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Mandrakelinux Goes X.org
dvalin writes "With Mandrakelinux now going for X.org it seems like every big linux distributor now has officialy dumped XFree86.
First release for cooker was announced on the changelog list the 7th of June:
http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/changelog/2004-0 6/msg00799.php
Nice to see for all us cookers out there:)
Also on another note, Mandrakelinux has also switched to gcc-3.4 now"
I don't understand why everyone is switching to x.org when it's known that there will be significant changes coming in the next couple of releases. It seems to me like that's begging for problems.
can someone explain the benefits to me in real terms? performance?
What are the differences between XFree86 and X.org, besides the liscences and names? I havnt really had any experiences with X.org
anyone knows if/when x.org will make it to debian experimental/unstable ?
i don't want to build mine because the next apt-get dist-upgrade may overwrite x.org with xfree86, so i'm waiting for the packages. i just want to know how long i'll have to wait.
What ? Me, worry ?
It seems to me that the major distros are all jumping to X.org because of the XF86 licensing issue. Are there any other advantages to X.org, or are distros just jumping to it over what looks like a quite trivial license change?
XFree86 project was scuicided and this is what happens. :) Personally, any change for the better including new implementations and speed enhancements will do everyone good.
Speaking of which, this is off topic, but has anyone gone x.org for their own machines and if so, what's the smallest compiled binaries sizes (total X install) you've come up with? I'm looking at working with DamnSmallLinux and the smaller the better, or straight out integration (unless that's pure evil)
Post some replys, I'd love to hear from everyone.
Looks like XFree86 has a bad management staff. If companies and people all start jumping ship you fix why they are all doing it. It's simple business.
Evolution or ID?
I've never used X.org but I've used XFree86 for almost 10 years now and have not had any issues with it. What is the advantage of X.org? Are there good techincal reasons or is it just politics (of which frankly theres far too much off in OSS these days IMO)?
Is the format for the XF86Config file the same? What does the switch to X.org mean for end users?
Actually, Xorg is just a fork of XFree86 right before the licence change.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
XFree86.org changes a few words in their license, and within four months almost every major Linux distribution and BSD has dumped it. How much longer does it have left? I'd guess by the end of the year the team will be disbanded as the independant OSS people move to x.org. Oh well, I never like the name XFree86, especially after it was ported to other architectures (XFree68? XFreePPC? :)
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
The XFree86 process has been dysfunctional for quite some time with politics dominating. A fork was probably imminent either way. This is natural selection at work, and shows why open source is an effective model.
Im only half way through downloading the v10 offical isos.... crap...
should probably get this or wait for the next "community" release...
With the length of that Novel you posted, you'll need to type a lot faster than that to get FP!
GCC is still 3.4.0.
GCC 3.4.1 is targeted for June 15.
and now X-windows on Fedora runs alot faster. I'm happy to see the distros leaving Xfree86
Xorg is a fork of XFree86 due to a change in licensing on XFree86 software. Apparently the XFree license has had a 'marketing/advertising' clause added to it which may make it incompatible with the GPL. That was the straw that broke the camel's back..... From what I've read, their has been a lot of friction for a long time between XFree leadership and development community for various reasons (too many to list here). You can get the details about Xorg from here.
Anyone know where I can find decent information on the X protocol without druging through the source? I've been toying around with Y-Windows, and I've been wondering just how much work it'll take to make some kind of compatibility driver/subsystem.
Thanks in advance.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Can anybody give an update on what the thinking inside the BSD community on the Xfree86 vx X.org is? Do they plan on changing or staying with Xfree86?
Its great to see another distro adopt x.org as the cornerstone of their distro.
When XORG 6.7.0 was released, to put it midely, i was running around the house naked celebrating with great joy knowing that finally X11 will be bought kicking and screaming into the 21st century in regards to performance.
With the heavy weight of the distros plus SUN, hopefully SUN will stop having their own in house X server and instead adopt the XORG. What this should mean is greater enhancements coming to Solaris and all platforms that rely on XORG.
What I am disappointed in, however, is the lack of movement by FreeBSD to getting XORG working. A known bug that has been sitting in bugzilla since last month still hasn't been fixed, whats taking FreeBSD so long?!
it seems like every big linux distributor now has officialy dumped XFree86
But is XFree86 actually dumped? Surely their future work (even if it does come out slowly) will continue to be utilised by X.org. And right now all they've done is fork a version of XFree86 anyway. In effect everyone is still using XFree86, and unless X.org has some kind of wild new direction planned, it doesn't look like much is going to change for users. Bah. It's all too political and boring.
