Slashdot Mirror
The Power of X
An anonymous reader writes "The license changes in the last version of Xfree86 have caused many distributions to reject the project in favor of the forked X.Org X server. As X.Org prepares to release the second version of the X.Org "monolithic" X Server (dubbed version 6.8), Ars Technica investigates the future of the X platform, as cooperation between X.Org and projects like GNOME and KDE begin to take take hold at freedesktop.org. Already host to an impressive array of projects, it appears that freedesktop.org will become the hub in which other Free Desktop projects can collaborate. Daniel Stone, release manager for freedesktop.org, gets into the details on how it's all going to work, in conjunction with freedesktop.org's upcoming platform release."
Looks like the original XFree86 project was going nowhere fast. The distros making the first move to X.org want to make some progress to making Linux (and other Unix-types) ready for the desktop. Hopefully, X.org is the first sign of progress to a backend which will eventually be able to do things a modern desktop will need to do.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Yummie soon available near you http://freedesktop.org/XOrg/X11R68ScreenShots
Like X.org in Cygwin?
If you use the latest release of cygwin, it comes with an X.org server that has a rootless WM (like the one in Apple Xfree server). With it, you can run X11 applications next to your Win32 windows as if they were native (same for remote windows).
I use it all the time for remote admin and this is great.
And pretty slow it seems.
Right now I am running fedora core 2 and am using the latest release from X.org's CVS.
It seems stable and all that, but it's slow.
GLXGears I am scoring 285 fps with xcompmgr off
and 60-70 with it on. (that turns on the composite features).
Although it does have my dri drivers turned off in both cases (using intel i830-type video driver). I am recompiling as I type right now to enable the new i915 driver for it to see if that makes a difference.
But other people have reported it to be slow. Probably would be nice on my other computer using the Nvidia FX 5900 XT, but I don't want to mess up my desktop with a CVS-based X server.
All in all it's pretty stable and shows the progress that XFree86 was holding back on, unfortunately. Yea for X.org
Oh and also for that guy that says he was nervious about X.org and Freedesktop.org and KDE/Gnome "working to close together". He is a idiot. This isnt' X Windows, this is just the X SERVER. It's one part.
What I'd worry about more is X.org and Linux getting to cozy and unintentially making it more difficult to run on other Unix-like OSes.
X.org has a open invitation for all Unix developers and it would be great if they would get more of their input. (Especially the BSD's)
The future looks good. X.org would like to strip away the dual nature of X's drivers (Mesa/Dri OpenGL drivers + XFree86-type 2D drivers) and get the X server running on pure OpenGL!
That means instead of having to write 2 versions of drivers for video cards, now they only have to worry about the OpenGL version. This means it's easier to get good drivers for Linux and other Unix-like OSes that use X.org servers, and quicker too.
Also the Cairo project is going to be integrated bringing in Vector-based Windows and graphics libraries into X windows and allowing them to also be OpenGL accelerated.
The MS Longhorn waiters, eat your heart out. This is going to be some cool stuff we will have in the next couple years.
Of course OS X is openGL, too, but the cool thing about X windows is the flexibility. All these changes will keep complete backwards compatability with older programs (X clients actually in X terminology), while removing bloat for features that nobody uses/completely obsolete and streamlining developement thru modularlization and extensions.
Stuff like Damage is reducing the X networking load considurably too, making wide spread use of X terminals in businesses and schools more and more fesable.
And all sorts of other improvements are coming.
Changing over to X.org seems to have been a fortuninate move.
I don't know if you missed something in the interview but the nvida drivers definitely work with the new xorg and the extension. (I'm using them right now).
Also if you take a look at the xorg mailinglist you'll find that the guys at nvidia are working happily with the xorg devs.
As I understand it, you're right on the first part. XFree86 did fork X.org's work. The part that you're wrong on is that X.org didn't use XFree86's code. XFree86 was a fork specifically designed for the x86 platform. X.org didn't have that, and thus had to patch their codebase from XFree86's codebase.
Clear as mud?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade