Posted by
michael
on from the thanks-for-all-the-fish-screensavers dept.
Nirbo writes "FreeBSD switches to X.Org, The 'HEADSUP' can be found here, and on the -x11, -current, and -ports mailing lists. Very good news for those FreeBSD users who have either changed to X.Org in anticipation, or have been waiting in hope for this momentous change."
Re:So what will become of xfree?
by
gnu-generation-one
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"Where does this leave xfree?"
It leaves XFree86 with the world's most complex configuration file, and as the source of most of the linux-related problems people have.
automatic configuration
by
bcrowell
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
As a FreeBSD desktop user, I'm happy about this simply because of the easier configuration of X windows, regardless of the political aspects. (Well, I'm happy about that, too, since the licensing change of XF86 seemed bogus.) Configuring X has been one of the few remaining big barriers for both Linux and FreeBSD on the desktop.
Too bad that you can't upgrade an existing system without using portupgrade, though. I hate to see portupgrade drifting closer and closer to being a required part of the system. I've had a lot of bad (system-breaking) experiences with it.
Oh for Christ's sake. The fucking article is 5 paragraphs long and contains this information.
This is not in any way informative except for idiots who somehow manage to find/. but still haven't learned how to click on a link.
I wish I was new here, at least then the stupid moderation would be a refreshing surprise.
-- "A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
The lesson of X11....
by
evenprime
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The lesson of X11 is that you can be the most popular piece of software on every distribution, and it still doesn't give you the power to play dictator with your licence. If you put unneccessary restrictions in your licence, someone will fork your code and the community will embrace them, not you. You would think that people would have figured that out after the ssh/openssh split. Now we have another example in windowing systems....
--
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Re:The lesson of X11....
by
edhall
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I don't think this shift is entirely a license issue.
I was chatting with one of the FreeBSD core team guys
around the time the decision was being made, and he felt that the frustration of getting fixes fed back into the XFree86 code base in a timely manner was a big part of the motivation. And this certainly isn't the first time I've heard complaints of XFree86 foot-dragging by the FreeBSD folks.
I guess you might say it's all of a piece -- the XFree86 user community simply didn't find the developers responsive (whether on license or technology), and when X.org proved a viable alternative, they voted with their feet.
-Ed
Re:The lesson of X11....
by
cortana
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· Score: 2, Insightful
People have been sick of the way xfree86.org have fucked up X11 development for years. The licensing issue was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.:)
Re:The lesson of X11....
by
nathanh
·
· Score: 5, Informative
But I'm curious what restrictions the XFree people added and why it caused all this ruckus. It doesn't seem to have made any difference to my ability to get the source or play with it. What am I missing?
They added an advertising clause. Similar to the old BSD license.
There's a reasonable argument that the license change by itself didn't cause the exodus. It was simply the straw that broke the camel's back. There has been friction between the XFree developers and the rest of the FLOSS community for quite some time. There has even been considerable friction within the XFree team which led to the infamous "eviction" of Keith. But until recently there haven't been any realistic alternatives to XFree.
It remains to be seen whether Xorg can deliver better than XFree. Initial signs are promising; the codebase is being broken up and autotooled, cutting edge extensions like Xcomposite are being integrated, some of the best and brightest have committed themselves to Xorg instead of XFree, the distributions are backing Xorg over XFree, and (most important of all) the Xorg developers are COMMUNICATING with the rest of freedesktop.org (eg, the projects that build upon X11/XFree/Xorg). Those changes alone are a significant improvement over XFree.
Re:The lesson of X11....
by
XO
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Although definitely not like any other build procedure I have ever seen in the free software world, X is probably the one piece of software that I have never had ANY problems whatsoever in building, re-building, installing, re-installing, etc.
Though I did have a big ass problem with Debian refusing to let apt do it's things the right way when I "broke" the X installation by installing a source-built XFree 4.3.0 over the then-Debian-supplied XFree 4.2.0. This is when I discovered that (a) dpkg sucks (b) Debian's X installation is a spaghetti mess (c) it's virtually impossible to remove XFree packages from a Debian installation and not remove every other program that uses X on the system, which is why I had to just plain install source-built XF over the top of the Debian installed one.
On the bright side, every time apt- would hork the XFree installation by changes having happened to the Debian files during an apt-get, a simple "make World" made my entire X installation back to the way it was supposed to be.
Now, on the other hand, I've never even cracked the bindings of XFree source. I imagine, that it's probably a myriad of horrible hacked crap dating back 10-15 years or more in several places. I imagine that it's a completely unmaintainable nightmare. And I also completely understand that there was virtually NO development happening beyond bug fixes and the occasional tweak type enhancement to XFree. XF 4 was a major update but that was still like 2 years ago. 4.1, 4.2 were mostly bug fixes, 4.3 completed some of th features for 4.0, and fixed more bugs.
I'm really curious as to if there are any differences between X.org and XFree86 in th software, yet?
-- "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!"
http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Re:The lesson of X11....
by
Rasta+Prefect
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Though I did have a big ass problem with Debian refusing to let apt do it's things the right way when I "broke" the X installation by installing a source-built XFree 4.3.0 over the then-Debian-supplied XFree 4.2.0. This is when I discovered that (a) dpkg sucks (b) Debian's X installation is a spaghetti mess (c) it's virtually impossible to remove XFree packages from a Debian installation and not remove every other program that uses X on the system, which is why I had to just plain install source-built XF over the top of the Debian installed one.
Generally, building from a source package or building your own package (not that difficult if you're up to compiling from source anyway) works a _lot_ better.
-- Why?
Re:The lesson of X11....
by
runderwo
·
· Score: 4, Informative
(c) it's virtually impossible to remove XFree packages from a Debian installation and not remove every other program that uses X on the system, which is why I had to just plain install source-built XF over the top of the Debian installed one.