What's wrong with 'whinging'? That is a word. Unless you're just pretending not to know... I dunno these things.
Is it compatible with the XFree86 config files?
God knows we don't want to have to write another X server config file by hand after finaly getting one to work.
Or perhaps, X.org is just better so we won't have so much trouble.
I've not used X.org yet, so I can only ask others.
Less look fast, more go fast.
whinging is an actual word...
Tom.
Oh arse
It is not the business success of the company that we are cheering about, but the great product they produce.
The original was named X386 (yes, after an intel 386). Also I should say XFree86 was named "Free" not because it was , but because it rhymed with three.
And that's how it ended upQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
One thing which was nice about xfree86 is that is was very crossplatform, so it ran under linux, *bsd, solaris (etc) and on i386, ppc, arm etc. How will this be with x.org? Any plans?
Yes, but it is the British spelling. The American version is, of course, the preferable and correct one to use ;o)
In case the parent post is a little confusing, Fedora Core 2 uses Xorg as the X-server and XFCE is one of the available WMs (along with the usual Gnome, KDE etc).
:)
I'd have to agree that XFCE is a very compact, tidy and high-performance WM. Great for low-end boxes and even power-users who don't want to loose potential gaming resources to a WM
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
and shows why open source is an effective model
Not so, it only shows that open source is an effective model IF these transitions occur smoothly and the destination is found to be worthy the journey.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Thank you for your beautiful illustration of point number three. Please don't sue me.
It doesn't show why open source is effective, I doubt a company would let it get so dysfunctional (it would effect its income).
Open source is effective but this is not an example.
Too bad fedora wasn't in it, oh wait it's that floater that just won't go away.
What if the company goes out of business? What happens to everyone that depends on their product then?
Here, why don't you just take X-Windows
Put the X at the end so you get
Windows X
And then add a P for good measure
Windows XP!!!! and you're done!!!! YAY!
The package revision is 0.1mdk. That means it is not yet the first real release of the package, but a pre-release. The changelog also clearly indicates it is a CVS copy of GCC. Once GCC 3.4.1 is officially out, and the package has been stabilized, the package release will become 1, and increase as other changes/improvements are made to the package.
It shows how open source is effective for the consumer, not for nessesarly for the producer. It also shows basic market economy, company makes bad product, consumers switch. This is how things should work, but generally don't in a more locked in system that is generally produced in closed source.
Suppose that I have XFree86 4.2 or 4.3 on my system, and I've been happily using apt/yum/rpm to keep myself up-to-date. How difficult is it to switch to X.org?
If X.ORG is marked as conflicting with XFree86, then apt will uninstall XFree86 for me -- along with everything that depends on it. KDE, Gnome, all my X applications... ack!
Or should I continue with XFree86 for a while? Obviously, my install tools don't care about license changes.
chiefly British. Please keep it that way.
- Yankee No. 203,034,030
Not true, because through the process of natural selection if the fork is -not- worthy very few if any will switch to it and the product will wither and die.
... far more effective than bying a commercial product that decides to make changes that aren't compatible with your setup and then saying "too bad, you have to upgrade, you might want to change you setup".
If the transition isn't smooth then selection will be slowed until the transition has taken place. If the destination isn't worthy after transition, people still won't switch.
Sounds effective to me
Is it perfect? Nope, I think the Universe has an if() loop that states if anyone finds the perfect one-size-fits-all business model it then transfers the rights to the supreme being and ends the experiment. However, it is still quite effective.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
If it's not GPL, it's nonsense.
Will/Does the NVidia or ATI drivers work in x.org ? Will NVidia/ATI support future x.org upgrades, or will they continue to support xfree ?
What about the proprietary drivers from ATI and NVidia? Do we need to start lobbying them to support X.org rather than xfree86, or will the existing drivers work?
Apple released X11, an X-windowing system based on XFree86. I wonder if X11 will change also.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
the license is the old xfree86 license
From looking at the x.org website, I get the impression that x.org is the official decendent of the orginal closed-source X11, while historically XFree86 was just a free implementation. However, it looks like X.org adopted XFree86 4.x as their own code base, which makes me wonder what happened to the old closed-source X11. Did the old X11 just die a silent death as everyone adopted the open source implementation?
LOL the irony.
:)
You read carefully through that long post to find something to fault and then you prove the point that so incensed you.
p.s incensed is a word too
Funny how Xfree86, which started as a liberal spin-off of the "de jure" X Foundation, only to become the de facto standard for this foundation later on, now finds itself buried in bureaucracy and licensing problems, and getting passed by, no other than, the "new, exiting" X.org foundation.
