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"

Comments

xorg changes

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:xorg changes

[TEMM]

People are switching to X.org due to liscence incompatbilities of XFree86 with the GPL.

Re:xorg changes

[colinleroy]

Well, I think switching to X.org sooner rather than later allows for more progressive changes. Switching from the latest XFree86 with the "correct" license to the first X.org release, is a matter of changing a few scripts, paths and names.
Architectural changes that could happen later will very probably be transparent to the use. Changing from XFree86 to X.org 6.9.0 (or any other upcoming Xorg release) will cause broder changes to take place and as such will make bug reporting and chasing harder.
Also, I think switching fast is meant as a strong political message from the distros to XFree maintainers.

Re:xorg changes

[AKAImBatman]

it's becoming increasingly apparent that MandrakeSoft doesn't care much about stability anyway :(

No kidding. When I did a review of Mandrake 10.0, I found that nearly all the software was beta stuff, and that the system was about as stable as a dog in flight. That's not to say that it won't work for most people, but they do go out of their way to be "so sharp I bleed before you cut me" edge.

Re:xorg changes

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's because the distros that are switching are "business interests" who "have chosen to discriminate against XFree86" because they want to "exploit and manipulate *volunteers*." In other words, "just another name for slavery."

(Quotations from David Dawes, President of XFree86.)

Re:xorg changes

[Ianoo]

Giving credit where credit is due is incompatible with the GPL ;)

(at least the method of doing so in the BSD 4 clause license)

Re:xorg changes

[los furtive]

Slightly older versions? You are obviously not familiar with Mandrake.

Re:xorg changes

[BenjyD]

I had very similar experience to yours with Mandrake 10.0. I deleted a perfectly stable system (Arch Linux) to try it out, too.

I've tried two of the current major commercial distros now (Mandrake 10.0 and SuSE 9.1). Both had some nice features but had the minor drawback that they didn't work reliably. If the distro companies can't create a stable system with no show-stopper bugs, why bother adding features? I'm back on Arch now, which is faster and more stable than either.

Re:xorg changes

[sxpert]

WTF are you talking about ???
X.org is an X server, which is similar to what you have inside your NCD thing (except the NCD is stuck at XFree86 4.1.x
X.org itself doesn't communicate with your NCDs, the Xlib in your server does (where the X applications, also known as X clients, reside).
the xlib that comes with X.org does not break compatibility, and still uses the core X protocol (it's X11R6.x), otherwise, it wouldn't be an X 11 library.
Now, your NCD things are flash upgradable. you should kick NCD in the nuts for not making a newer firmware available for that expensive hardware you use.
As for us, we have switched from NCD based X servers to EPIAs booting from the network with PXE...

Re:xorg changes

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh .. X.org dictate the damn X protocols. And they've always been backwards-compatible.

Re:xorg changes

[13Echo]

X.org *is* pulled right from an XF86 4.4 release candidate. It even has the same bugs that XF86 4.4 has (like the broken XV overlay code).

Re:xorg changes

[frost22]

Huh ?

Do you have any actual issues, or is that just a better.than-usual troll ? Why should x.org not work with NCDs ?

BTW - ever tried to get Suns or contemporary Linuxes work with NCD crap ? I think I've seen more pseudo frozen NCD terms than I can count. Those thingies are incredibly picky about what they work with and what not.

Re:xorg changes

[13Echo]

I have a friend that is using EPIAs with PXE as well. Claims it works flawlessly for connecting to Windows servers with RDP as well. Cheap and effective. ;)

Re:xorg changes

[Anonymous Coward]

And like in many failing projects I've seen once the rats leave the sinking ship strange loudmouths turn up who in a rage of hurrying obedience defend their masters against all accusations (including imagined and perceived ones).

Re:xorg changes

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, this is a big problem. Right now I can't think of a distro I can recommend to newcomers.

Mandrake -- too bug-ridden
Fedora -- very slow, and has the partition table problem
Gentoo, Slack, Debian -- way too hard for a newcomer

So basically, we don't have a solid, well-tested and popular desktop distro that's freely available.

Fuck. This is bad for Linux.

Re:xorg changes

[sxpert]

As I said, You don't know what you are talking about. the core stuff won't EVER change, all new stuff goes into these really practical things called "X extensions" which are some sort of plugins that can be used when available, or simulated if not present.
now, stop trolling and go do your homework before whining, you have a lot to read on xorg.freedesktop.org

Re:xorg changes

[fodder69]

Since we are throwing out ancedotal evidence, my Mandrake box which started as 7.x has been upgraded all the way through and is now at 10.0 community. It runs rock solid stable while playing UT2004, and records TV programs at 640x480 30fps for weeks on end without rebooting or ever having to look twice at it.

Re:xorg changes

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on the date of your review (April), and the fact you downloaded the isos, I can only assume you did this review based on the "Community Edition". This was never intended to be the final version, and in a lot of ways WAS supposed to be beta. Maybe the Official version would work better for you..

Re:xorg changes

[sxpert]

dunno, never tried that (we don't have windows anywhere in sight around here...)

Re:xorg changes

[wayne606]

Xlib is not part of the X server, it's part of the X client. They communicate via the X protocol. If either X.org or XFree86 make changes to the protocol that the other doesn't follow we could be in big trouble (unless it's of the form "Does the server support extension blah? If so then use it."). They would be nuts to do this because Sun, HP, Apple, etc all have their own servers and client libraries and *must* interoperate with each other and linux, not to mention 10-year-old statically linked applications.

Re:xorg changes

[squiggleslash]

Nope. Actually, the GPL requires credit be given if the program is interactive and the version you're modifying already prints a copyright message:

2c: If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

The major issue with the XFree86 license is that it is more specific about how the credit should be given. The ironic thing is that people using GPL'd forks were probably the only bunch that were required to give credit before this issue, given that XFree86 is indeed interactive, and does print a copyright message when it starts.

Re:xorg changes

[Anonymous Coward]

They would be nuts to do this,

Yes I agree, but there are lots of people screaming to remove this "unused cruft" from X and make it faster.

I guess I am looking at more that the newly formed X.org is not fully solidified in what they are planning. It can easily get out of control with feature creep and start making changes that can break things fast.. .espicalyl with features that a small subset use like the X networking protocols and functions. there are at least 1000 X users that only use it locally on the desktop to every X user that is using remote X terminals.. making the 1000 happy at the expense if the one is very tempting.

Re:xorg changes

[squiggleslash]

Actually I just figured out what your second paragraph meant and realised I shouldn't have started my reply with "Nope". Sorry!

Re:xorg changes

[ElGnomo]

Solution: Spawn of Debian. Take what is probably the best distro out there and preconfigure it and add some administration utilities and you get the best of both worlds. Examples: MEPIS, Knoppix, Lindows (Linspire), the late Corel Linux, etc...

Re:xorg changes

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeDesktop is in fact talking about tossing XLib all together and then reimplementing X11 legacy-compatibility around another library. Go check the whitepapers.

Re:xorg changes

[13Echo]

They're basing it off of PXES.

http://pxes.sourceforge.net/

It's a pretty good solution for connecting to all sorts of terminal servers.

Re:xorg changes

[auzy]

The reason isn't only because of the licensing, its also because Xfree86 was a badly managed project.. It was very common for programmers to write code which wasn't accepted (I heard for instance the cygwin coders spent a very long time coding patches which they refused to accept).

They also moved slowly.. At the rate Xfree86 was going.. in 10 years maybe we'd be getting up to OS X level, but with xorg, I know a few people are working on the compositing already (the stuff needed for the translucent window effects and stuff), and libraries like cairo I'd imagine will be better utilised.

So, many of the flames here I think are wrong, and are made by people who have no idea what the current situation is.. In fact, I'm betting that it will be a year tops until everyone here is thankful of the changes..

I'm not a coder for Xorg, but I do hang around the channel alot, and have seen how fast Xorg is evolving (I do code though)

Anyway, you want simple applications, and maybe a bit more stable server, go Xfree86.. If you want something, that is more cutting edge, can easily produce nice next generation effects that can surpass longhorn, Xorg is your best choice for the future.

Haven't you noticed that nothing has visibly changed in X since the first accellerated ones came out, other then more drivers (lets face it, you could still run Xfree86 3.3 and get pretty much the same experience then now, if your drivers worked on it). Xorg however will add extensions that will finally make it worth while enough to be hoping for an upgrade.