You're talking crazy talk. The client-side libraries are the only thing that X clients depend upon. You can have X applications installed on a Debian system with _no_ X server. An X application only needs the client libraries to talk to whatever server it feels like.
I've never even cracked the bindings of XFree source. I imagine, that it's probably a myriad of horrible hacked crap dating back 10-15 years or more in several places.
No, actually most of the code (excepting the display drivers) is quite clean, modular, and well-documented. But you couldn't be bothered to look before spouting off a sensational opinion, could you now?
Re:I wonder...
by
foidulus
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· Score: 4, Informative
Heh, well all OS X users use a port of it, but who knows if they will switch too when Apple releases Tiger next year.
Who is left...?
by
bogaboga
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Yes, Slashdotters, which among the major distros is left? Anyone know whether X.org is doing anything about the [horrible] Linux fonts found in major default Linux installs? I have always had to install M$ fonts or run the webfonts.sh script to get decent fonts. This is shameful! The Linux gurus create a world class OS but have not yet made fonts for Linux? What do you think?
Re:Who is left...?
by
gabbarbhai
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· Score: 3, Informative
The free Bitstream fonts are not all that bad for the desktop..
Re:Who is left...?
by
Jah-Wren+Ryel
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· Score: 2, Informative
I haven't looked at the SVG spec for a long, long time, but last I remember it was simply a way to specify vectors. The other reason that postscript fonts are programs and not just tables of vectors is that they really work is in the "hinting" such that a font rendered at 9 points needs to look substantially different from the same font rendered at 72 points.
The good postscript fonts "know" things about human perception and thus render themselves in different fashions based on that knowledge. Simple vectors can't do that because vectors aren't just for fonts and human perceptual tricks that apply to fonts don't necessarily apply to other kinds of vectorish information.
-- When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Re:Who is left...?
by
Quattro+Vezina
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Anti-aliasing is screenshot-pretty, but for actual use, it makes me want to scratch my eyes out.
Thank you. Finally, there's someone else here who can't stand to read antialiased fonts.
I'm pretty obsessive about not having my fonts antialiased. I've turned off AA in KDE's Fonts control centre dialog. I've grepped/etc for the variable GDK_USE_XFT (cd/etc && grep -R GDK_USE_XFT *), and set each occurence of it to 0. I always compile Firefox with the moznoxft USE flag.
You're also right in that AA is good for one thing: screenshots. I find screenshots of OS X, antialiased fonts and all, to be quite pretty. But I would never want to actually use a system with antialiased fonts--they're horribly grating on the eyes if you're doing anything but looking at a screenshot.
The first part of your post might be why I can't stand the Bitstream Vera Sans Serif font--if the BV fonts only look good when antialiased, and I go out of my way to not have antialiased fonts, then logically, the BV fonts would look ugly.
*looks up at the parent again*
Dear Zod, why is your post at 0? Someone mod this guy up!
Re:Who's Left?
by
Homology
·
· Score: 4, Informative
So, what major linux distributions, BSD variants, or other operating systems are still using the XFree86 code base? Is the transition essentially complete?
OpenBSD is still using the latest XFree86 4.4 release candidate with the old license+drivers. And
NetBSD incorporated XFree86 4.4 with the new license.
Re:Tobes Of Hades Lit By Flickering Torchlight
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Good News Everyone!
Mike Smith now works for Apple, who's OS is based on BSD.
Check it out: www.lemis.com/~grog/msmr.html
and at: daemonnews, under "BSD at Apple"
He didn't like the direction that v5 was taking so he quit and starting writing BSD code for Apple.
Portupgrade neither necessary, nor sufficient
by
wirelessbuzzers
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Too bad that you can't upgrade an existing system without using portupgrade, though. I hate to see portupgrade drifting closer and closer to being a required part of the system.
No. It says in the post:
To upgrade, you must remove your XFree86 ports and install the xorg ports. It couldn't be done with portupgrade, unfortunately, because we are keeping the XFree86 ports around.
In other words, you cannot automatically upgrade all the ports using portupgrade.
As for portupgrade becoming necessary, I don't know what you're talking about. While I use it (to keep my -CURRENT current), this is merely for convenience: I haven't seen any ports that depend on it.
-- I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Re:lack of second side of the coin... again
by
strabo
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· Score: 2, Insightful
bad news for those who are to lazy to rtfm.
If you want to keep the old XFree86 on -current, simply set X_WINDOW_SYSTEM=xfree86-4 in make.conf
Name change...
by
CaptainPinko
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I know this is stupid but I'm glad for the name change of the X-server that ever is using. Because it always seemed weird to be running XFree86 on a PPC It's nice that the new standard has an architecture neutral name. I'm assuming the 86 came from x86.
-- Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Re:Name change...
by
jbardell
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· Score: 2, Informative
The start of the project to develop a 'free' version of the X server was called X386, named after the target CPU. The re-name became a play on this, XFree86. Getcherself a copy of the book 'Rebel Code' and enjoy all of the interesting little tidbits within.
Is this the place?
by
iamdrscience
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I don't know if this is the best place to mention this, but I like to pronounce "X.org" like it was all one word, i.e. sounding like "Zorg". It sounds like some futuristic GUI monster that would crush towns at its whim. This alone is enough to justify Xorg the Conqueror's rising popularity and XFree86's decline. I mean, XFree86 sounds kind of like a fighter jet, which while kind of cool, would be useless against Xorg. He would use an XFree86 fighter jet to pick his teeth! All hail Xorg!
Re:BETTER QUESTION: Why do we even need FreeBSD?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Bet you can't back that up.
I'm getting laid !!!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Funny
That's right, I've switched to FreeBSD...
Re:BETTER QUESTION: Why do we even need FreeBSD?
by
aristotle-dude
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Why? I like the XNU kernel and kernel extensions. I thought the last thing we wanted was a monoculture? Aren't we all trying to escape the monoculture of MSFT? Why advocate creating a new one?