:-)
(Lots of letters and commas in that sentence
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
XFree86 used an X/BSD style license, then added some more conditions to it that people did not like.
X.org uses a X/BSD style licencse without those new conditions.
open source means someone else can easily pick up support. not so with closed source which usually doesn't allow maintenance or development of the source code.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
At first glance this is poorly formated, incoherent babble, but once you realize that the etymology of 'petard' is 'little fart' it becomes purest comedy gold.
How does all this affect X as distributed on non-x86 platforms? Apple's X11 app is based on XFree86, but what about X as it comes with Solaris, AIX, et al. Does IBM, Sun, etc. write their own, which conforms to the X spec, or are they in some way beholden to what happens with the XFree86 project? I don't know why I thought this, but I was under the assumption that the XFree86 project represented "official" development of X going forward, after MIT stopped working on it.
Some people on the XFree86 Forum list claim it's the vendors using Xorg for their own interests.
This guy is way out there
In Open Source, if you play ball then everybody sticks with you, if not, say goodbye.
Open Source will prevail, the community votes by turning their backs on that which is vile. It's a pity that people can't break free from the Microsoft strangle-hold so easily.
The message is rather blunt. They're switching to X.org and it's highly unlikely that anyone will switch back once they go through the effort of dumping XFree.
The political messages happened months ago when maintainers of various distros made it pretty clear that the new license wasn't going to work for them. Xfree had PLENTY of time to back down or reach a compromise with those that were offended by the new license....they didn't. So now Xfree86 is effectively going to become an orphan and will likely just wither away.
What happens when you throw an X Server party and nobody comes? We'll soon find out.
Slightly OT: It's very common thing to happen. Because every idea tends to become ideology, and every movement tends to become organization. There is also a third thing that tends to become something else, but I forgot it. (I would really be thankful if someone could recognize how this proverb sounded in original, and what was the third thing.)
No sig today.
Xfree86 is dying...
Try Y
.. you just wait :P
I am still prototyping Z
If Xfree was cross platformable, then I don't see why x.org wouldn't be. Remember, it's a fork. Think Xfree86 + improvements + future updates
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
for life, not just until they can afford to fool some more people into donating more money.
All the distro's just like the new name. XFree86 was just too hard to keyboard and sounded funny. xorg.conf is much easier to type than XF86Config. X.org just sounds better, that's why everyone's switching, not because of serious licencing or oranizational issues. (grin)
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
I suspect it should better be pronounced BORG and means that all Linux distros will be assimilated.
but also costumers dont look only at quality,i think is also based on tradition, people are used to have on their computers a Windows Operating System, Microsoft Office, etc....People Trust on their neighbor that lived there for years they wont trust on the "New-kid-From the block".....i dont have anything against linux and the creator(mr. torvalds),and open source promoter and creator of the GPL(mr. stallman)...in fact i have my pc with Linux! =) but my point is...how to break the tradition?
Some info about this commercial X server. I wanted a Linux laptop, but neither wanted to spend a ton of money and have to fight with the damn thing to install Linux, nor spend the assload for a Mac. So I got a reasonably powerful from powernotebooks.com. So I don't care too much about the licensing issue. Does this make me evil?
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
Great distro for newcomers.
All's true that is mistrusted
My experience at HP was eye-opening in this regard, Sun is even worse.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
So what has the XFree86 project's reaction been to this? They'll have noticed the defectors to X.org like everyone else. Are they contrite or defiant?
to the loss of something.
:)
:)
Thank you
A lot (not alot)
Go fishing THEN clean up. (not than)
I'd rather a bludgoning THAN a tar and feathering. (not then)
Fortunately, the rope around his neck was too LOOSE to choke him. (not lose.)
If you don't fold this hand you will LOSE all of your money. (not loose)
Thanks and have a fab day
Good names really do help grease the wheels.
When we forked Inkscape from Sodipodi, we gave a lot of careful thought to branding, and over the course of the project it's paid off in a lot of small ways.
Of course branding doesn't determine the long-term success of a project; there are a lot of successful projects which are even agressively BADLY branded (e.g. GIMP, or (IMO) Sodipodi). Long-term a project stands or falls by its technical, legal, and organizational merits.
But in the short term branding is often the thing that gives you those little critically needed boosts at the right times.
Don't think that cuddly penguin hasn't helped Linux.
DNA just wants to be free...