Re:xorg changes

[BenjyD]

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but the problems I found were:

Mandrake 10:
- Kdevelop crashes on startup (there's a simple workaround, but it's a pretty obvious bug they should have fixed before official)
- installer and drakconf lock up with some USB mice connected, so the configuration tools were unusable for me.
- Hard freezes on startup and shutdown

SuSE 9.1
- Firefox crashed on me a lot (much more than with other distros)
- overly long boot time (five times as long as my current system)
- USB keyboard and mouse randomly wouldn't work on boot (about 1 in 15 boots, no problems in other distros apart from Mdk)
- random lockups when powering off due to sound card module problem, plus odd static from speakers (again, not seen with any other distro)

The USB and Kdevelop problems are reported in Mdk's anthill bug system for both 9.2 and 10.0 by many people. I don't know about the SuSE bugs, I was too fed up by then to bother, I just wiped it and reinstalled Arch.
Of the two, SuSE was better, but neither of the two gave had any killer features that made it worth struggling with the problems, when there are many perfectly good free alternatives. They were both very good-looking distros that I would have liked to have used, but until the bugs are gone I'd rather have something that works.

Re:xorg changes

[Daengbo]

Hey Lumpy! Fellow thin client businessman, here.
Rest at ease. I would've been worried, too, but x.org is working with (under?) freedesktop.org, of which Jim McQuillan is a founding member. Since he makes his living off of thin client consulting and LTSP, I don't think we have to worry.

I actually feel safer than I previously did with the future of XF86.

Re:xorg changes

[stevey]

It will certainly be interesting to see how many of these patches now get in.

The Debian X Strike Force produce a packaged version of X which runs on more platforms than the native version, seeing those patches folded in would be wonderful news.

Re:xorg changes

[spitzak]

I would think that "todays x.org" is going to resemble "tomorrows x.org" at least as much, and probably slightly more, than "todays XFree86" is going to resemble "tomorrows x.org".

Re:xorg changes

[coolfrood]

For what it's worth, there *are* valid reasons to move forward with newer versions. For instance, I could never get X working reliably with my laptop (ATI Radeon Mobility 9200) with XFree86 4.3.x. I had to finally use XFree86 4.4 that Mandrake pulled out due to licensing concerns. X.org sounds promising though, I might give it a shot.

Re:xorg changes

[BenjyD]

Huh? How about you learn to read and think before randomly insulting people? Half the problems are non-USB connected.

Even if that were the only problem, why should I throw away my excellent $30 optical mouse (yes, I have an MS mouse) that works perfectly well in Arch, Gentoo and Debian in order to work around a bug in a distro I have no strong reason to want to use. That doesn't make sense.

Re:xorg changes

[BlindSpy]

Who says change is bad? I've switched over to xorg in Gentoo and its a bit faster. I hope there is only more changes like that to come.

Re:xorg changes

[ckaminski]

SuSE.

It passed my "Dad" test (only because he knows what user accounts are).

Re:xorg changes

[IncohereD]

FreeDesktop is in fact talking about tossing XLib all together and then reimplementing X11 legacy-compatibility around another library. Go check the whitepapers.

If they're implementing legacy compatibility on it, what exactly is the problem?

It seems you are the know-nothing troll.

Try actually learning about what you troll about next time, as this can CERTIANLY break what he is talking about.

You can't say anything CERTAINLY until you see it in action. Let's argue about what % compatible something that doesn't exist yet will be! Yay!

Re:xorg changes

[athakur999]

X.org is the organization that maintains the X standards. It's a pretty good bet that, since they're the ones maintaining the standard, they'll make sure their own distribution adheres to them.

Re:xorg changes

[peragrin]

Why mod as a troll when i call bullshit.

XF86 isn't broken, it isn't slow when compiled right either(okay only gentoo does it right all the time). It has several advanced features that no other GUI system uses. Transparent network support at the top of the list. That's right you don't have to load a whole desktop to use one app you can just load the app.

Now XF86 does need updates for the 21 Century. it can use enhancements, and changes to fix the bugs that the developers wouldn't fix.

If anything the XFree86 team is afraid of change, and it cost them. Linux users don't mind change as a large percentage of them are willing to run beta software and help fix it. Change and Linux go hand in hand, most of the people who currently use Linux, can run multiple Kernenl's and mulitple UI's. Something most windows users can't even grasp.

Re:xorg changes

[Lumpy]

thank you,

you are the only person who was able to give me a straight answer to this concern.

Re:xorg changes

[swillden]

Everything in XF86 is broken. But Linux users are afraid of change and won't get off this 20+ outdated architecture.

Let us know when you've finished implementing the replacement. Don't forget the network transparency. Please also make sure it's at least as fast as XFree86 (not an easy task), as extensible as X11 (which now makes effective use of hardware features that were undreamed-of 20 years ago), as easy to program with as GTK and Qt, as portable as XFree86 and supports as many video cards as XFree86.

Making it easier to configure would be good, but X.org will probably beat you to that. Making it less resource-intensive would be good, also, but the various projects working on making X servers that run on tiny hardware platforms will probably beat you to that, too.

Anyway, happy hacking!

Re:xorg changes

[BlindSpy]

I knew nothing about Linux and used Gentoo right from the begining with no problems. There's no such thing as "too hard for newcomers" as long as the "newcomer" can read.

Re:xorg changes

[Cro Magnon]

I've had good luck with SuSe on my previous machine. It's the distro I'm most likely to recommend to "Aunt Tillie".

Re:xorg changes

[Cro Magnon]

I've frequently had trouble with RedHat/Fedora and older versions of Mandrake (I didn't bother with 9.x/10.x). SuSe worked great on my older box, but choked on my latest & greatest computer. :(

Re:xorg changes

[squiggleslash]

I just read that thread (and a few others) and it's the most depressing thing I've seen all day. The tone, the quality of the discussion, etc, is like reading an Amiga advocacy list - and I don't mean in 1990, I mean today. The paranoia, the outdated view of the world, the extremist rhetoric.

If Dawes, Georgina, et al, represent the current direction of XFree86, then XFree86 is dead. And for what? A clause in a license that does something that could have been achieved by friendlier, more flexible, means? A failure to work within the FOSS communities to achieve it because of apparent hostility to the GPL?

What a depressing end to a great project. I hope X.org succeeds where XFree86 could have done.

Re:xorg changes

[WindBourne]

In defense of XFree86, they came about due to 2 reasons:

1. The X org was not truely open source.
2. Xorg was moving way too slowly.

It is humourous that this has come full circle. It also shows that the way to usurp an open source project is be more OSS and work harder. :)

Re:xorg changes

[lspd]

Take what is probably the best distro out there and preconfigure it and add some administration utilities and you get the best of both worlds.

I was thinking of something along these lines a while back. Something like a sane defaults Debian install where you pop in a CD, hit return once and an image installs to the first hard drive wiping it clean. The discover package would do all the heavy lifting of hardware configuration, use DHCP by defualt, X would be set to use VESA by default and GDM/KDM would be set to autologin (with a script to prompt for new user and root passwords on the first boot.)

Knoppix is great, but it's a PITA to pull all of the Knoppix specific packages out of an installed system so that you have a pure Debian box.

Re:xorg changes

[n0dez]

I agree with you; the problem is the GPL.

Re:xorg changes

[zurab]

SuSE 9.1

I haven't gotten into 9.1, but 9.0 works perfectly for me and I am planning to skip at least one version. So, on 9.0:

Firefox crashed on me a lot (much more than with other distros)

Firefox has never crashed at all. Konqueror crashes about couple of times a week from some crappy Javascripts.

- overly long boot time (five times as long as my current system)

Turn off the services you don't need. SUSE tries to guess what you need during install, but almost always starts more stuff than you actually need.

- USB keyboard and mouse randomly wouldn't work on boot (about 1 in 15 boots, no problems in other distros apart from Mdk)

Again, I never had that problem on 9.0 and I am using USB mouse and keyboard daily. I did have a problem with PS/2-to-USB converters, but I had the same problem with Windows, so it's probably hardware related.

- random lockups when powering off due to sound card module problem, plus odd static from speakers (again, not seen with any other distro)

Never heard of this either.

SUSE's main advantages are ease of configuration, lots of included software and YaST. If you don't use any of those, then SUSE won't make much difference, other than maybe standards compliance. I've been using SUSE since 6.x versions and in my experience it's been extremely stable while not giving up features and options. But then again, I haven't tried 9.1 yet, and as of now, I am not planning to either. OK, maybe I'll give it a try on my dual athlon on a test partition.

Re:xorg changes

[jonadab]

> When I did a review of Mandrake 10.0, I found that nearly all the software
> was beta stuff

All Mandrake anything.0 releases have a lot of bleeding-edge stuff. 9.0 had
a version of gcc that was binary incompatible with both past *and* future
versions, for crying out loud, because the binary-incompatible changes were
halfway finished. If you want stability, you hold out for the .1 or .2 release.

Re:xorg changes

[swillden]

Yes, because you can't bring up criticism of anything unless you're a programmer. That'll bring these projects to the masses.

Strawman argument. It's utterly obvious to everyone that writing the code yourself is not the only way to go about contributing.

And it's utterly obvious to everyone but you that there's a huge difference between detailed, constructive criticism and "Everything in XF86 is broken".

XFree86 is NOT fast.

Evidence? It's generally faster than MS Windows, for whatever that's worth. On both 2D and 3D benchmarks, for cards with good drivers.