Now that Gentoo has been ported to OSX, we have Darwin ports, fink and Gentoo Portage. Do you understand that Linux is just a kernel? We already have the userland BSD "and" GNU (what you seem to think is linux) on OSX so I don't see the point of switching kernels.
Apple contributes to KDE KHTML, BSD and various other open source projects. What is it exactly that you are complaining about again?
-- Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Anyone for the Fifth Element?
by
GumphMaster
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Been done before I'm afraid. The 'evil monster' in The Fifth Element is Dr. Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg.
-- Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Re:Who is left...?like
by
marcello_dl
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· Score: 4, Informative
I agree on the AC post about bitstream vera fonts. They look very good on the notoriously unforgiving notebook screens. I prefer them over the standard ms fonts i had to install to check compatibility of web page layouts. Try them for yourself.
-- ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Re:Short Domain
by
wfberg
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I guess to beat that, you'd need to go with a country code domain.
ai and dk should work. Due to DNS weirdness you might need to add a dot, as in ai. and dk.
Re:The Cautionary Tale of XFree86
by
dwheeler
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· Score: 2, Informative
To my knowledge, they'll continue to use the original MIT/X license. It's known to be GPL-compatible (the main point of contention), and it's the license they've been using all along in general. It's certainly the direction of least resistance.
It turns out a few files have slipped in with licenses other than the MIT/X licenses.
My appendix links to a detailed license analysis
(I didn't do the analysis, kudos to the person who did!). But there aren't many such files, and it wouldn't take much to fix them. It's likely that some weren't even intentional, and contacting the authors would be all that's needed in some cases.
I very much doubt that they'd move to the GPL. This is a project shared between GPL'ed operating systems, *BSDs, proprietary X vendors, and proprietary OS vendors; a GPL move would break that. I guess it's conceivable they'll later move parts to the LGPL, particularly easily separable parts (like a sound server). Mesa was originally LGPL, for example. And the commercial environment has changed since X was started; some projects like Wine have decided to switch from MIT/X/BSD-like licenses to the LGPL, because they believed that too many commercial companies would take but not give back otherwise (rendering the project unable to continue). So you could argue that the changed environment might encourage them to use a different license to keep the project more viable. But I suspect that won't happen, at least in the short term. Most people seem to be interested in keeping the "status quo" MIT/X license, and more interested in rearchitecting and adding new features. I don't speak from special authority, just as someone who occasionally follows the discussions.
Re:So XFree Is Dead then
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Microsoft didn't steal it. That's the nature of the BSD license. We don't care if you, Microsoft, or anybody else is using the code for commercial purposes.
It's a strength, not a weakness.
Re:BETTER QUESTION: Why do we even need FreeBSD?
by
brilinux
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You know, I was going to make a similar joke, but seriously, competition is always good. My laptop runs Gentoo, my desktop runs FreeBSD and WinXP. Why? Because Linux is good for a lot of desktop stuff and programming that I would be doing for school, I need XP on my desktop for gaming, and when I am not doing that, FreeBSD is something different that is nice and fast, a great server, and something that runs familiar programs that I normally run under Linux. So, do I need FreeBSD instead of Linux? No. But it serves purposes that are often different from the ones served by Linux and it is more specific in its direction and use.
They wanted out..
by
mnemoth_54
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I think they wanted this to happen. Search old/. stories for 'xfree86' and see what I mean.
The license change was really just a way of prompting everyone to move on, while not completely abandoning them.
Thats all just my guess, take it or leave it.
Re:Xorg vs XFree86
by
Lisandro
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· Score: 2, Insightful
As it is, X.Org is not at all different from the latest "non-crippled" XFree release - i'm running it in my Gentoo box and besides beeing just a tad faster, it's the same. It has minor patches applied and a few configuration files names changed. The upgrade is as painless as it can be; even my nVidia linux bnary drivers worked perfectly.
The thing with XFree it's been the attitude of it's developers (David Dawes in particular, do a google search of Usenet groups for some fun) - and this translated to the project in being very hard to submit codes or patches and had them approved. XFree has then been quite stagnant in the recent past; the licence fiasco was simply the cherry on the top.
X.Org has a much more open developement and i expect it to become quite different (advanced) of XFree in the future; stuff like Cairo and other X extensions (check http://www.freedesktop.com/) will at some point be incorporated onto X.Org giving us a nice, nifty OpenGL accelerated desktop.
Can't wait for that myself.
Re:BETTER QUESTION: Why do we even need FreeBSD?
by
drinkypoo
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
We need FreeBSD so that we can keep the developers who are interested in developing an operating system under a BSD-type license, but who are not interested in writing code under a GPL license, busily writing code that benefits us all.
Competition is good for everyone but the losers, and in a certain sense it's good for them too - as a wake-up call. Competition can be a major driving force, even if you're only competing against yourself. For example, I'm on everything2, and when I see a writeup that I think sucks and I say "I can do better than that" it's a strong motivator to me to outdo the existing writeup. So, someone implements something on Linux, and some BSD type says "I can do that! Shit, I can kick that thing's ass!" Next thing you know the feature in Linux is being upgraded or replaced because its author wants it to be the best tool of its type, or someone else wants features which are in the BSD version.
So even if you don't think it's important for what it can do in and of itself, BSD is important for the same reason as the lower class - to scare the shit out of the middle class.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Xorg vs XFree86
by
erikharrison
·
· Score: 3, Informative
This is semi objective. I have a very minor presence in the X.org mailing lists.
XFree86 seems to be mostly listing, with it's major focus being drivers. It was always easier to get new extensions in XFree than in the reference implementation, but that was still hard, so driver's and performance were much of it's force and they seem to think that it still will be. XFree seems to think that they will be the application that people upgrade to from X.org for their value added improvements. Short term assessment, this is a load of crap. People are moving from distro's X.org and XFree ONLY for stability concerns, and those are easily assuaged.
