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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 ..."
Different licenses.
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.
x.org is a fork of XFree86-4.3.99, so the drivers will certainly, without a doubt, work flawlessly.
Oh, they'll work. Remember that this is a fork, and moreover that it is a recent one that developed only when the licensing issues came to light. Those drivers were usually written to comply with the X11 standard anyway, not just a single implementation of it.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Apparently ATI drivers from XFree 4.3.0 work with X.Org
It won't. The X.org fork came about because of the issues with XFree management. Over the last year, the folks at X.org have gained momentum and are now seen as the main fork...not XFree.
If XFree didn't drive so many developers to create the X.org fork, there wouldn't be a transition.
In short, X.org is routing around the dammage.
Actually if you see at XFree's website, the only major player, if you want to call it that, that supports xfree is NetBSD, the rest are mostly hobby distros or foreign based. Sooner or later, they will follow the major distro's lead.
Activists United
Conectiva Linux isn't generally well known outside Latin American but it's used by a huge number of people just the same (more than slackware I'll bet).
However I have little doubt that this distro will also change over in due course.
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.
interesting question! (to me at least :P)
Based on XFree86 4.3 for Panther, X11 for Mac OS X gives you a complete, rootless X11R6.6 implementation
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
They have an implementation based on XFree86 4.3.0. Here is the text from the about box
The X Window System
X11 1.0 - XFree86 4.3.0
Copyright © 2003, Apple Computer, Inc.
Copyright © 2003, XFree86 Project, Inc.
BSD-style based distribution
* NetBSD® Runs on practically everything; highly scaleable.
* MirOS BSD a NetBSD/OpenBSD hybrid for the skilled EU sys admin; new.
Linux® based distribution
* Conectiva Brazilian-based distro with a world-wide following using RPMs.
* Arch Linux a Canadian distro; i-686 optimised.
* Ark Linux an EU Redhat-based distro using ISOs.
* Buffalo Linux a cut-down Vector/Slackware-based distro with ISOs.
* JoLinux a Brazilian distro based on Slackware using ISOs.
* Lycoris Linux a desktop friendly environment for novices.
* Magic Linux when native Chinese-support is desired using ISOs.
* OneBase Linux a meta distribution.
* OpenNa Linux when security matters.
* Peanut Linux an 85MB base.
* Plamo Linux best for native Japanese support; Slackware based.
* Rubyx Linux object-oriented ruby is its scripting language.
* Slax Live Linux a small Slackware source-based distro.
* Source Mage a source-based distro aimed at linux magicians (sys admins) with a social contract.
* Sorcerer Linux a source-based distro aimed at linux wizards (sys admins).
* Yoper Linux a new down-under (New Zealand) distro.
NO, I haven't left anything off of the list.
Are you a VF grad? Check out the VFMA Alumni Forums VFMA Alumni Forum
Panther was released before this whole mess went down though. Perhaps things will change for Tiger's release.
uh-uh. it is correct that the x.org server is a recent fork (of xfree86 4.3.99, i believe... or maybe it was 4.4.0rc-something). anyway, yes, the x.org release is almost identical to xfree86 4.4.0, so drivers should work with either. however, this has nothing to do with the X11 standard. the X11 standard is a wire protocol that details how clients communicate with the server. the drivers are entirely implementation-dependent. for example, xfree86/x.org drivers aren't going to work with keith packard's kdrive server (at least not at present; i recall some talk about porting xfree86's driver layer to kdrive...).
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
I can't speak for ATI but my nvidia card and 'nvidia' module have made the transition from Xfree86 to Xorg just fine.
It seems most distributions/BSDs have switched to X.org. Except for NetBSD, Connectiva and a couple of smaller distros.
Lifted this comment off the OSNEWS website: "I subscribe to the FD.O xserver mailing list, and it seems like the plan is to integrate FD.O into the X.org server. Does anyone know how this is going to happen? I believe Keith's server is based on Kdrive, which is a great project that is X11 compatible, but doesn't require any configuration files. My understanding of X.org is that it's a free implementation of Xfree86. Maybe i don't totally understand how the "X Windowing System" works, but it seems like these projects have somewhat different goals. " and "The plan is to drop xfree86 base completely and use a compatible configuration file for compatibility reasons. xlib based stuff would work but the drivers particularly proprietary stuff would need some changes. all the fancy effects thats supposed to be in GUI's 2 years later is already being coded in here. however all this would take around 6 months time or so. probably can be expected in fc4 as an alternative. fedora plans to allow swapping of multiple implementations" I dont know about timelines but the direction is heading that way.