Congratulations, you got the ability to change resolutions on the fly and are just getting around to translucency! Meanwhile, OS X and Windows are already moving onto full 3D acceleration.

Yep, as discussed, catching up in that area is one of the benefits of the move to X.org. The X11 protocol itself is not the reason for the delay here, and it *is* rather impressive that X11 will support all of this new stuff well, given how old it is. It gives us good reason to believe it will adapt to whatever we need 10 years from now, as well.

GTK and QT are far from easy to program, and they are one of some 20 libraries for developing apps.

How would you know? Didn't you say, or at least imply, you're not a programmer, by way of excusing yourself for not developing the replacement you feel is so badly needed?

And, in any case, you're wrong, at least with respect to Qt (I haven't worked with GTK). Qt isn't the best UI toolkit I've ever used, but it is the second best, and improving rapidly.

I seriously doubt it. After decades of XFree86 development, we've got what--XConfigurator?

In the first place, it's "XFree86 -configure" and it actually works extremely well on 90% of hardware. For example, I used it on a new machine yesterday and the only thing it did wrong was select a default resolution and color depth that my video card could only drive at 60Hz -- and I hate 60Hz flicker. So, I used the KDE control center to change it to a slightly lower resolution with a higher refresh rate. Easier than WinXP, actually, which requires me to hunt down a driver CD for the machine.

Moving on to the future, X.org's stated goal is configurationless configuration for all video cards. Autodetection and auto-configuration of a basic, working setup, so that nice, user-friendly tools can be used to tweak the settings from there. Much like my experience yesterday, but without having to manually copy the auto-generated config file to /etc/X11.

And the reference to the "decades of XFree86 development" is silly. There's nothing in XFree86 that inherently makes autoconfiguration much harder than it is for Windows (it's a little harder, because XFree86 supports non-x86 platforms -- something any X replacement needs to do as well. Mac OSes have it much easier, of course). The problem is nearly solved now, and with X.org's focus on it, there's no reason to think it won't be nearly perfect soon.

So much for those "fast" claims.

Eh? "Resource-intensive" has to do with the fact that you need sufficient RAM to run it. Assuming you do have enough RAM, it is very fast. How much do you need? Depends on what you're doing, of course, but for a given application set X on Linux requires less memory than Win2K or WinXP. In practice, on modern hardware RAM is cheap enough that X's size is not a problem. On a machine with 256MB of RAM, getting X to give back 20MB isn't going to make much difference, in most cases. On a machine with 1GB (like my laptop), it's a complete non-issue.

And, as I pointed out... there are people working on that problem, because it does matter on very small devices.

Next.

My sentiments exactly. Come back when you have some detailed and supportable criticisms that really indicate a need to replace X11.

Re:xorg changes

[HiThere]

I'd recommend Libranet, but it's been so long since they last updated their CD that setting up a system takes about a day with a fast system and a fast download line (and the experience of having done it several times before).

KRUD's version of Fedora (w. patches) is pretty good, but limited. And if the newbie starts going to the experimental sites to get their packages, you will soon need to be doing a re-install. Still, if everything that they'll need is in the basic package, then that might be a good choice. (They're still on a patched version of Fedora 1 because they consider Fedora 2 too unstable, which seems to be true.)

I'd never recommend a system which has the user log in as root, so that lets out Lindows/Linspire. I haven't heard anything bad about Xandros as a newbie system, but I couldn't support it, as I don't know the system. Etc.

I do wish that Mandrake would start paying attention to QA. They are the mainstream distro that is obviously appropriate for newbies, only they aren't because of instability. Fine, if they want to have a bleeding edge release, but also sell a current and patched release that's more conservative. Otherwise I can't recommend them.

Re:xorg changes

[Daengbo]

Yeah, you know, I always get nervous when there's an X story on Slashdot, mostly because everyone is talking all this "network transparency stuff is useless" crap, and I think to myself, "What if most apps on X start assuming a local host (some already do)? I'd be screwed.
Luckily, I feel that this move makes that less likely.
No problem for the info. If I have it, you've got it.

Re:xorg changes

[KermitJunior]

Morphix foots the bill of Knoppix without all the specific packages.

There is a gentleman (Gandalfar) on the Morphix channel, who has created a "Build your own LiveCD" program called intellibuild. It works nicely, apt-gets the latest .debs and allows you to copy config files over.

The morphix installer is getting better, too.

Re:xorg changes

[The Original Yama]

I think PCLinuxOS is the answer. It is just as easy to use as Mandrakelinux but it looks better, is easier to install (it's a LiveCD) and is more stable.

(disclaimer: I'm an admin at PCLinuxOnline.com but I'm not involved in PCLinuxOS development)

and this means?

[Anonymous Coward]

can someone explain the benefits to me in real terms? performance?

Re:and this means?

[colinleroy]

This page probably can.

Differences?

[TEMM]

What are the differences between XFree86 and X.org, besides the liscences and names? I havnt really had any experiences with X.org

Re:Differences?

[Karamchand]

X.org is actively developed while XFree86 is only maintained at best because most high-profile X developers from XFree86 have changed to X.org.

Re:Differences?

[The Analog Kid]

I read that in the next release there will be compositing implemented, right now though, there isn't much difference but some packages in X.org are updated that aren't in XFree 4.4. Xorg is the future, it's an X server that is actually put under an OPEN development model and patches are accepted, where XFree was not.

Re:Differences?

[starseeker]

As far as the end user is concerned, there are relatively few differences between X.org and XFree86 at this point. X.org is a fork of XFree86, and even if they were gung ho to change everything no project the size of XFree86 is going to get radically altered overnight. (Which I don't think they are, bty.)

I made the switch on Gentoo, where it was very painless. For distros without such a smooth upgrade path and/or non-geek inclined folk it might be better to wait for the next release of the distro (since a foobared X install is a little hard to fix without experience on the command line.) But if you're worried about programs not working or anything like that, there shouldn't be any issues at this point.

The experimental work is, IIRC, focused primarily on the freedesktop Xserver. The major difference between X.org and XFree86 is things will get fixed sooner, driver releases will be better handled, etc. The license change was just the last in a long, long line of problems - fixes made by the cygwin folk, for example, were rotting without ever being applied to the main tree. I don't know all the details of that incident, but I don't think it is the only such either. The XFree86 team wasn't so worried about being responsive to the needs of XFree86 users. (Which is their right, of course, since most of us aren't paying them. But nor should they be surprised by a fork.) X.org is the place for people who want XFree86, but managed correctly and in an open manner. Those who want adventure and bleading edge should scope out freedesktop.org. I don't know what will happen to XFree86 - likely they will keep on the way they have been, with fewer users. I get the sense this won't bother them much, either, but I could be wrong.

Re:Differences?

[kundor]

Xorg works better than XFree86, considering it's just the last good-licensed XFree86 with a lot of bugfixes that the xfree team never got around to putting it.

stop being a moron.

Re:Differences?

[RedWizzard]

X.org is now part of the FreeDesktop.org project. Keith Packard is very much involved with the X.org implementation.

x.org in debian ?

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

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.

Re:x.org in debian ?

[Psiren]

Isn't Debian the official XFree86 testbed, due to the large number of architectures it supports? Would this support be offered for x.org instead perhaps?

Re:x.org in debian ?

[Dionysus]

Probably is going to take awhile for unstable. Debian doesn't move X-Window System into unstable until it gets it running on all supported platforms.
There probably will be unofficial ports long before that, though.

Re:x.org in debian ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that sid currently hosts an cvs 4.4 from before the license change, and I believe the plan is to wait until the split up x is ready and make the big switch all at once.

Re:x.org in debian ?

[mcgroarty]

anyone knows if/when x.org will make it to debian experimental/unstable ?

Debian is not planning a change, as XFree286 is not affected by the licensing changes.

Hey-oooo! Debian versioning joke!!!

Re:x.org in debian ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just after Duke Nukem Forever hits the shelves :)

Re:x.org in debian ?

[TamMan2000]

Why would it take a long time if X.org is just a fork from XFree?

Re:x.org in debian ?

[dmaxwell]

Why would it take a long time if X.org is just a fork from XFree?

Debian does a lot patching, cleaning up, and build script twiddling to make their packages run on all architectures. This only recently happened for XFree86 4.3. When they transition to a 4.4 base, they'll go with X.Org same as everybody else.

Re:x.org in debian ?

[dildatron]

because it is debian. I mean, let's call a spade a spade here. Some distros make newness a priority, others choose older, proven packages. Debian is on the proven side of the spectrum. Debian moves slower than many other Linux distros. This is not a bad thing, it gives the users a choice.

Re:x.org in debian ?

[Technonotice_Dom]

I wouldn't say that - the unstable tree runs with almost all the latest packages. Sometimes you might have to wait a week or so on the less common packages for the latest version to be packaged but it gets there.