X.org is all about two things. One, take the protocol to the next level, through the judicious use of extensions. X.org has support from Sun and HP, for example, Sun is moving much of their Looking Glass work into the tree.
Second, get the implementation out of the stone age. Modularize the build, and use a more modern build system. Clean up the DDX (device dependent X) get extensions playing well with each other, havea faster release cycle and get security and bug fixes from vendors incorperated more quickly. All of this seems to be happening. Hop on the X.org mailing lists and take a look.
There is no XFree...
by
gwalla
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Re:BETTER QUESTION: Why do we even need FreeBSD?
by
useosx
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· Score: 4, Insightful
BSD is important for the same reason as the lower class - to scare the shit out of the middle class.
That is the most absurdly ignorant, hateful statement I have ever read. You're telling me you think that lower class people strive every day to make enough to live on--often at the sacrifice of their own health--and that is important because it motivates the middle class to work harder at their dumb ass job they hate. You, drinkypoo, are a huge asshole. I mean, unless you're a millionaire, why the fuck are you advocating for a system that continuously fucks you over?
People walk around throwing out phrases like "laws of nature," "human nature," "the way of the world," "that's the way the world works," like there's some sort of fucking truth. You give us your cute little scenario about Linux hackers vs. BSD hackers like it's some kind of truism, like it proves something. Please.
Think about how many different cultures there are throughout the world and how different they have been throughout history. It doesn't have to be this way, folks. Want to get educated? Read a book. Want to do something? Go work for a labor advocacy group.
Re:Who's Left?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Actually, OpenBSD has brought in changes from freedesktop.org into their copy of the X sources. They've always maintained a local modified version anyhow, and they have already said nothing else will come from xfree86, just freedesktop and local work.
Re:BETTER QUESTION: Why do we even need FreeBSD?
by
rsidd
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
You're telling me you think that lower class people strive every day to make enough to live on--often at the sacrifice of their own health--and that is important because it motivates the middle class to work harder at their dumb ass job they hate.
No, he's saying the middle class shouldn't get too smug in their middle-class comfort, because in today's equal-opportunity world, the lower classes will not stay down there forever. And similarly, even if Linux is ahead in a lot of things, the BSDs will catch up (in fact, it wasn't long ago that the BSDs were ahead in most aspects of stability and performance and Linux was the "lower class" playing catch-up, and in many respects the BSDs are still ahead.) And I didn't understand very much else in your rant.
Re:BETTER QUESTION: Why do we even need FreeBSD?
by
AKAImBatman
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Name anything freebsd actually does better than linux?
Well, for one, my mouse actually works. And so does USB. Oh! And my zip drive works! And I don't randomly lose files in a crash! And my programs are more responsive. And my system stays up longer. And I'm hacked less. etc. etc. etc.
There are more advantages to an OS than just ticks on a "supports this feature" list. Supporting a feature is not the same as supporting it well. The FreeBSD guys usually don't add a feature until it's supported well. The Linux guys add the feature, then improve after everyone tells them it's broken. Both camps have their advantages and disadvantages.
BSD is running on fumes of hype right now, once people wake up and realize it sucks it will be all done.
Do a 's/BSD/Linux/g' and you're getting pretty close. Modern Linux systems tend to be highly unstable with large numbers of known issues and overall poor testing. This is done intentionally to help Linux reach a competitive stage more quickly. But one does have to wonder: Is it worth completely reinstalling your OS every three months? The whole reason of ditching windows was to get away from reinstalling, DLL hell, and system instabilities. So we've made things better by replacing these 'problems' with reinstalling, RPM hell, and system instabilities.
That's not progress!
Progress is something like Mac OS X: build a system that is MORE usable, and MORE feature-rich than the competitor. Yet what people like you seem to miss, is that Linux is not about building a "better" system! Linux is about building a system that is "free" in Stallman and Linus's definition of the word. If that is what you want, than Linux is a great choice. If you want a "better" end-user OS than Windows, then you're going to need to compromise some of the principles on which Linux is based. Take your pick, because these goals are mutually exclusive.
Re:So XFree Is Dead then
by
neurojab
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
>This weakness made it possible for IBM, Sun, HP, etc. to proprietize Unix and make many incompatible versions that only run on their hardware.
So would you say that made UNIX less successful? Anyway, you're spouting nonsense. IBM and Sun were never forked from BSD. They were forked from derivations of AT&T Unix, a proprietary product.
>The GPL was only created because of the lessons learned from the whole Unix-fiasco.
Unix, arguably the most sucessful operating system ever, was a fiasco? Surely you jest.
The GPL was created for those who believe that software should always be free. Believe it or not, there are those of us in the industry that are totally comfortable with closed-source software as well. For those of us that don't MIND that a large company might make money off software that we freely write, the BSD license is a good fit.
Speaking as a (l)user with an nVidia Riva128 video card (yes, I know
it's old and it sucks and I should get a new one; you may be seated), I
have experienced frustration in the recent past, when XFree86 4.3.x was
limping toward 4.4.0: XFree86 4.2.x had annoying bugs which
unfortunately I can't now remember; the Riva128 driver in the 4.3.99
prerelease packages was broken, and the only way to get a working one
was to use a CVS snapshot; but getting the CVS snapshots working with
any sort of stability was, to put it politely, a challenge.
From the small amount of correspondence I had on the XFree86 mailing
list, the devs seemed rather frustrated at the way things were dragging
along, and not just with a video driver for a ratty little video card
that three people still use. While I'm still mainly using XFree86 for
the moment, I'm definitely watching Xorg with interest.
Re:BETTER QUESTION: Why do we even need FreeBSD?
by
SillyNickName4me
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> Why do we even need FreeBSD when we have Linux? The developers of FreeBSD should abandon it and migrate over to Linux.
Because WE NEED CHOICE.
There is no reason whatsoever to turn Linux into the enxt monoculture, that in fact is one of the most important things to prevent.
