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X.org X11 Server Release 6.8
kormoc writes "The developers of X.org have just release the long-desired version 6.8.0. This release brings real translucency and allows one to set values on different windows. Also, nifty drop shadows as well as XDamage, an extention that limits redrawing of windows to only the areas that were damaged. The Xcomposite extention is still not stable, but it works well for some people. Why not give it a shot?"
Really, why?
What is it with drop shadows?
Do they make you appear super l33t h4x0rZ111!11one w00t!!!?
On the bandwidth requirement fromt? Frankly, I don't u'stand why we don't have a good windowing environment atleast half as good as Citrix so far. The X-Damage stuff could be the ticket though.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Gentoo users may have access to it first, but will they be the first to be able to run it? Teeheehee!
(Take it as a joke, gentoo fans...)
For those who like to have more details: http://freedesktop.org/~xorg/X11R6.7.0/doc/RELNOTE S.html
Sounds like a nice release to me. Now I only have to wait for Gentoo to update portage.
Qui ne va pas à la chasse n'a pas de gibier
PHP Queb
I run XFree, you insensitive clod
...in japan.
I hope this finds it way into Debian soon...
Umm..yeah...XFree86 die die....
X.org is a good thing....yeah...bring on the Aqua-like eye candy I say.
I installed this from cvs yesterday. The new composite extension amazing, full shadows and transparency possible, yet everything renders faster than i've ever seen X, no flicker whatsoever.
In order to use the composite extension i had to add:
Section "Extensions" Option "Composite" "Enable" EndSection
and
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
to my nvidia driver section of my xorg.conf file
then install xcompmgr to turn it on since kwin doesn't utilise it yet.
We do announce releases of windows... so...
gentoo users will just emerge it.
thanks.
Here for 6.8.0.
If you want to find out when it is available in portage without sync then check the portage database
----
Wouldn't it be better to wait until X.org makes a press realease about this? That way, they can prepare for the onslaught of downloads. I seem to remember a version of FreeBSD being announced too early on /. that wasn't really a release.
How about waiting until X.org announces it? Until then, it's just a directory of files on an FTP server.
Dropshadow screenshotsp ng 9 500411796a9ba106_1.jpg
http://ruinaudio.com/Xorg-xcompmgr.png
http://jserv.sayya.org/misc/matchbox-gcin.png
http://jserv.sayya.org/misc/matchbox-xcomposite4.
http://img3.exs.cx/img3/6458/screen_lynucs_175940
Translucency screenshots
http://freedesktop.org/~mallum/argb.png
http://freedesktop.org/~krh/Screenshot.png
How much is XDAMAGE changing the original X11 protocol on wire ?. I have beed using something called WierdX, which is deployed as a JNLP in our project's webserver . Do these new extensions change something fundamental or is it just not applicable for remote X11 ?.
Hmm.. I just wish X11 would use my Video card instead of hogging CPU for those purty gradients and translucent windows.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Ah, so now the developers will start moving away from XFree86 in droves!
Don't forget that this improves much more then just adding real tranpsarencies!
X is a networking protocol not a gui!
Stuff like XDamage makes it easier to use over slower connections, for example.
The move to more and more extensions and reducing the monolythic nature of X is great. But it's slow and a evolutionary manner. But as you get more and more modular, stability will increase as will speed of developement. Each section can make changes and not worry about the impact on other parts of the X server.
Unlike the monolythic model of lumping everything into Xlibs and making it difficult to program for and adding new features while retiring obsolete ones.
Look forward to things like pure OpenGL enviroment! Now you have to have 2 drivers for every 1 video card... one for 2-d and one for 3-d.
Currently each application must deal with 3-dness independantly of each other. They must deal with the hardware independantly. Does Quake3 work over a network? No! But it can if they move everything to the X server. Each window then would automaticly be hardware accelerated, even if it was originally designed for the old way of doing things. Windows and items can be 3-d straight from the desktop.
That and dozens of other improvements are coming. This XDamage and Composite stuff is just laying the groundwork for more stuff, more progress.