Sure, the stable tree is behind, although a new release is in the works but it's like a snapshot of releases that are proven to work. The reason stuff like X.org isn't in yet, as dmaxwell said, all the tidying of scripts and building for multiple architectures - currently 10 with two being prepared for release.

I think I'd support the idea of Debian packages being released on platforms that they're currently available and then filling up the other, lesser used platforms later. But I can see those platforms being forgotton about and a lot of packages only available for say x86.

AFAIK, Debian is the most ported distro around - most of the others are just x86.

Re:x.org in debian ?

[swillden]

I wouldn't say that - the unstable tree runs with almost all the latest packages.

Just last week I finally decided to give Gentoo a shot and, although I like a lot of things about it, I had to chuckle a little at the fact that most of the packages are a minor version or two behind my Debian unstable systems. I always figured Gentoo would be ahead.*

That said, XFree86 is a bit different on Debian than most other packages. While most projects' releases make it into unstable *very* quickly, XFree86 always takes a lot longer. I think that's because the XFree86 developers rely on the Debian X team as the primary port team. Debian's developers play the role of port engineers for lots of packages, but X is a bit different, as it's more architecture-sensitive than most. It's almost as bad as the kernel in that regard, and there are lots of people who work on porting the kernel. For X, there's plenty of focus on x86 and PPC, but everyone on all the rest of the Debian platforms seems to pretty much just wait for Debian to do the work.

[* OT -- the one other Gentoo weakness I've found thus far is that it seems like it will be more fragile across upgrades. Gentoo users are cautious about upgrades, whereas Debian unstable users tend to upgrade constantly and without much concern. That factor will probably lead to my Gentoo system lagging even further behind my Debian unstable systems. Ah, well, nothing's perfect. ]

Re:x.org in debian ?

[david_bv]

Although there is no official stance on it, there seems that debian will not be shipping the monolithic X.org tree, but the modularised version from freedesktop.org. That will happen in sarge+1 though.

See this link for details.

Re:x.org in debian ?

[ninewands]

Debian WAS the official maintainer of the non-x86 branches of the XF86 tree, however, I don't believe that will continue because Daniel Stone has stated for the record that they will NOT ship any version of XFree86 under the 1.1 license.

Re:x.org in debian ?

[kundor]

Just last week I finally decided to give Gentoo a shot and, although I like a lot of things about it, I had to chuckle a little at the fact that most of the packages are a minor version or two behind my Debian unstable systems. I always figured Gentoo would be ahead.*

Are you crazy? I've never seen a release of any package, no matter how minor, that wasn't in the portage tree within a few hours. You probably have "testing" packages masked, as they are by default. Turn off your masking, and emerge sync more often.

[* OT -- the one other Gentoo weakness I've found thus far is that it seems like it will be more fragile across upgrades. Gentoo users are cautious about upgrades,

WHAT? Most gentoo users I know are upgrade addicts -- every day, twice a day if they're bored. I mean, it only takes "emerge sync" followed by "emerge --update world." And that's why you never need to reinstall gentoo -- a simple emerge makes it identical to the latest release.

whereas Debian unstable users tend to upgrade constantly and without much concern. That factor will probably lead to my Gentoo system lagging even further behind my Debian unstable systems. Ah, well, nothing's perfect. ]

You cause me much bemusement. I don't use gentoo, being a Gobo person myself, but your words were ridiculous.

Re:x.org in debian ?

[swillden]

You probably have "testing" packages masked, as they are by default.

Ahh, that would explain the difference. I'll figure out how to change that.

I told you I was surprised that the Debian packages were ahead. I mean Debian unstable is very up to date, but I expected Gentoo to be on the bleeding edge.

WHAT? Most gentoo users I know are upgrade addicts -- every day, twice a day if they're bored. I mean, it only takes "emerge sync" followed by "emerge --update world." And that's why you never need to reinstall gentoo -- a simple emerge makes it identical to the latest release.

Hmm, that's not what I get from reading the forums. I find many posts by people who only update every few months because they can't afford to break their systems.

Anyway, time will tell. As I said, I just installed Gentoo last week, so I hardly claim to be experienced yet.

Re:x.org in debian ?

[mabinogi]

spoken by someone who has never used Debian, or even invetigated it.

The question was when will it get in to Unstable - probably only Gentoo is more up to date than Debian Sid, and I'd guess that it's less stable than Debian too...

However, as stated elsewhere they do take a little longer than most on X updates as they are pretty much the only testing that XFree86 got on a lot of plaforms....

Re:x.org in debian ?

[Rich0]

FYI - the way that gentoo packages work is thus:

1. New package is added (an ebuild file). Whatever archs it is known to work on are added to the ebuild keywords as "~arch" (ie ~x86, ~amd64, whatever).
2. Some time later, if no complaints, the ~ is removed from the keyword.

For x86 pretty much every package has at least ~x86 in it. If you want bleeding edge on a package just add it to your /etc/portage/package.keywords file with the ~arch keyword. Henceforth, that package only will be updated any time somebody releases a new version with minimal testing. If a bleeding edge package that you want needs a bleeding-edge library that you don't want you'll get a dependancy error if you try to update it (you can add the library to your keyword file and it will be accepted). You can also emerge a package one time with ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~arch" and then in the future it won't be kept up to date with the bleeding edge.

I find that gentoo strikes a good balance between bleeding edge and stability. Once in a blue moon a "stable" package has problems (usually compile problems).

On non-x86 environments you pretty-much have to accept unstable packages, and even try out ones that aren't even marked unstable (ie completely unsupported). Most package authors only try out x86 - the other archs then just report in if they work and they get added to the keyword list. I use amd64 - as you might imagine just about everything works fine (plus you can always install an x86 environment chroot'ed and run from there as long as your kernel has x86 support enabled).

Re:x.org in debian ?

[swillden]

Thanks for the information. Since my Gentoo box is a desktop system that isn't my primary work platform, I went ahead and added ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~86" to my make.conf. Part of my goal with installing Gentoo on that box was that I wanted it to track the bleeding edge. Now we'll see just how much bleeding is involved :-)

Re:x.org in debian ?

[Rich0]

If you run ~x86 all the way I can guarantee some bleeding... Things get masked ~z86 if one developer can get the thing to compile with no obvious errors...

Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[desplesda]

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?

Re:Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The main advantage (IMHO) is that they have developer momentum (i.e. lots of developers cast away from xfree, and also new developers with enthusiasm for the project).

Re:Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[nine-times]

In the immediate sense, X.org is barely different from XFree86 4.4.0. They're almost the same code.

However, this fork wasn't made merely because of the licensing issues. XFree86 development has been fairly slow, as well as not really being focused on some of the sort of improvements that would actually help end-users. To the best of my understanding, the X.org people are much more focused on helping Linux become a "desktop" OS than XF86 was.

So, the first release of X.org looks like XF86, and it was a good choice to make it close to identical, to help migration, and it means they're starting from the solid base XF86 provided. However, we should be seeing some real improvements soon (hopefully).

Re:Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[drgonzo59]

Indeed, I just went to the xfree86.org page and they have a list of distros that still support xfree86.org. Nothing major there, all the major ones have switched. Here is the list from: http://www.xfree86.org/distro-support.html # Conectiva # Arch Linux # Ark Linux # Buffalo Linux # JoLinux # Lycoris Linux # Magic Linux # OneBase Linux # OpenNa Linux # Peanut Linux # Plamo Linux # Rubyx Linux # Slax Live Linux # Source Mage # Sorcerer Linux # Yoper Linux

Re:Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[ninewands]

Two points to consider:

1) I assume XF86 means distros that currently support their software and have not announced an intention to change,

2) I know Conectiva was initially RedHat-based, but then, so was Mandrake. I wonder how many of these distros are also derivatives ... hmmm Arch(Debian), Lycoris(Debian), Peanut(appears to be RedHat/Fedora-based), Lycoris(Debian), Slax(could it be Slack-based?), Source and Sorcere (I'd be willing to bet on Gentoo) ... they will eventually switch as their parent distros do.

Re:Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[Brandybuck]

To the best of my understanding, the X.org people are much more focused on helping Linux become a "desktop" OS than XF86 was.

Considering how nebulous the term "desktop" is, this new focus doesn't encourage me. Is this new "desktop" going to be like Aqua where you can only use a tiny handful of high end video cards? Or are they going to cater to the "Linux isn't ready for the desktop until it can do Doom at 333FPS! crowd? Are they going to dump their traditional policy-neutral stance and tell us what window managers and environments to use? And what about those of us who don't use Linux, will we be left behind as X.org makes the software kernel specific? Enquiring minds want to know!

Re:Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[nine-times]

You know, I'm not sure. It would take some looking into, maybe asking someone more involved. However, first time I heard about the X.org fork, I read someone who seemed to be "in the know" saying XF86 was just maintaining the code, maybe refining a little, but, pretty much purposefully, arguably obstinately, avoiding making a "next generation" version that would fit well in the desktop.