Activists United
I think you are right. On top of pissing off X developers I think the licence change reached out to other sections of the community. We may not ever have to work with XFree code but we do understand that licencing is important and that someone deciding to change a licence more or less unilaterally is something that makes people nervous.
As such it created a bit of a popular movement (and also corporate support) behind some of the developers who previously had struggled with the situation more or less on their own.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
This is interesting.
I know Conectiva is the most popular distro in Latin America and so I guessed that it might be used by more people than slackware. To find it not even in the top 100 makes me wonder if the sampling method is biased.
Could it be for example that internet access is very poor is SA even among those wealthy enough to own computers? Perhaps non-English speakers are less likely to access distowatch? Maybe something else is skewing the results . . . interesting.
I love Screen, and frequently use it, but mostly for keeping interactive processes (e.g. IRC clients) running on remote systems.
Unfortunately, even for people that operate primarily in text, Screen is not a perfect replacement for X (or another GUI). Perhaps the biggest issue is that it lacks facilities for having multiple terminals visible at the same time, which is a requirement for many people (including myself).
Framebuffer support in Linux also isn't particularly great yet. Even on cards with decent framebuffer support in Linux, it's as yet often painfully slow. Even on upper-end systems it's noticable, and on low-mid and lower systems, I'd imagine it would be nearly unusuable.
And in the end, even command-line junkies often use graphical browsers.
X.org is stuck with XFree86 4.4 rc2 and I see no development of this project
Tha's becuase you're not looking. The XDamage and XFixes extensions from Keith Packard's xserver project are already integrated into x.org's code, and they're working on getting the compositing code integrated with the rest of it. Together those extensions will lay the groundwork for flashy high-performance graphics like Apple's Quartz Extreme, or Microsoft's Longhorn in X11. All of these are new features that were either turned down by the XFree "leaders", or written by programmers they had driven away from the project in the past.
Who develops X.org? Who??
Mostly developers that got fed up with the glacial pace of XFree.
XFree86 is about to issue 4.5 alpha soon
Which is really just the current release with a few bugfixes and minor driver updates, like every release XFree has made since 4.0.0.
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!).
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.
The Signal/Noise ratio can be improved in two ways. Remaining silent is the OTHER way.
"...Perhaps the biggest issue is that it lacks facilities for having multiple terminals visible at the same time, which is a requirement for many people (including myself)."
Umm, man screen next time.
Here's a hint: C-a S
Here's another just because I feel benevolent at the moment: C-a ?
BTW, Slack "just works"
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
2^5
Slackware has an upgrade system?
I always thought it was more like: backup old files, format, install new version with new package, get used to new machine.
Either that or compile from source.
Both are time-consuming and tedious, but nice once you're done. They aren't that helpful, though, when - for instance - Thunderbird requires a newer version of glibc than that against which everything else on your system was compiled. This is one of the reasons why I'm still using Mozilla 1.3.1 and Netscape 4.7 for web and mail.
Pisses me off. And then BitTorrent works almost regardless as long as I have python available. Stable APIs are nice.
I could recompile Thunderbird for my system, but then we're back to tedious and time-consuming.
</vent>
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
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 ----
See also what KeithP & Co. does in -CURRENT. This is their to do list. Release notes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Currently, you won't notice a difference, except the package names. Everything else is essentially the same, including files, their locations, config files, etc.
--- d'oh
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.
True. The format of /etc/X11/XF86Config on Fedora Core 1 is almost identical to /etc/X11/xorg.conf on Fedora Core 2.
/etc/X11/X now points to the new binary /usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg
However the link
Fedora Core 2 xorg packages take the name xorg-x11-*-6.7*.rpm
Connectiva is in the top 100 - it's at number 47 at the moment. You can find more page hit stats over various time spans here.
Or twin? Console window manager. Gotta love it. Even has an XMMS applet. ;)
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
maybe this is only a small point of contention, but Gentoo technically hasn't taken the plunge yet either. X.org (6.7.0) is in the package tree, and many Gentoo users are already using X.org, but it is marked unstable for all architectures. Gentoo is obviously making strong efforts to make the change, but they haven't totally changed over -- not just yet.
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
the license changed in XFree86, and it's now too restrictive for most distributions. (i think) slackware's fine with the new license, but since everyone else is switching (and there will be differences between the two in the future), they're switching for compatibility reasons.
this will have almost no impact on the end-user... it might just change the location of a few config files, or at worst, temporarily break compatibility with binary drivers from some manufacturer(s).
upgradepkg *.tgz has always worked more cleanly for me than any rpm upgrade. it also keeps /var/log/packages nice and clean (free from redundancies) if you always upgrade rather than just install new packages.