Besides the fact that FreeBSD is better at specific things, but you as home linux zealot are extremely unlikely to have a need for those else you'd have known about them already and not have asked this utterly stupid question.
Re:BETTER QUESTION: Why do we even need FreeBSD?
by
SillyNickName4me
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> See it's only these silly amateurs who think BSD is so freaking exciting.
And with that one comment you have proven yourself to be utterly and completely clueless with regards to the subject.
*BSD is not about being exciting, it is about doing its job well. That is very boring actually, nothing exciting there.
> Linux has superior support for USB
Since when? Linux USB support is such an amazingly horrible hack that it is surprising it does anything at all. I suggest you go read the source instead of posting bullshit.
only on very recent Linux versions things like my USB mouse and sd card reader started working (2.6 series kernel on gentoo) while it has worked out of the box on FreeBSD for the last 3 or 4 years at least.
> Linux actually has journaling filesystems so you don't lose files in a crash where as BSD still fails to have one,
Hrm, there exists a JFS implementation for BSD, but I would not use that for any production work. More promissing sounds the porting of XFS.
At any rate, Reiser has caused me way more problems then FFS ever did (while I have a lot more data on FFS)
I hear the same from everyone here who has seriously tried both.
Besides, you seem to be a bit clueless once more.. journaling filesystems do not prevent data loss, they prevent situations where your data and meta data is out of sync, and they provide for a rollback to resync those in case they do end up being out of sync still.
You can still lose data with that, but you will not get a filesystem that is in a inconsistant state... normally.
Now, unlike traditional ufs and filesystems like ext2fs, the FFS filesystem does not write data and metadata asynchroneously, so the inconsistancy between those two is extremely unlikely.
That said, a production quality journalling filesystem would be nice to have
I'd rather want to have FFS2 snapshop functionality to go with that tho.
> RPM hell only existed on distros that used RPM and even then it has been fixed for years with tools like urpmi, up2date and yum.
Last time I checked RPM is part of the LSB but you are right here, it is not used by every distro, and not even part of "Linux" itself.
You know something I dont understand is how is the Xfree licenance un free? Just becouse someone chooses not to use the GNU dosent make it wrong. I believe the BSD licenance is the true meaning of freedom becouse it dosent place silly restrictions on software. In the end I believe the baderging of developers wrong and they should get the credit they deserieve for there hard work.
Re:Short Domain
by
kasperd
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I do. I use NetBSD---one of the few organizations that had enough [of something] to import XFree 4.4. There's really nothing wrong with the license, despite what the GNU team thinks.
> There's really nothing wrong with the license, despite what the GNU team thinks.
I do not see them saying it is wrong, I see them saying it is incompatible with the GNU GPL.
To quote their statement on it:
"This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, incompatible with the GNU GPL because of its requirements that apply to all documentation in the distribution that contain acknowledgements."
They believe it is a very bad idea to make licenses incompatible with the GPL, but there it ends. If GPL compliance is not relevant for you (as it is in the case of *BSD) there is no issue (well, except when you are called Theo maybe).
A much better reason to move to X.org is that it quite looks like most development moved to X.org as well.
Re:Bad News Everyone?
by
JamesTRexx
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
One *BSD hates the other? Where did you get that idea? If it's just because some developers have their own idea on how to implement things, you might as well say that every GNU/Linux distro hates the other ones. Which does seem to be the case with all the distro zealots and their ranting on how only their choice is the good one.
I stronly disagree with your statements...
by
Saem
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
BSD is the antithesis of competition. LGPL is the anti-competition, tis the ultimate of truces.
Look at the BSDs, their greatness is achieved through entities (the groups) pursuing goals which may produce overlap work. But they SHARE, with little ego for the most part.
If you think about it, it's not competition that drives them, it's cooperation and out right, striving, for the betterment of all that they can effect and themselves. There are more things, but currently, at least to my limited ability to express myself, remain ineffable.
Additionally, if not tangentially, how many different versions of Linux do we have, not distros or backported kernels for some of those distros, but actual, different kernels? Why is Linus' Linux basically the main one?
Re:Not to troll or anything
by
TheRaven64
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Of course the backend is important, but to most it's not important enough to care about.
...
Hell, most linux users won't ever know they're running xorg until they have to edit their xorg.conf to get those NVIDIA drivers working.
These sentences seem to contradict slightly. You know Linux is just a kernel, right? As in as far to the back end as it's possible to get without touching actual hardware?
Re:Bad News Everyone?
by
jdog1016
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Actually, FreeBSD is increasing it's market share, as mentioned here,
here, and here. You really should know a little about what you're talking about before you talk about it.
As for one BSD hating another, that is utterly ridiculous to the point that I laughed at you when I read it.
Finally, I don't know what you define as "success" but the way I see it, microsoft still has the dominant desktop operating system in both quality (IMHO) and popularity (statistically) and IMHO FreeBSD still has the upper hand over Linux in the server department. So, if you follow that, that still leaves linux behind both of them.
I suspect that OpenBSD will not switch to x.org until after the release of 3.6 in november (and hence go x.org in 3.7, 1st of may). Why? At the moment x.org looks promising, but really hasn't released anything substantial. And since OpenBSD by tradition (and goal) is quite conservative when it comes to importing third party software, I think it will probably take a while.
Another thing is that OpenBSD has developed a few handy patches for X11, like privilege separation (something I hope will be ported to x.org's distribution) and with OpenBSD's security goal I don't think they will give that up in a whim. OTOH, periodically merging with XFree or merging with x.org is probably the same amount of work...
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone seems to be moving to xorg now. Where does this leave xfree? Not that I'm worried about it or anything.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Too bad that you can't upgrade an existing system without using portupgrade, though. I hate to see portupgrade drifting closer and closer to being a required part of the system. I've had a lot of bad (system-breaking) experiences with it.
Find free books.