Since you ask about "desktop", what I mean is less focused on merely maintaining the traditional, old, though highly flexible, X11 standard, (which had a priority on geek/network/server stuff) and moving towards a windowing system that allows for easier and more predictable setups, and has support for 3D accelleration/effects, transparencies, fonts, and features of the like, plus they'd be a little more ambitious about but fixes and performance improvements and such. This would make it more attractive, more responsive, and easier to develop a user-end desktop system.

Anyway, I don't think all the 3D effects would necessarily be used, but just that they'd be supported. I would expect it'd be more of the Window Manager's (Gnome, KDE, etc) thing to decide whether/how to impliment the effects, but that the X.org crowd would make it easier for the Gnome/KDE people to make it happen (if they choose).

Anyway, I'm talking out of my butt, and this is all hearsay, but that was my impression.

Re:Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[Brandybuck]

less focused on merely maintaining the traditional, old, though highly flexible, X11 standard

And that's what has me worried. I would rather have the flexibility, power and elegance of X11, than the crufty functionally limited Win32. Win32 is successful not because it has a superior architecture or better API, but merely because it has the marketing might of Windows behind it.

p.s. Only bringing up Win32 because that's what everyone points to as the direction X11 must take in order to "survive".

Re:Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[nine-times]

I share your concern, but first of all, don't take my word for any of this. I don't really know what they're up to. Second, I was really trying to put more accentuation on the word "merely". There would be a difference between violating the spirit of having a flexible, powerful, elegant windowing system vs. having a next-generation flexible, powerful, elegant windowing system. I don't really think XF86 was DONE. It's not like we had a perfect little system that couldn't use additional work.

So they'll try to improve it, and if they crap it all up, someone else will fork off of X.org and make something else. But lets not live in the past and settle for old standards if we can come up with better ones.

Re:Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[juhaz]

New features to X protocol have always been done as extensions that are not needed for core parts but may be useful for specialized applications, no reason for this to change, focus in desktop or not.

Is this new "desktop" going to be like Aqua where you can only use a tiny handful of high end video cards?

Yes. In a sense that they may allow extensions and patches that make use of features in high-end video cards. This stuff is not unheard of in XFree86 either. XRender, XVideo anyone?

Or are they going to cater to the "Linux isn't ready for the desktop until it can do Doom at 333FPS! crowd?

Yes. Again, if someone has something to give that makes Doom (it already goes way over 333FPS btw) or 3D graphics in general run faster, why not? DRI anyone?

Are they going to dump their traditional policy-neutral stance and tell us what window managers and environments to use?

No.

And what about those of us who don't use Linux, will we be left behind as X.org makes the software kernel specific?

Linus would never allow graphics core in kernel, Linux is not Windows. Nevertheless let's pretend it is, if X.org would do, for example, performance sensitive parts of drivers in kernel space like NVidia and ATI, again: So what? It would still work in your OS, albeit bit slower.

They are _adding_ optional stuff. Not removing. Not replacing.

Re:Are there any advantages other than licensing?

[MobyTurbo]

Slax(could it be Slack-based?)

Slax is Slackware based, as are "College Linux" and a few others. Since Slackware changed from XFree86 4.4 to X.org recently in -current, I assume the Slackware based distributions will likewise be supporting X.org in future releases.

Good Thing(tm) & FP

[zoloto]

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.

Re:Good Thing(tm) & FP

[ciroknight]

xorg is still pretty much to stock XF86, so you're not going to gain/lose anything by early adopting. Later, it'll become a big deal.

Re:Good Thing(tm) & FP

[NickFortune]

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?

Gentoo linux using the standard ebuild:

-rws--x--x 1 root root 2058368 Apr 26 14:04 /usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg*

That's with some USE flags set - I'm not sure how much, (if anything) they add to the binary size

Re:Good Thing(tm) & FP

[cowens]

Since DSL only uses FB and VESA you are probably better off using kdrive . It is designed to be small and lightweight.

Re:Good Thing(tm) & FP

[GamerGeek]

For a really small X based linux system check out pxes http://pxes.sourceforge.net/. They have an X based system in a 13 meg bootable iso. It's binary compatable with RedHat 8, so it shouldn't be to hard to customise.

good luck

Bad Sales

[millahtime]

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.

Re:Bad Sales

[hendridm]

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.

This might have something to do with it. From their web site:

"We have no corporate sponsors. We have only a volunteer administrative staff, so it is only through the generosity of our patrons that we can fund further development."

That's a helluva a way to run a "business". ;) I have no involvement with the project whatsoever, but it's always been my impression that they position themselves as "ehh, we make X how we want it. If others want to use it, great." Perhaps that's just my limited understanding, but they come off as not really caring about disto numbers and their latest moves seem to reinforce this.

Re:Bad Sales

[div_2n]

If they truly don't care, I don't think they would bother posting this:

http://xfree86.org/distro-support.html

Actually...

[ciroknight]

Actually, Xorg is just a fork of XFree86 right before the licence change.

Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[JBMcB]

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? :)

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[proj_2501]

when i ran netbsd on my good ol' macintosh lc520 i believe the x server was in fact called xfree68.

it only ran in black and white.

perl took two days to compile.

i couldn't figure out how to add a user so i did everything as root.

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[Octorian]

It's NetBSD. Just fire up "vipw" and edit the passwd file manually ;)

(they might have recently added a "useradd" command, but traditionally have not had one, in their minimalist style)

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[happyfrogcow]

x.org is a much better name, right?

well, maybe it is... if it's pronounced ZORG! (with exclamation and all)

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[endx7]

XFree86.org changes a few words in their license, and within four months almost every major Linux distribution and BSD has dumped it.

Er...no on the BSD part. Let's see who -has- actually switched.

OpenBSD: Yup, but not to Xorg. They created yet -another- fork (for now at least?). :P

NetBSD: Nope. XFree86 4.4.0

FreeBSD: Nope. Haven't done much at all, and the current used version is still 4.3.0 (Xorg might become default and is in ports right now, but you'll probably be able to use 4.4.0 if you want to)

Darwin/OS X: Xdarwin?? I'm not sure if this applies or not.

I haven't included ekko, mir, etc because they are far from major.

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[RealAlaskan]

x.org is a much better name,

... if it's pronounced ZORG!

Ok, I vote we make it official:

X.org is pronounced ``ZORG!'' and XFree86 is pronounced ``dead''.

All in favor say ``ZORG!''. If we all say it often enough, it'll stick.

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[Bruce Perens]

There is no team. It's just David.

Bruce

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[ckaminski]

Why don't we just drop the ".", that way, it's still pronounced "zorg", but is spelt xorg, so that we can at least have a grasping chance at a google-match.

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[ChaoticLimbs]

It's a shame. I had heard that there was more to this than simply the licensing. If David has a poor attitude, it's best that developers move beyond him. That's the beauty of the GPL; there is no single point of failure. It doesn't depend on any one person, group, or corporation in order to expand, improve, and mature. The rants I have been reading on Xfree86's forums basically support my initial impression that David believes that he controls X in the free *nix world. It's funny that because of the GPL, the scenario being complained about (with developers leaving and funding a project for their own best interest) is EXACTLY why FOSS is attractive. You can MAKE LINUX AND FOSS DO WHAT YOU WANT. This is good news. This period of flux is also proof to industry that Linux and other open source software can recover from a setback faster than proprietary software can. Linux. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[LarsWestergren]

X.org is pronounced ``ZORG!'' and XFree86 is pronounced ``dead''.

All in favor say ``ZORG!''. If we all say it often enough, it'll stick.

Bump! I mean, ZORG!

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[Bruce Perens]

In technical terms, Open Source licensing gives you a "power of circumvention" to route around damage or bad policy. In this case, we had really credible people like Jim Gettys leading the exodus. Everybody knowledgable takes Jim's word where X is concerned.

Bruce

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[proj_2501]

this was 7 years ago, and i installed netbsd specifically so i could have a command line perl and gcc

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[theNeophile]

Good idea. Someone look into getting Gary Oldman as the mascot.

Re:Wow, that's gotta be a record!

[Neo-Rio-101]

There is no team. It's just David.

There is no Dana... only Zuul.

(ok, old Ghostbusters joke... and I'm a day late)

Re:Great , another config file format to learn.

[kmmatthews]

(of which frankly theres far too much off in OSS these days IMO)

Nowadays?! It has always been this way, and it will always be this way. These are the dynamics of a lot of intelligent, strong willed people working together, albeit in a loose an relatively disconnected manner.

pssst.. it's "of" not "off"

Licence was only the last straw

[InfiniteWisdom]

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.

bugger

[DuncanE]

Im only half way through downloading the v10 offical isos.... crap...

should probably get this or wait for the next "community" release...

Re:bugger

[hfolkers]

I write this from mandrake 10.0, no great problems till now. Maybe special hardware doesn't work, but for me only stupid audio software won't work.

Re:bugger

[ChaoticLimbs]

I got my MDK 10 disks from linuxcentral for supercheap, had some minor installation problems related to my Nforce2 motherboard. In advance, if you have problems during install, just boot linux noapic nolapic.