This is awesome! From section 3.3 of Release Notes:
E S3.html#3
The nv driver for NVIDIA cards has been updated as follows:
* Support added to the nv driver for the GeForce FX 5700, which didn't work with XFree86 4.3.
* The driver now does a much better job of auto-detecting which connector of dual output cards the monitor is attached to, and this should reduce or eliminate the need for manual xorg.conf overrides.
* The 2D acceleration for TNT and GeForce has been completely rewritten and its performance should be substantially improved.
* TNT and GeForce cards have a new Xv PutImage adaptor which does scaled YUV bit blits.
http://freedesktop.org/~xorg/X11R6.7.0/doc/RELNOT
Anyone know when this will get released via yum repositories or is there a repository that has more current stuff for Fedora?
No, there is no double standard. You're looking at the wrong metric. Microsoft charges for their software. I've never in my life cut a check to X.Org (although I shall soon - and decide how much myself).
When a company charges for a product or service and it is defective, you try to return it, report the bug, and complain about the problem on discussion groups.
When a volunteer gives you a product for free and it is defective, you let the person know what's wrong, offer to retest it if they try to fix it, and if you have any time & talent to draw on, you offer to fix the problem and send in a patch. You NEVER, EVER complain. The worst you have the right to say is "I hope they take care of it in the next release".
Other than that, in response to your last sentence, on behalf of everyone whose ever given software away for free, STFU.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
It's part of a stable X.org release. The unstable extensions are not compiled by default, but they do bear mentioning because they are significant additions to X, and will make huge changes to the eye candy, as well as the utility (eg expose in mac os) of X
Not a big fan of X or anything, but is this 6.8 or RC 6.7 as the link says?
>
> > Why not give it a shot?
Aaaiiieeeee! Top-posting makes its debut on Slashdot! [head explodes, intarweb collapses]
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Since the new stuff is in *EXTENSIONS* the core X11 protocol is NOT affected at all. The new extensions have their own protocols, there are facilities in the core X11 protocol to ask the X server whether these extensions are present or not. This is the same for all X11 extensions.
I don't find this comment interesting, funny or even worthy of a mod point.
There is a time to be funny, and a time to just shut your trap.
I hate you for your sig... .sig PLEASE freaking stop?
There is a reason. It's for fucking US residents only. Now will everyone that has that shit in their
well, XDamage is an extension, which means, it doesn't modify the existing protocol, but adds more request/response types to said protocol, via a well defined extension protocol.
the Xpixmap issue with the ATI drivers, where Xv refuses to work very often :(
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
SP2 is mostly needed pain to enable security by default, so I don't understand people's beef with it beyond download size. As far as double standards however: There's a difference between a new feature that doesn't always work, and breaking existing stuff. As far as has been reported there's nothing broken in the new X system unless you turn on experimental stuff yourself.
This is kind of how I wouldn't expect the longhorn betas to have a 100% functional Avalon or WinFS, but I'd be annoyed if a later patch caused random simple programs to stop running.
Will future versions of x.org allow me to specify an alterntive backup graphic card driver in my xorg.conf?
:)
Use "nvidia", but if that fails use "nv".
This feature would be worth a thousand dropshadow effects
"X.Org release a piece of software that "works well for some people", Slashdot readers claim "Sounds like a nice release for me"."
No. X.Org release a piece of software that includes some experimental extensions which may not work correctly for all users (hence them being experimental). Also, these extensions are switched off by default.
I had to use Xfree 4.4 to get photoshop working with wine because of some bug in X.org 6.7, does anyone know if this has been fixed?
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Yeah but transperancy is mainly usless, look up any good Human computer Interaction textbook
I think that this release, just (about) 9 months after the fork from XFree, shows what talented X developers we have, who were being stifled by the XFree politics.
I am glad to see the amount of progress that is being made, and can only imagine what time will bring now that there is a way to actually contribute code to the X codebase again.
Kudos to KP, JG et al...
