking like a madman in any GUI. That's assuming your programs uses actual configuration files, of course
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
it looks like this changelog fad is finally catching on too!
I don't know if the FreeBSD Project has a made a decision about it. What I know is that the latest Production Release (FreeBSD 4.10) comes with XFree86 4.3.0
According to this www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=openbsd
OpenBSD 3.5, ships with XFree86 4.4.0
I'm writing this right now on an e-Machines T1.....
[No Carrier]
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
I have the same problem. I used X11 upto 4.3.99 with the ATi propitary drivers (3.2.7 i belive) and XV 'worked' Ever after those drivers it sucked. I'm with X6.7.0 now and XV hardly works. I have noticed with DGA support enabled (for vmware) it doesn't work at all. without dga it sometimes works for some files. ...
I haven't been able to put my finger onto what caused it, (X, ati drivers, file type etc) but something is definatly broken
As a gentoo user, I've been meaning to convert to x.org's server from xfree, I just haven't gotten around to it lately. My understanding is that the reason x.org still masked (unstable) is because there are still a few packages that think they need xfree (when really they could use the same libraries in x.org). Fixing this is just a matter of hunting down all the packages that "depend" on xfree, and changing one or two lines in the .ebuild file to allow them to use whichever virtual/x11 component package, i.e., x.org. Should be all set in a couple more weeks.
because change requires organisation and time. the discussion was going on for quite a while already.
:)
slackware is a pragmatic distro, and patrick listens to his users. he asked for opinions, created an email adress for it, and concluded that 4 to 1 in favour of X.Org, plus the compatibility issues, were arguments enough to switch.
slackware (patrick) has always been careful with changing stuff around. and although his opinions aren't popular sometimes, he keeps his users in mind. i've heard he would (for example) boot gnome if he could get away with it
yet it's still in slackware, which is one of the reasons we need two slack CDs instead of one nowadays.
> Check on ebay, there's plently floating around. :)
> I just got mine last month. Upgraded from a 9500
> to 8500.
All kidding aside, is this true? That is, are Radeon 8500s really faster than Radeon 9500s? I have a Radeon 9500 Pro, and if getting my hands on a 8500 would mean better performance than the 2400fps I'm getting with glxgears and 350fps on fgl_glxgears (and, of course, the benefits of a fully open-source driver integrated into Xorg), then I'd bite. In such a case the only thing I'd be giving up is compatibility with DirectX 9, right?
You probably mean "du jour."
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
There is a demand for donations on the main xfree86 page AGAIN. The last time was only about 2 months ago. Those guys are really a bunch of jackasses.
My understanding of X.org is that it's a free implementation of XFree86.
Ha! The irony is that X.org used to basically just define the X standard, and provide a reference implementation (that I gather wasn't all that good, or we'd all be using it). XFree86 was an implementation of that standard that got really popular when the X consortium fell out of favour.
Now, the worm has turned, and X.org forked XFree86, and basically turned it into their new reference implemenation. And are back to being the good guy, a la IBM.
Im surprised this article is even posted.. Slackware is soo ill-maintained and out of date I'm surprised they even bother to do anything with it.
Don't get me wrong, I love the slack, but damn.. The maintainers have been soo derelict with keeping it up to date, it is actually ill-advised to install and use (if you expect to connect the box to the internet)..
Slackware has long been renowned as one of the most secure and stable GNU/Linux system available, but its desktop has always left something to be desired. Dropline GNOME serves to address this while maintaining the core stability and simplicity of Slackware we all know and love. This is not simply a set of GNOME 2.4 packages; it has been tweaked and modified for a better appearance, cleaner interface, and a nicer integration with Slackware as a whole. Some of these differences are:
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
Debian will dump it right on schedule two years from now. Aren't they still using 4.2?
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
So, will this change help Slackware to step into the new age of DVD's? After all, VCR's are going the way of the record player. If an OS won't play a simple Region 1 DVD movie, I'm just not interested. Perhaps dropping frames on a DVD movie is a security feature.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
Oh come the fuck on, why is the parent modded interesting/informative and this troll?
Absolutely none of what you just said is true. Bravo, champion.