Golden Rule: upgradepkg --install-new *.tgz
(if package to be upgraded is not installed, install and proceed)
I love Slack...
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
didn't Debian already?
Nope, Debian is still going strong with XFree86...XFree86 4.1, to be exact (in the stable distribution anyway...unstable just got up to 4.3 a couple months ago). In 10 years or so when they do update the X11 server it will probably be to X11R6.7, but that is a long way off.
That's why Ratpoison is such a nice product:
t /l inks/
http://ratpoison.sourceforge.net/
Or if you want to be fancy you can use Window Manager Improved:
http://wmi.berlios.de/
For Web Browsing in such an envirement I'd suggest Links, not only the most functional non GUI web browser the most user friendly browser out there. And yes, you can see graphics.
http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibrigh
I'd just love to see X.org in unstable as soon as possible, but propably other debian users agree with me, that it too quite a while to see 4.3 in there too.. so might still take some "weeks" :-)
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
I'd say Gentoo has half-taken the plunge. I just did a new install a few days ago and virtual-x11 or whatever points to x.org, not xfree. Of course, with X.org masked (~x86), this means the default X11 is masked, which is weird and should probably be fixed one way or the other.
For this reason (crummy framebuffer support with graphical apps when I would want it) I've used X but utilized a wonderful wm known as evilwm; it just gets out of my way. I have a write-up on signalnine.com:
evil wm write-up.
This is just one way to use X "economically", but it's one that I liked.
spam, spam, spam, spam, e-mail, news and spam.
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.
(And no, I wouldn't have tried to compile software on those boxes. I'd build the system in a chrooted environment on my destop and then tarball the sucker.)
Ever heard of DistCC? It's pretty useful for setting up Gentoo on a low-power system--might be a tad easier than using a chroot.
And I love Gentoo's ``installer'' (and I use that word loosely)--it lets me customise my system more than any other installer, and the documentation is virtually perfect.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Xfree has been officially depreciated on AMD64. If you run Gentoo on AMD64 and decide to install X, X.org is what you'll get.
See for yourself
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
This has nothing to do with Copyleft (GPL and LGPL) and everything to do with Free Software and I guess RMS would agree with you.
He probably would also say that Copyleft has everything to do with making sure that these freedom are kept in modified versions of Free Software.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Not necessarily. Qt is GPL, while GNOME are LGPL. This is a very important aspect for some developers who can't afford to pay $$$$ to Trolltech for developing non-GPL inhouse products. It's great that GNOME is still around, even though it sucks.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
There's tons of information out there - for example take a look at forums.gentoo.org. Anyway, the answers to all of your questions is "yes".
:p
BTW, installing on gentoo is easy - "emerge xorg-x11", wait for it to build, and you're done
Perhaps but then again you *need* it. I don't think twice about sticking a Fedora disk in and installing it. With Gentoo I'd be afraid to even start installing unless I had another computer open beside the target machine so I could tentatively proceed one step at a time.
I wonder if Gentoo actually needs to be so hard to install. After all, it could probably boot into a graphical or menu driven installer just like other dists, but with the difference that it additionally builds some packages instead of copying the binaries.
I doubt the moderators will see this, and as such I doubt much of the slashdot crowd will either. But I find your attitude rather close minded.
There is this wonderful invention, for all of the Unices/Linux distributions out there. It's called SVGAlib. You can use it in conjunction with apps like mplayer and links, and view images and watch movies in a CLI interface. No X involved.
And it has nothing to do with your prosecution complex that people who use CLI instead of a GUI (I'm saying this as a three year XFCe user) are elitist or whatever. Setting up SVGAlib is really simple, and most CLI apps that you would think need the ability to view graphical things (Movies, images) have an option to use SVGAlib.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
Two things.
Firstly, we're talking about Free Software not Open Source, specifically because Open Source refuses to directly address the issue of freedom, for some reason preferring to focus on pragmatism.
Secondly, the grandparent said, "this is what RMS meant when he coined the term Free (libre) Software". No one mentioned the GPL, nor is anyone claiming that RMS invented the concept of free software; it existed long before the GNU project started. All RMS did was to make sure that people knew what they were giving up by accepting proprietary software.
It's a Zap Brannigan (Futurama) quote.