Re:XF86Config-4

[argius]

In the keyboard section you have to replace XkbRules "xfree86" with XkbRules "xorg"

gcc 3.4.1 does not exist yet

[ishmalius]

Is Mandrake doing a RedHat move, and including a CVS build of a compiler that hasn't been released yet, or is this just a statement that 3.4.1 is the "target" version that will be in the next Mandrake release?

GCC is still 3.4.0.

GCC 3.4.1 is targeted for June 15.

Re:gcc 3.4.1 does not exist yet

[Derang()]

From the link announcing the gcc change:


- 3.4.1 CVS (2004/06/01)


I'm guessing its a CVS build at the moment ;)

Re:gcc 3.4.1 does not exist yet

[Dcnjoe60]

Mandrake cooker, the development version of Mandrake has switched to GCCC 3.4.1, not the release versions. Since the next release of Community and Official are months away, it makes sense for Mandrake to start using the new GCC. By the time the next Mandrake Community is released, GCC 3.4.1 will be officially stable.

Re:gcc 3.4.1 does not exist yet

[Skjellifetti]

And which glibc are they using? IIRC glibc 2.3.2 is not compatible with gcc 3.4 and glibc 2.3.3 has not yet been released. Last month I tried to build an LFS w/ gcc 3.4 and a cvs version of glibc 2.3.3 w/ several patches available from glibc bugzilla. Everything built, but many of the glibc and binutils tests failed. There were also trivial incompatibilities building several of the base programs with gcc 3.4. Does Mandrake have a standard place for obtaining their patches against the base gnu code?

Re:gcc 3.4.1 does not exist yet

[AxelTorvalds]

No GNAT support either. Not yet at least.

Long Story/Short story

[p.rican]

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.

Re:Long Story/Short story

[RdsArts]

Actually, the core (drivers, servers, etc) was put under the new license, meaning they could no longer use GPLed patches. Assuming you'd want to.

The XLib was still MITed, so linking GPLed software against it was fine. Stallman even "vetted" it, so it was kosher there. IMHO, it was more a case of coders saying "we can no longer trust this group of project leaders," and deciding to just fork with [XOrg/Freedesktop].org under more open leadership (of which one can not discount Keith P.'s place) then anything else.

X Protocol?

[ciroknight]

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.

Re:X Protocol?

[Des Herriott]

Try this.

Re:X Protocol?

[alienw]

Go to a decent library, and you will find dozens of thick books that describe the official specification.

What is going on with the BSD's

[Danathar]

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?

Re:What is going on with the BSD's

[Simon Lyngshede]

I don't know about FreeBSD, but NetBSD choose to go with XFree86 4.4, OpenBSD would not accept the license. Currently OpenBSD uses are pre-release of 4.4 from just before the new license was introduced. I don't think the OpenBSD teams has decided what to do yet.

Re:What is going on with the BSD's

[DreadSpoon]

OpenBSD for one is likely to change. They were one of the biggest opponents of the new XFree86 license.

The reasoning for why the new license sucks has absolutely nothing to do with the GPL, despite the uninformed ramblings of the Slashdot crowd. It has to do with practicality. The new XFree86 license is almost impossible to follow depending on your interpretation. The license itself is unclear, and instead of fixing the wording, XFree86 leaders have just made informal statements on mailing lists regarding their own personal interpretation.

The new license is impractical because it requires that attribution to be given to the XFree86 developers wherever any other attribution is given to another party. OpenBSD's complaint was with CD covers. Say you put a "Artwork provided by Foo Bob" on the CD insert. Now, according to some interpretations of the XFree86 license (and these are valid interpretations, because the license wording is very ambiguous and vague) you'd also have to put there in the same font size and prominance, "X Window system provided by XFree86, Inc." Then, if a contributor adds some stuff to the project under the same license, you have to add their name as well. And the next contributor. And so on. Pretty soon you run out of space to put all of these. There's also potential for the license to "spread" as people lift code, resulting a wide variety of apps with hundreds if not thousands of authors that have this incredibly stupid licensing stipulation.

The XFree86 developers have stated that the above scenario is not their intention. But what they say doesn't matter much, because the above is pretty much exactly what the license text implies.

Re:What is going on with the BSD's

[k98sven]

The reasoning for why the new license sucks has absolutely nothing to do with the GPL, despite the uninformed ramblings of the Slashdot crowd.

Richard Stallman interprets the license as GPL-incompatible. Is he also uninformed? I wouldn't say so.

Re:What is going on with the BSD's

[friedo]

Is [Richard Stallman] also uninformed? I wouldn't say so.

Then you probably don't know much about Richard Stallman. The guy is a crank and his grasp on reality is tenuous at best.

Re:What is going on with the BSD's

[runderwo]

The reasoning for why the new license sucks has absolutely nothing to do with the GPL, despite the uninformed ramblings of the Slashdot crowd.

The new license is GPL-incompatible. Applying it to the client-side libraries has been "deferred" according to the Project. To me, that sounds like future plans are in store for applying it to client-side libraries. Once that happens, anybody who distributes a GPL application linked to Xlib without obtaining extra permissions from the application's copyright holders (similar to the OpenSSL exception) will be violating the GPL.

Of course, the problems the license change introduced were not the sole problems. libGL was under an SGI source license which is not GPL compatible. Anyone who was distributing a GPL application linked to the GLX library for XFree86 was also in violation of the GPL already. There are a few other examples of GPL problems related to the variety of licenses that XFree86 finds acceptable to include in their codebase.

The new license is impractical because it requires that attribution to be given to the XFree86 developers wherever any other attribution is given to another party.

Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, in the same form and location as other such third-party acknowledgments.

That alternate stipulation waters down the doomsday scenario you propose. The "corruption" is limited to the software itself.

There's also potential for the license to "spread" as people lift code, resulting a wide variety of apps with hundreds if not thousands of authors that have this incredibly stupid licensing stipulation.

The potential for the license to "spread" is exactly the same as the potential for the GPL to spread. In this case, only an attribution requirement (which can be trivially satisfied in an "About" box or in a startup message on the console) is being spread, rather than the stipulation that you must provide all of your software under a GPL-compatible license, in the case that you reused some GPL software. Putting it in perspective, it's really not all that bad. It's not nearly as bad as the advertising clause in the original BSD license, for example.

Remember that the intent of this license is to prevent proprietary developers (such as those of other commercial X servers) from using XFree86 code without giving credit to the project. It was not intended to inconvenience open source developers, and it hasn't yet been made clear to me exactly how the new license is the problem with XFree86. To me, it looks like the real problem is that developers are jumping ship due to the glacial pace of development and resistance to new ideas.

If one is looking for a conservative and stable open source X server, they will find it in XFree86. However, it is being made clear that a significant number of users prefer an X server with regular feature additions and a shorter development cycle. It is unfortunately impossible to satisfy that demand within the XFree86 Project, so new options have opened up, largely thanks to people whose needs differ from XFree86 and who are willing to put in the work to improve choice in the open source world.

Re:What is going on with the BSD's

[Brandybuck]

Put brain in gear before pressing the "submit" button. The new XFree86 license sucks, but NOT because it's GPL-incompatible.

Awsome..

[kaiwai]

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?!

Re:Awsome..

[chendo]

Dude, I celebrated too, but running around the house naked? As people said, Linux is more of a religion than an OS ;)

Re:Awsome..

[advocate_one]

"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?!"

FreeBSD is dead... didn't you know??? :)

Re:Awsome..

[stienman]

to put it midely, i was running around the house naked celebrating with great joy

Dude, that is so not mild. I'm going to have to get the memory eraser out again to get rid of that thought.

-Adam

Re:Awsome..

[endx7]

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?!

Er, it is in ports. And it sounds like from the ports mailing list that a good number of people have it working fine.

Re:Awsome..

[endx7]

something about upgrading the imake version needed for xorg.

I know this is why XFree86 4.4.0 wasn't in ports, so I guess it makes sense it would affect Xorg as well. But then again, people -are- successfully using Xorg...so...I dunno.

dumped?

[phrasebook]

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.

Re:dumped?

[Shimbo]

But is XFree86 actually dumped? Surely their future work (even if it does come out slowly) will continue to be utilised by X.org.

I doubt it; the contributors will just submit their patches to X.org and get them directly into the mainstream that way. The extra effort required to get them checked into XFree86 is only worthwhile as long as XFree86 is perceived as the 'official' source (whatever that means). Plus X.org can't use just XFree86 code and strip the new licence off it anyway.

Re:dumped?

[OrenWolf]

Actually, the license change means no work by XFree86 can be used in X.org.

Re:dumped?

[Weird O'Puns]

Actually there is a "wild new" direction planned for Xorg. First of all it will get the extensions introduced in the Keith Packard's XServer: Composite(transparent windows), Xevie, XFixes and XDamage(latter two are already in the CVS). Then there will be the support for Autotools and moving away from the monolithic design in to a more modularised model.