This is only in -CURRENT. For those of you in 5.2.1, or 4.10, you can add:
/etc/make.conf. For those of you running -CURRENT that want the old X, make it:
X_WINDOW_SYSTEM=xorg
in
X_WINDOW_SYSTEM=xfree86-4
--If I said something interesting it probably wasn't correct
The lesson of X11 is that you can be the most popular piece of software on every distribution, and it still doesn't give you the power to play dictator with your licence. If you put unneccessary restrictions in your licence, someone will fork your code and the community will embrace them, not you. You would think that people would have figured that out after the ssh/openssh split. Now we have another example in windowing systems....
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Heh, well all OS X users use a port of it, but who knows if they will switch too when Apple releases Tiger next year.
Yes, Slashdotters, which among the major distros is left? Anyone know whether X.org is doing anything about the [horrible] Linux fonts found in major default Linux installs? I have always had to install M$ fonts or run the webfonts.sh script to get decent fonts. This is shameful! The Linux gurus create a world class OS but have not yet made fonts for Linux? What do you think?
OpenBSD is still using the latest XFree86 4.4 release candidate with the old license+drivers. And NetBSD incorporated XFree86 4.4 with the new license.
Good News Everyone!
Mike Smith now works for Apple, who's OS is based on BSD.
Check it out: www.lemis.com/~grog/msmr.html
and at: daemonnews, under "BSD at Apple"
He didn't like the direction that v5 was taking so he quit and starting writing BSD code for Apple.
Too bad that you can't upgrade an existing system without using portupgrade, though. I hate to see portupgrade drifting closer and closer to being a required part of the system.
No. It says in the post:
To upgrade, you must remove your XFree86 ports and install the xorg
ports. It couldn't be done with portupgrade, unfortunately, because we
are keeping the XFree86 ports around.
In other words, you cannot automatically upgrade all the ports using portupgrade.
As for portupgrade becoming necessary, I don't know what you're talking about. While I use it (to keep my -CURRENT current), this is merely for convenience: I haven't seen any ports that depend on it.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
bad news for those who are to lazy to rtfm.
I know this is stupid but I'm glad for the name change of the X-server that ever is using. Because it always seemed weird to be running XFree86 on a PPC It's nice that the new standard has an architecture neutral name. I'm assuming the 86 came from x86.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
I don't know if this is the best place to mention this, but I like to pronounce "X.org" like it was all one word, i.e. sounding like "Zorg". It sounds like some futuristic GUI monster that would crush towns at its whim. This alone is enough to justify Xorg the Conqueror's rising popularity and XFree86's decline. I mean, XFree86 sounds kind of like a fighter jet, which while kind of cool, would be useless against Xorg. He would use an XFree86 fighter jet to pick his teeth! All hail Xorg!
Bet you can't back that up.
That's right, I've switched to FreeBSD...
Now that Gentoo has been ported to OSX, we have Darwin ports, fink and Gentoo Portage. Do you understand that Linux is just a kernel? We already have the userland BSD "and" GNU (what you seem to think is linux) on OSX so I don't see the point of switching kernels.
Apple contributes to KDE KHTML, BSD and various other open source projects. What is it exactly that you are complaining about again?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Been done before I'm afraid. The 'evil monster' in The Fifth Element is Dr. Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
I agree on the AC post about bitstream vera fonts. They look very good on the notoriously unforgiving notebook screens. I prefer them over the standard ms fonts i had to install to check compatibility of web page layouts. Try them for yourself.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I guess to beat that, you'd need to go with a country code domain.
ai and dk should work.
Due to DNS weirdness you might need to add a dot, as in ai. and dk.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
More details on this story are in my appendix The Cautionary Tale of XFree86, part of my essay Make Your Open Source Software GPL-Compatible. Or Else.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Microsoft didn't steal it. That's the nature of the BSD license. We don't care if you, Microsoft, or anybody else is using the code for commercial purposes.
It's a strength, not a weakness.
You know, I was going to make a similar joke, but seriously, competition is always good. My laptop runs Gentoo, my desktop runs FreeBSD and WinXP. Why? Because Linux is good for a lot of desktop stuff and programming that I would be doing for school, I need XP on my desktop for gaming, and when I am not doing that, FreeBSD is something different that is nice and fast, a great server, and something that runs familiar programs that I normally run under Linux. So, do I need FreeBSD instead of Linux? No. But it serves purposes that are often different from the ones served by Linux and it is more specific in its direction and use.
I think they wanted this to happen. Search old /. stories for 'xfree86' and see what I mean.
First, XFree86 Core Team Disbands, then X.org and XFree86 Reform. Then a week later, XFree86 Alters License. I realise the 'merger' turned out to be more of an exodus, but I think the project was ready to die anyway.
The license change was really just a way of prompting everyone to move on, while not completely abandoning them.
Thats all just my guess, take it or leave it.
As it is, X.Org is not at all different from the latest "non-crippled" XFree release - i'm running it in my Gentoo box and besides beeing just a tad faster, it's the same. It has minor patches applied and a few configuration files names changed. The upgrade is as painless as it can be; even my nVidia linux bnary drivers worked perfectly.
The thing with XFree it's been the attitude of it's developers (David Dawes in particular, do a google search of Usenet groups for some fun) - and this translated to the project in being very hard to submit codes or patches and had them approved. XFree has then been quite stagnant in the recent past; the licence fiasco was simply the cherry on the top.
X.Org has a much more open developement and i expect it to become quite different (advanced) of XFree in the future; stuff like Cairo and other X extensions (check http://www.freedesktop.com/) will at some point be incorporated onto X.Org giving us a nice, nifty OpenGL accelerated desktop.
Can't wait for that myself.
We need FreeBSD so that we can keep the developers who are interested in developing an operating system under a BSD-type license, but who are not interested in writing code under a GPL license, busily writing code that benefits us all.