If you are the real Bruce Perens, then this comment makes you less of a business man than I thought. Throwing this kind of insults around will not help Userlinux.
:)
AC (But I might be Scott McNealy
For great justice!
You might find closure in the knowledge that I, as
a Sun employee and X org rep instigated the notion that X.org reincorporate itself as a 501(c)3
research charity so that X org could reconcile its
relationship to the dominant X distro (XFree86).
This was a question that we had been debating
for more than 3 years.
I also drafted the motion to terminate furthur
development of the SI as it had become irrelevent
as a reference standard. The symbolism of this
step is major- it alludes to issues of
standardization, certification, stewardship,
and revamping of the perspective for organizations
whose interest in X go back to day one (June 1986)
Outside of X.org, the symbolism may not have
such impact, but there are lessons about
the 15 year history of this technology.
Please note that X.org never intended a fork to XFree86, hostile or otherwise. We are maintaining
binary compatibility for the foreseeable future.
The departure was instigated by the license change.
The driving issues behind creation of the new X.org are openness, inclusiveness, and more
effective process for advancement and innovation
in the X and desktop technologies.
X.org breaks logjams for our work at Sun in
accessibility and internationalization to name
a few things. Now that the new X.org exists (and
it is obviously not a Sun puppet)we are doing everything we can to complete the integration
process.
And finally, while we may promote X.org and
imply deprecation of Xsun, it's not free beer.
I am happy to be part of a team of 8 talented individuals whose work continues to provide
benefit beyond Sun's customers. The premise
of X.org is to provide a governance for all
stakeholders in X development, whether free
by choice or employed by choice.
I really believe that X.org exists to
invigorate our work and ultimately create more employment for bright folks who can work
cooperatively with other free and employed developers. Doesn't that make good sense?
skk
No words were made illegal in the USA. As I
recall the brits (BBC) are the ones banning the
use of certain words on the air. Here we tend to
invent new workds that everybody in the world
accept to use (except the brits).
As for the English language in the USA. It has
been imposed by the fucking brits upon us and
we've adapted to it. We've improved the language greatly.
You have to remember that brits are outnumbered
by German by about 10%. The brits being only
13.1% of the US population, the German 23.3%.
XF86 isn't broken, it isn't slow when compiled right either(okay only gentoo does it right all the time).
It is quite broken. You know when they added multi-moniter support, it broke the extension for hardware video? To get around it, they hacked it so it only works on the primary screen.
How about how Xine has to simulate a keypress every so often to prevent the screensaver from coming on? That, my friends, is a hack.
It has several advanced features that no other GUI system uses. Transparent network support at the top of the list.
That doesn't make up for anything. Fans always bring this up. "B-but, it's network-transparent!" Y-Windows is network transparent too.
That's right you don't have to load a whole desktop to use one app you can just load the app.
Uh, hello? I have to install both entire desktop libraries and base packages. That's what I was talking about. Read, learn, comprehend. I have to install KDE's base system to be able to run some app that happened to be coded for KDE. Instead of implementing one sane development library, a bunch of idealists have decided the more choice, the better--having absolutist views and applying them to everything is why Linux is still only at 1% of usage on Google Zeitgeist. The nearest is OS X up about 4 points (so much for that article declaring that Linux desktop usage would surpass the Mac...).
"Sufferin' succotash."
Debian has made a good job maintaining the XFree86 packageports for a lot of architectures: alpha, arm, i386, m68k, mips, mipsel, powerpc, sparc, hppa, ia64 (this is why new versions of XFree86 often take a while to go from experimental to unstable). Debian switching to X.Org is a great loss for the XFree86 project.
It's not a question of can read. It's a question of want to read.
SuSE is nice because a new user can set a basic install and get a nice desktop with all the bells,whistles,chameleons, and penguins a person could ever want.
Truth be told, some people are just scared of command lines or editiing system filse (and i think there's a reason for that. Nothing like overwriting fstab accidently to really make a new user say 'this is fun, i'm convinced')
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
It's just a fact of life, not an insult. Large companies tend to have a frustrating level of internal politics and bureaucracy that work against productivity. I doubt there's any company of that size that doesn't have such problems.
Of course, smaller companies can have this problem too - all you need is one politician. But, the smaller the group, the larger the chance that people can work together in a happy and efficient way.
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Someone a bit down wants to drop the "." bit. I think it should be used to make the Z in ZORG hard, so you say it with a gutteral, German burst. "TS-OR-GH!" :)
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
My experience at HP was eye-opening in this regard, Sun is even worse.