Re:dumped?

[Wateshay]

Due to the licensing incompatibilities, I wouldn't be surprised to see little or no XFree86 development make it into X.org. Given that there's little to no XFree86 development to start with, that means that in the grand scheme of things XFree86 is dead. On the other hand, since X.org is a fork of XFree86, and most of the good XFree86 devs have moved over to it, you could make the argument that XFree86 just changed its name to X.org.

Re:XF86Config-4

[colinleroy]

Basically, after having upgraded to X.org, your distro will have taken care of the init scripts found in /etc/X11/ and all you'll have to do is

mv /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and replace /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ with /usr/share/fonts/ in said file, to reflect the font path change.

Re:Great , another config file format to learn.

[mgoodman]

If you haven't had any problems with XFree86 for the past 10 years, then you haven't *really* used it :P

Re:France == better than America!

[phrasebook]

What's wrong with 'whinging'? That is a word. Unless you're just pretending not to know... I dunno these things.

Conf file.

[AngstAndGuitar]

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.

Re:Conf file.

[starseeker]

"Is it compatible with the XFree86 config files?"

Yes. I simply copied my XFree86 config file over to the new name.

No changes I'm aware of to configuration methods yet, so it's probably not "better" in that sense. However, now that things are more open, if support develops for some better method that's proposed there's every chance it could happen :-).

Re:Conf file.

[statusbar]

I, for one, would love to see a configuration file that is EASILY machine-editable. I hate it when I see hacks like in Mandrake 10 where the system startup code tries to modify the config file if the nvidia module is not loaded. It simply prefixes the associated line with '#', on every boot, every time! ######

As much as I see xml overused everywhere, having the configuration in a clean xml file would probably be best.

--jeff++

Re:France == better than America!

[Anonymous Coward]

whinging is an actual word...

Who's left?

[tomknight]

Here's a list of who's still using XFree86. I may be very out of the loop, but I'd only heard of one of the Linux based distros. Regarding the BSD distros, only two seem to used XFree86 - are the others all on X.org?

Tom.

Re:Who's left?

[jrutley]

I don't speak for Arch Linux, but they're probably going to switch to x.org, too. There's an x.org package in the testing repository that runs great on my PC.

Re:Who's left?

[swv3752]

Most of the distros listed are pretty minor. Connectiva and Lycoris and NetBSD barely are major Distros, buthae about as much impact as say Stampede Linux did in its hey day.

Peanut has been supplanted by Vector Linux years ago. Sorceror was a predecessor to Gentoo, and Sorc was torn apart by internal politics.

The rest are pretty much Joe-Bob linux, that someguy created in his basement. (Not that there is a problem with this, most Linux Distros got thier start this way, but for every Red Hat and Mandrake, there are several more that remain obscure.)

Re:Who's left?

[spinkham]

I use Source Mage, and it has xfree86-4.3, xfree86-4.4, and x.org availible. Since it is a source based distro. that values flexibility, you can install whichever one you want. Most people who hang out on IRC or on the mailing lists seem to have made the switch to x.org.
In this case, "still using xfree86" is quite relative.

Re:Who's left?

[MobyTurbo]

Here's a list of who's still using XFree86.

Several of the distros on the list are Slackware based. Since Pat changed his mind and now x.org is in -current, expect the list of distributions supporting XFree86 4.4 to grow smaller.

Re:An almost bankrupt company,

[Ruie]

> selling membership to a 95% free product, making news!

It is not the business success of the company that we are cheering about, but the great product they produce.

XFree"86" is for 386 .. But

[Gopal.V]

But for the record the first commercial X11 release was in 1986 ...

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 up :)... rhymes with three, but is not free

Re:XFree"86" is for 386 .. But

[belloc]

And that's how it ended up :)... rhymes with three, but is not free

Thank you, Johnny Cochran.

Re:XFree"86" is for 386 .. But

[bitterbastard]

But for the record the first commercial X11 release was in 1986 ...

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.


Like saying 386 wif a souf London accent (fwee-eighty-six).

Re:XFree"86" is for 386 .. But

[mattyrobinson69]

"souf" is the nothern accent northern, so is london

"saaf landan" would be the "saaf landan" way of saying it

im northern, southerners are shandy drinking poofs.:)

Re:XFree"86" is for 386 .. But

[Brandybuck]

And that's how it ended up :)... rhymes with three, but is not free

Except that XFree86 is still free. That's "Free" as in "RMS". It might not be GPL compatible, but it certainly is still Free Software.

Re:Great , another config file format to learn.

[BenjyD]

pssst.. it's "of" not "off"

Maybe he means "of and only of". You never know.

Crossplatform?

[pigeon]

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?

XFCE is a WM not an X server

[reality-bytes]

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 :)

Re:XFCE is a WM not an X server

[reality-bytes]

Depends how *Power* a user you are I suppose ;)

Re:Not FP...

[zoloto]

True - It was the etiquette of typing out a correct hyperlink and having a slow morning (no caffeine, I'm a natural waker)

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[DaHat]

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.

Re:Fedora switched to xfce

[XMyth]

What's that have to do with XFree86/X.org ? XFCE is a window manager...

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[InfiniteWisdom]

What if the company goes out of business? What happens to everyone that depends on their product then?

See the package

[DreadSpoon]

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.

Re:Fedora switched to xfce

[mallardtheduck]

I guess you mean FC2? I'm running FC1 and it uses XFree86, I just checked...

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[MindStalker]

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.

What does this mean for upgrading?

[MobyDisk]

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.

Re:What does this mean for upgrading?

[sirReal.83.]

Since XOrg will be replacing XFree, APT dependencies will have a "Replaces: xserver-xfree86" field along with the "Conflicts:" field. Don't worry, things like this happen more often than you think.

Re:What does this mean for upgrading?

[Stephen Williams]

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!

Assuming you're using Debian (since you mentioned apt), those packages don't depend on XFree86. They depend on one or more of the X11 library packages, which at present are built from the XFree86 sources. A hypothetical future Debianized x.org will provide the same packages, thus ensuring that the dependencies continue to be satisfied. No applications should require rebuilding, because the XFree86 libraries and x.org libraries provide the same API.

Personally, I'm not touching x.org until it gets as far as Debian's testing stream. The XFree86 server and libraries in Debian testing Work For Me(tm), so I'm in no hurry to replace them just because.

-Stephen

Re:What does this mean for upgrading?

[Minna Kirai]

everything that depends on it. KDE, Gnome, all my X applications... ack!

I don't know about your particular distro, but X applications should not depend on XFree86!

If Linux Mozilla, for example, needs an X11 server to run, there is no reason to require XFree86 on the same computer. The dependences should allow X applications to install without X itself- that's how you'd build a back-end application server.

Re:What does this mean for upgrading?

[tarballedtux]

I've been keeping up to date with on Slackware-cuurent. I did a quick read up on the procedue for switching on LinuxQuestions.org and it was very easy. 1) Download the X.Org packages. Easy, "swaret --get x11" 2) Use pkgtool to remove all the xfree86* packages 3) "swaret --install x11" 4) A quick dep check and it was working! On a side note I switched to X.Org so the binary ATI drivers would work with my video card. Thats was the selling point for me. --tarballedtux

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[Jahf]

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.

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 ... 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".

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.

Re:Great , another config file format to learn.

[Viol8]

:)

Well , when I said I haven't had any problems with it I meant once I'd got it set up. To be honest I'm still using v3 since v4 just Will Not Work properly with my Matrox G200 graphics card. No idea why. I guess if I did heavy duty openGL stuff I'd be a bit pissed off but since I only use it for xterms and browsers its not a bit deal.

How does this affect 3rd party drivers ?

[farzadb82]

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 ?

Re:How does this affect 3rd party drivers ?

[Weird O'Puns]

Yes, the Nvidia and ATI drivers work with Xorg. You need to remember that the current Xorg is just a fork of XFree 4.4rc2.

I would think that in the future both ATI and Nvidia will support the one the community uses and now it looks like community will be using Xorg

Re:How does this affect 3rd party drivers ?

[cozziewozzie]

They do. I use nvidia drivers myself and haven't had any glitches at all yet after switching.

As for what they will support, nobody knows that for sure, but I'm guessing that they'll stick with what the majority is using (i.e. X.org)

Re:How does this affect 3rd party drivers ?

[juhaz]

No idea about NVidia, but current ATI drivers do not work "out of the box", they need unofficial patches and even with them there are problems with XVideo that were not there with XFree86 4.3.0.

So, for most part you're correct but it takes a bit of work and some things aren't quite optimal... I'm sure this will be fixed with next official release, though.

Re:How does this affect 3rd party drivers ?

[Nerd With Nalgene]

The nvidia binary drivers seem to have trouble making the switch. It seems weird that with essentially the same code base they would just stop working, but I don't know how else to interpret "No Devices Detected" from the X server, when it works fine with the open source drivers.