Competition is good for everyone but the losers, and in a certain sense it's good for them too - as a wake-up call. Competition can be a major driving force, even if you're only competing against yourself. For example, I'm on everything2, and when I see a writeup that I think sucks and I say "I can do better than that" it's a strong motivator to me to outdo the existing writeup. So, someone implements something on Linux, and some BSD type says "I can do that! Shit, I can kick that thing's ass!" Next thing you know the feature in Linux is being upgraded or replaced because its author wants it to be the best tool of its type, or someone else wants features which are in the BSD version.
So even if you don't think it's important for what it can do in and of itself, BSD is important for the same reason as the lower class - to scare the shit out of the middle class.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is semi objective. I have a very minor presence in the X.org mailing lists.
XFree86 seems to be mostly listing, with it's major focus being drivers. It was always easier to get new extensions in XFree than in the reference implementation, but that was still hard, so driver's and performance were much of it's force and they seem to think that it still will be. XFree seems to think that they will be the application that people upgrade to from X.org for their value added improvements. Short term assessment, this is a load of crap. People are moving from distro's X.org and XFree ONLY for stability concerns, and those are easily assuaged.
X.org is all about two things. One, take the protocol to the next level, through the judicious use of extensions. X.org has support from Sun and HP, for example, Sun is moving much of their Looking Glass work into the tree.
Second, get the implementation out of the stone age. Modularize the build, and use a more modern build system. Clean up the DDX (device dependent X) get extensions playing well with each other, havea faster release cycle and get security and bug fixes from vendors incorperated more quickly. All of this seems to be happening. Hop on the X.org mailing lists and take a look.
...only Xorg.
Oper on the Nightstar
XFree86 is dying. ;-)
You can get X11 for OS X here.
Albuquerque PC
BSD is important for the same reason as the lower class - to scare the shit out of the middle class.
That is the most absurdly ignorant, hateful statement I have ever read. You're telling me you think that lower class people strive every day to make enough to live on--often at the sacrifice of their own health--and that is important because it motivates the middle class to work harder at their dumb ass job they hate. You, drinkypoo, are a huge asshole. I mean, unless you're a millionaire, why the fuck are you advocating for a system that continuously fucks you over?
People walk around throwing out phrases like "laws of nature," "human nature," "the way of the world," "that's the way the world works," like there's some sort of fucking truth. You give us your cute little scenario about Linux hackers vs. BSD hackers like it's some kind of truism, like it proves something. Please.
Think about how many different cultures there are throughout the world and how different they have been throughout history. It doesn't have to be this way, folks. Want to get educated? Read a book. Want to do something? Go work for a labor advocacy group.
Actually, OpenBSD has brought in changes from freedesktop.org into their copy of the X sources. They've always maintained a local modified version anyhow, and they have already said nothing else will come from xfree86, just freedesktop and local work.
No, he's saying the middle class shouldn't get too smug in their middle-class comfort, because in today's equal-opportunity world, the lower classes will not stay down there forever. And similarly, even if Linux is ahead in a lot of things, the BSDs will catch up (in fact, it wasn't long ago that the BSDs were ahead in most aspects of stability and performance and Linux was the "lower class" playing catch-up, and in many respects the BSDs are still ahead.) And I didn't understand very much else in your rant.
Name anything freebsd actually does better than linux?
Well, for one, my mouse actually works. And so does USB. Oh! And my zip drive works! And I don't randomly lose files in a crash! And my programs are more responsive. And my system stays up longer. And I'm hacked less. etc. etc. etc.
There are more advantages to an OS than just ticks on a "supports this feature" list. Supporting a feature is not the same as supporting it well. The FreeBSD guys usually don't add a feature until it's supported well. The Linux guys add the feature, then improve after everyone tells them it's broken. Both camps have their advantages and disadvantages.
BSD is running on fumes of hype right now, once people wake up and realize it sucks it will be all done.
Do a 's/BSD/Linux/g' and you're getting pretty close. Modern Linux systems tend to be highly unstable with large numbers of known issues and overall poor testing. This is done intentionally to help Linux reach a competitive stage more quickly. But one does have to wonder: Is it worth completely reinstalling your OS every three months? The whole reason of ditching windows was to get away from reinstalling, DLL hell, and system instabilities. So we've made things better by replacing these 'problems' with reinstalling, RPM hell, and system instabilities.
That's not progress!
Progress is something like Mac OS X: build a system that is MORE usable, and MORE feature-rich than the competitor. Yet what people like you seem to miss, is that Linux is not about building a "better" system! Linux is about building a system that is "free" in Stallman and Linus's definition of the word. If that is what you want, than Linux is a great choice. If you want a "better" end-user OS than Windows, then you're going to need to compromise some of the principles on which Linux is based. Take your pick, because these goals are mutually exclusive.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
>This weakness made it possible for IBM, Sun, HP, etc. to proprietize Unix and make many incompatible versions that only run on their hardware.
So would you say that made UNIX less successful? Anyway, you're spouting nonsense. IBM and Sun were never forked from BSD. They were forked from derivations of AT&T Unix, a proprietary product.
>The GPL was only created because of the lessons learned from the whole Unix-fiasco.
Unix, arguably the most sucessful operating system ever, was a fiasco? Surely you jest.
The GPL was created for those who believe that software should always be free. Believe it or not, there are those of us in the industry that are totally comfortable with closed-source software as well. For those of us that don't MIND that a large company might make money off software that we freely write, the BSD license is a good fit.
Speaking as a (l)user with an nVidia Riva128 video card (yes, I know it's old and it sucks and I should get a new one; you may be seated), I have experienced frustration in the recent past, when XFree86 4.3.x was limping toward 4.4.0: XFree86 4.2.x had annoying bugs which unfortunately I can't now remember; the Riva128 driver in the 4.3.99 prerelease packages was broken, and the only way to get a working one was to use a CVS snapshot; but getting the CVS snapshots working with any sort of stability was, to put it politely, a challenge.