This is a resounding amen coming from a former Sun employee that worked with a fellow whose wife was at HP...
"Not so, it only shows that open source is an effective model IF these transitions occur smoothly and the destination is found to be worthy the journey."
Not really. The fact is that ALL of the choices available for proprietary software are STILL there in open-source. It's just that you also have MORE choices. So, even if this choice is not good in this situation, all of the other choices still exist.
However, I am sure that the transition will be smooth. Why? BECAUSE NOTHING HAS CHANGED YET. Because of open-source, switching vendors does not mean that you have to change even a single line of code in your system. With the proprietary model, switching vendors means completely wrecking existing infrastructure. In those cases, your questions are valid. In this case, switching to X.org isn't really changing anything yet, just switching vendors.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Surely by now there should be a better low level windowing system than X for linux. It's structure is antiquated and it runs like syrup, even on 3GHz PCs.
I may be wrong, but I don't think the original X11 was EVER closed source until just recently. XFree86 was a fork of the original X11 for x86 machines, and then after X11 closed it's source XFree86 kept on as a fork of the free X11, and then when XFree86 changed its license X.org took over the free development.
So, as far as I know, all free X implementations are just a fork of the original.
Engineering and the Ultimate
We get all kinds of these gun totting dipshits here all the time. They ask us why we give them change in Canadian dollars and why we don't fly the American flag. To get to the island I live on they have to take a ferry but many insist they drove over a bridge for some reason. They ask us where the queen is. They stink like crap. Even their babies are overweight. They show up with winter coats on in the summer expecting to see igloos and polar bears even though this city is only a hundred or so miles north of Seattle. Americans are stupid.
Just look at his user number.
QT open source claus in license or it gets sold to another company i guess.
:( I wanna buy zak mckracken.
Pity companys just pack products away and deny they ever existed
but if the transition is too difficult, then users will simply choose not to change systems. They would keep using XFree86 or the pre-EGCS gcc, for example.
cpeterso
I wonder if that's related to why kernel-2.6.7.0.rc2.1mdk-1-1mdk kernel panics upon boot. rc1.1 did the same.
--
"Sorry, but according to our tests [Which we compiled using a beta GCC], you are trying to [pee] from an open [iLoo] proxy."
I just love it when our Canadian cousins "winge" at their mistreatment at the hands of brutal Americans. Canada would be a lot better off if Quebec were granted independence, and we put the rest of the Canucks into concentration camps. Then we could get at those natural resources that are rightfully ours.
To the South we've got the Mexicans. I heartily support the idea of giving them back Texas. Let the Bushes go to D.F. when they want to rape a nation. On the othe rhand, the Mexicans probably won't want the Tejanos, so we can ship them up to the now vacant lands of Canada, where they'll be happy shooting game and playing their damned polka music.
In a few hundred years, the Tejanos will have multiplied, and with legends of their southern homeland in their hearts, will sweep South, until they control everything from Elesmere Island to Tierra del Fuego. No doubt they'll allow Montreal to remain a free city; Prussians love a good French whorehouse.
See you in July.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
if the fork is -not- worthy very few if any will switch to it and the product will wither and die
We'll have the marketing department take care of that. There's this one VP over in marketing that went to school with a couple guys that sit in the state Senate. He can convince them that our fork is infinitely superior and can probably swing some funding for a government technology and innovation grant. If we really play our cards right we may be able to patent the whole project based upon our fork and really screw the main tree devs.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Two different kinds of AOpen optical mice, an IBM ball mouse, two Chinse nameless matchbox-sized opticals, a Dexxa optical, even an Acer tablet. That's just in this room. Only problem was I had to recompile the Acer tablet drivers 'coz the ones that ship with X are ancient. QED, more or less, for the g'g'g'grantparent.
KDevelop runs flawlessly.
Only issue I've had that looks like a freeze is one multi-processor machine will sometimes power down when you kill the X server. Otherwise, not a blip.
Currently recompiling KDE 3.2.2 from Cooker under Mandrake 10.0 so I can use the Kiosk Admin Tool for an internet cafe.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
But I guess you're too much of an imbecile to figure that out. Seriously, what the hell did they teach you in school? Apparently, they didn't teach you much. I think this betrays your bias in bringing up this tired (and discredited) old chestnut more than anything. Nice of you to point it out!
A story for you, Sir:
d =04/06/11/21422 23
Science: Physicist Loses Degree for Data Falsification
science.slashdot.org/article.pl?si
I whish you luck recovering your karma.
-AC.