Re:How does this affect 3rd party drivers ?

[Weird O'Puns]

There have been some problems with the autoloading of nvidia kernel module when starting Xorg. In here it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. "No Devices Detected" seems to indicate that this is the problem you'r having. You can test it by shutting down X, configure it to use nvidia binary drivers if you haven't already, then do 'modprobe nvidia' as a root and as a normal user start X. If it works configure your distribution to load nvidia module at boot.(adding 'nvidia' to /etc/modules.autoload or some similar file should do the trick)

Proprietary Drivers

[Tepar]

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?

Re:Proprietary Drivers

[Lispy]

Nvidia works fine for now. That said they would be very stupid to support XFree86 any further with all those nice eyecandy waiting to happen in xorg. I am confident that they will see the benefit in xorg and abandon XFree86

Re:Proprietary Drivers

[aloh]

something that might be interesting , slackware decided to use X.org because the ATI drivers should work better with X.org than XFree86. I think if every linux distro will change to X.org, soon the bsds will follow just because of their support. it's not just about license issues , but about a poor project.

Re:Great , another config file format to learn.

[Enahs]

Right now X.Org is mostly a code cleanup of the last GPL-friendly XFree86. That will change eventually. I'm running X.Org at home, and there were very few changes. The advantage right now is that you're running something somewhat close to latest-greatest XFree86, except that it's undergone some minor changes.

It's not just the minor licensing issue: XFree86 moves at a snail's pace, and it's not from lack of people trying to change it. Hopefully we'll see some modernisation, and new features designed to take advantage of modern hardware.

I for one welcome the change.

Re:XF86Config-4

[colinleroy]

Well, I wouldn't like my distro's package management system to fuck up my config files. I prefer doing it myself after having read the f* manual.

Re:Great , another config file format to learn.

[kmmatthews]

It's sarcasm... :)

Apple?

[Compulawyer]

Apple released X11, an X-windowing system based on XFree86. I wonder if X11 will change also.

Wait... Isn't X.org "THE" official X?

[HighOrbit]

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?

From X to Xfree to X in ?? years

[Pflipp]

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 :-)

Nothing to do with GPL

[GodWasAnAlien]

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.

Re:Nothing to do with GPL

[johnnyb]

He said GPL-friendly, not GPL.

Re:XF86Config-4

[13Echo]

Actually, instead of "XF86Config-4", the standard name is now "xorg.conf".

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[radja]

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.

Okay, I'm confused...

[wandazulu]

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.

Re:Okay, I'm confused...

[drfreak]

I think the X Consortium has the "official" X11 specs and implementation (X11 Server). Their server is more of a proof of concept and not accelerated, though. All other servers are made to their specs. Apple can derive from XFree86 because they play well with the license. Unix vendors such as IBM and SGI tend to write their own X servers or have a third party company do it.

Re:Okay, I'm confused...

[cpghost]

There's no technical reason why Apple, IBM et. al. have to stick to XFree86. They can right now switch to X.org without any hassle at all. The more they wait (and allow the codebase split to grow), the harder a migration will be. Just switch now to X.org. This is where the music is playing.

Re:Okay, I'm confused...

[wkcole]

The X implementations in commercial Unix-like systems are almost all based on the X11R6.x code base that is the descendant of the MIT code. X.org is the maintainer of that code base, enhanced by a merge of code from XF86 4.4.0RC2, i.e. XF86 just before the license change. The initialization of the current X.org code repository is described here and the result of that merge was the release of X11R6.7 in April.

X.org did undergo a rather significant organizational revolution leading up to the import of the XFree86 code. They had seemed to be mostly dead for a couple of years, but in January the 'X.org foundation' was announced and they took off again. As with any corporate-born organization, they did up some slides and did a presentation.

In short: you had it a bit backwards. The 'official' X11 was a joint project (more or less...) that was pretty slow and closed for quite a while, slow and closed enough to make XF86 look dynamic and open. The various issues with XF86 (license, acceptance of patches, etc) triggered a rebirth of the X11R6 project, infused with XF86 code. Vendors of other non-Linux and non-x86 systems have nothing really to be concerned about, since they are effectively in control of X.org now as they were before.

Interesting

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Some people on the XFree86 Forum list claim it's the vendors using Xorg for their own interests.

Re:Interesting

[scrytch]

> Some people on the XFree86 Forum list claim it's the vendors using Xorg for their own interests.

Speaking as someone who used a vendor that XF86 ignored for years and years ... fine. You can make a statement that you won't support proprietary drivers (not so), that you'll only support a certain interface (pretty much true), and so on, but you can't just sit there and refuse to take perfectly good patches WITHOUT COMMENT.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. I for one welcome my new conspiratorial corporate overlords, whoever they are.

Re:Interesting

[swv3752]

And that explains why XFree86 has repeatedly spurned code contributions from third parties, such as ATI and the Cygwin team? And I supose that Debian is a secret Illuminati organization? Right.

Re:Interesting

[Dante]

"And I supose that Debian is a secret Illuminati organization?" There is no cabal!

Political message or FU?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It is very common

[saigon_from_europe]

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.)

Re:Great , another config file format to learn.

[GreyWolf3000]

You can try directfb + XDirectFB server.

My g400 works great in X using the 'mga' driver.

Well, it is a fork

[poohsuntzu]

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

It's the name, silly

[egarland]

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)

X.org = The Borg?

[mousse-man]

I suspect it should better be pronounced BORG and means that all Linux distros will be assimilated.

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[foxpit]

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?

I Use A Xi Graphics LX Platinum X Server

[saudadelinux]

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?

SuSE

[Theatetus]

Great distro for newcomers.

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[Bruce Perens]

You haven't worked for a big company I guess, or you haven't been in upper management to see how dysfunctional they get.

My experience at HP was eye-opening in this regard, Sun is even worse.

Bruce

XFree86's reaction?

[jifl]

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?

Re:XFree86's reaction?

[RdsArts]

So what has the XFree86 project's reaction been to this?

I dunno, he's been kinda quiet lately.

Re:XFree86's reaction?

[mrchaotica]

Heh, most of them [the actual contributors] defected too!

Seriously.

[MenTaLguY]

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.

Re:Seriously.

[egarland]

I agree. While my post was toung-in-cheek, I do believe the nice name is helping spread x.org faster. I, for one, am happy to say goodbye to the XFree86 name forever. It really is hard to type. I'm much happier having to hand edit my xorg.conf file than my XF86Config file and I doubt I'm alone.

They really should rename GIMP. I doubt it will ever get widely used or respected with that name.

Re:Seriously.

[juhaz]

Don't think that cuddly penguin hasn't helped Linux.

Now that Linux and effect naming has in success both came up, can't help but wonder would the history have been different if Funet folks would have kept the name (Freax) Linus gave to his newborn OS?

Re:Great , another config file format to learn.

[shfted!]

Sick, just sick. I can't stop laughing!

Sorry, but

[Overly Critical Guy]

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...).

Re:Sorry, but

[Overly Critical Guy]

No, but it's a pretty big indicator, seeing as how Google is the biggest search engine on the Internet, and it's such a Linux-oriented company that fanboys love so much.

Re:Sorry, but

[peragrin]

Y windows isn't finished to a stable point yet. When it is X is gone. At least for me.

No if all your loading is one app across the network you don't need every KDE and X library just the ones needed to load that app. One can run konqueror under any WM. As long as the libraries are present for it. Meaning installed on the hard drive.

Yes OS X is better at almost every point execpt, it' not Network aware, And X windows on top of quartz is a hack. Hell a network aware quartz and Aqua would be every geeks wet dream.

As for installing KDE to run a KDE app well fine, don't use the KDE app. KDE is working on intergration, so is Gnome. It is to make the Distro's more user Friendly. If you don't like it don't use it. I run KDE 3.2 with 128mb and a dozen apps open. Performace does drag, but only barely noticable. I click it works.

debian has many

[eldacan]

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.

We're into this string now

[Psymunn]

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')

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

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

I second the motion

[JBMcB]

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!" :)

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[johnnyb]

"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.

Why use X anyway

[roboteeruk]

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.

Re:Wait... Isn't X.org "THE" official X?

[johnnyb]

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.

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[ChaoticLimbs]

Just look at his user number.

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[cpeterso]

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.

Re:TRY LIVING NEXT TO THEM

[tarballedtux]

Ok, I'll bite. Whiel I don't agree some Americans need to be kicked in the head. We're not all stupid. Being stupid implies that you act uninformed purposely. To be uninformed isn't an indication of everyone, just those individuals. As for overweight, what do you expect with all these BS lawsuits over "stupid" claims, why does anyone need to work. On a side note I just one a 15 million dollar lawsuit against a shoe store because the salesperson gave me a shoe 1 size too big and I was thoroughly offended at that show of disrespect towards my feet.

Re:Licence was only the last straw

[maximilln]

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.

Posting from Mandrake 10.0, didn't have those

[leonbrooks]

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.