From the small amount of correspondence I had on the XFree86 mailing list, the devs seemed rather frustrated at the way things were dragging along, and not just with a video driver for a ratty little video card that three people still use. While I'm still mainly using XFree86 for the moment, I'm definitely watching Xorg with interest.
> Why do we even need FreeBSD when we have Linux? The developers of FreeBSD should abandon it and migrate over to Linux.
Because WE NEED CHOICE.
There is no reason whatsoever to turn Linux into the enxt monoculture, that in fact is one of the most important things to prevent.
Besides the fact that FreeBSD is better at specific things, but you as home linux zealot are extremely unlikely to have a need for those else you'd have known about them already and not have asked this utterly stupid question.
> See it's only these silly amateurs who think BSD is so freaking exciting.
And with that one comment you have proven yourself to be utterly and completely clueless with regards to the subject.
*BSD is not about being exciting, it is about doing its job well. That is very boring actually, nothing exciting there.
> Linux has superior support for USB
Since when? Linux USB support is such an amazingly horrible hack that it is surprising it does anything at all. I suggest you go read the source instead of posting bullshit.
only on very recent Linux versions things like my USB mouse and sd card reader started working (2.6 series kernel on gentoo) while it has worked out of the box on FreeBSD for the last 3 or 4 years at least.
> Linux actually has journaling filesystems so you don't lose files in a crash where as BSD still fails to have one,
Hrm, there exists a JFS implementation for BSD, but I would not use that for any production work. More promissing sounds the porting of XFS.
At any rate, Reiser has caused me way more problems then FFS ever did (while I have a lot more data on FFS)
I hear the same from everyone here who has seriously tried both.
Besides, you seem to be a bit clueless once more.. journaling filesystems do not prevent data loss, they prevent situations where your data and meta data is out of sync, and they provide for a rollback to resync those in case they do end up being out of sync still.
You can still lose data with that, but you will not get a filesystem that is in a inconsistant state... normally.
Now, unlike traditional ufs and filesystems like ext2fs, the FFS filesystem does not write data and metadata asynchroneously, so the inconsistancy between those two is extremely unlikely.
That said, a production quality journalling filesystem would be nice to have
I'd rather want to have FFS2 snapshop functionality to go with that tho.
> RPM hell only existed on distros that used RPM and even then it has been fixed for years with tools like urpmi, up2date and yum.
Last time I checked RPM is part of the LSB but you are right here, it is not used by every distro, and not even part of "Linux" itself.
You know something I dont understand is how is the Xfree licenance un free? Just becouse someone chooses not to use the GNU dosent make it wrong. I believe the BSD licenance is the true meaning of freedom becouse it dosent place silly restrictions on software. In the end I believe the baderging of developers wrong and they should get the credit they deserieve for there hard work.
ai and dk should work.
I just create a list with all the short ones I could find that actually resolve.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
They tend not to arise with proper distributions. :-) I'll let you decide for yourself what is a proper distribution (mine's Slackware, but YMMV).
I do. I use NetBSD---one of the few organizations that had enough [of something] to import XFree 4.4. There's really nothing wrong with the license, despite what the GNU team thinks.
> There's really nothing wrong with the license, despite what the GNU team thinks.
I do not see them saying it is wrong, I see them saying it is incompatible with the GNU GPL.
To quote their statement on it:
"This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, incompatible with the GNU GPL because of its requirements that apply to all documentation in the distribution that contain acknowledgements."
They believe it is a very bad idea to make licenses incompatible with the GPL, but there it ends. If GPL compliance is not relevant for you (as it is in the case of *BSD) there is no issue (well, except when you are called Theo maybe).
A much better reason to move to X.org is that it quite looks like most development moved to X.org as well.
One *BSD hates the other? Where did you get that idea? If it's just because some developers have their own idea on how to implement things, you might as well say that every GNU/Linux distro hates the other ones. Which does seem to be the case with all the distro zealots and their ranting on how only their choice is the good one.
home
BSD is the antithesis of competition. LGPL is the anti-competition, tis the ultimate of truces. Look at the BSDs, their greatness is achieved through entities (the groups) pursuing goals which may produce overlap work. But they SHARE, with little ego for the most part. If you think about it, it's not competition that drives them, it's cooperation and out right, striving, for the betterment of all that they can effect and themselves. There are more things, but currently, at least to my limited ability to express myself, remain ineffable. Additionally, if not tangentially, how many different versions of Linux do we have, not distros or backported kernels for some of those distros, but actual, different kernels? Why is Linus' Linux basically the main one?
...
Hell, most linux users won't ever know they're running xorg until they have to edit their xorg.conf to get those NVIDIA drivers working.
These sentences seem to contradict slightly. You know Linux is just a kernel, right? As in as far to the back end as it's possible to get without touching actual hardware?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Actually, FreeBSD is increasing it's market share, as mentioned here, here, and here. You really should know a little about what you're talking about before you talk about it.
As for one BSD hating another, that is utterly ridiculous to the point that I laughed at you when I read it.
Finally, I don't know what you define as "success" but the way I see it, microsoft still has the dominant desktop operating system in both quality (IMHO) and popularity (statistically) and IMHO FreeBSD still has the upper hand over Linux in the server department. So, if you follow that, that still leaves linux behind both of them.
I suspect that OpenBSD will not switch to x.org until after the release of 3.6 in november (and hence go x.org in 3.7, 1st of may). Why? At the moment x.org looks promising, but really hasn't released anything substantial. And since OpenBSD by tradition (and goal) is quite conservative when it comes to importing third party software, I think it will probably take a while.
Another thing is that OpenBSD has developed a few handy patches for X11, like privilege separation (something I hope will be ported to x.org's distribution) and with OpenBSD's security goal I don't think they will give that up in a whim. OTOH, periodically merging with XFree or merging with x.org is probably the same amount of work...