Could somebody clarify it all ?
There's http://xfree.org and there's http://x.org . What's the difference between both ? And about the version numbers ? What do they stand for ? I have X11R6, v. 4.3 or something like that installed on my computer, and now they announce X version 6.8.0 ?! What does the 6 mean ? The 11 ? The 6.8.0 ? (And where the hell does the X come from ?)
Thanks in advance !
From the release notes:
:)
"OpenGL is now supported for printing"
Anyone care to explain this bizarre concept? Can I now connect my graphics card directly to my printer?
In the spoon, there is no Soviet Russia!
Well why are X.org wasting time on it then?
Does anyone know how many years ago Windows did Network Transparency?
Hmmm...
You know how I check my e-mail when I am on my laptop or away from home?
ssh my.desktop's.address evolution
Then it opens up on my laptop, just the same as if I was sitting in front of my computer.
You know I also have multiple X servers.
on my Debian machine:
ctrl-alt-F7 takes me to my Gnome desktop.
ctrl-alt-F8 takes me to my KDE desktop... running from my laptop.
ctrl-alt-F9 takes me to a Fluxbox running quake3 fullscreen on a server.
That's network transparency. I can run multiple X servers running from multiple machines. If I had a Redhat server to admin, I could open up the Redhat desktop on my Debian administration machine. All secure thru ssh tunnels, much better then VNC or Window's remote desktop.
No special software, no special software. Any and all Linux, Unix, or BSD machine running X windows can do this.
I can also have virtual desktops were I can move windows back and forth between them. You can get that with some add-on software in Windows, but it's nothing compared to what I can do.
Eventually I'll be able to do stuff like close out a X server session on one computer, move to another computer and re-open it. Thanks to improvements in X.org.
Stuff like XDamage is going to make this more efficient network-wise, and new tunneling technology will replace the generic tunnelling with OpenSSH with something more geared specificly towards X windows. Newer compression technics and data types will make it even faster ontop of that.
You Windows guys don't know what your missing by not using a OS that has REAL multiuser support (having sudo and actually having it MORE conveinent to be a user rather then logged in as administrator.) with powerfull network technology, in a stable and SECURE enviroment.
X Windows rocks. XFree86 and politics held it back, but now with X.org it is beginning to have the same rate of developement that the rest of Free software enjoys.
Fedora and OpenBSD have new releases every 6 months. Using stuff like apt-get and ports it's EASY and CONVIENENT to keep up to date and patched. All the software gets up to date, not just the core system like in MS.
How often do you Windows guys get to play around with new stuff? Every 6 years, now?
You could have mutliple layouts.
That way you could switch between drivers without having to edit your xorg.conf file. That's been possible for a while.
you'd specify a default layout and a alternative layout (call it unaccl for example) and go like this:
startx
if that doesn't work then go:
startx -- -layout unaccl
there are examples on the web if you look around. I use one setup for my dual screen, but some games don't like that, so I have a second layout for just one screen.
I, for one, welcome our new drop shadowed overlords. That way, we can tell who the overloards actually are.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
X is the protocol. X11 is the 11th version of the X protocol (the first version of the X protocol I saw was X10, and that was some time ago on an already ancient machine). X11R6 means the X Window System, Version 11, Release 6 - that's the basic protocol level.
.8.0 bit at the end is X.Org's specific version numbers for their implementation of the X11R6 protocol. (Other organizations implement X11R6, such as Sun - they call their version of X11R6 OpenWindows).
The
I believe there was a prototype windowing system called W that preceeded X, but that's now ancient history (the first X Window System implementation to run was in the mid 1980s).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Eventually I'll be able to do stuff like close out a X server session on one computer, move to another computer and re-open it. Thanks to improvements in X.org.
hopefully sooner then later. i'd also like to see this in a per window capacity, like screen does for shells.
Having said that, the presence of the new ARGB visuals is known to confuse and break some programs. Worryingly, Mozilla+Flash and GTK 1.2 apps (like XMMS, VMware, etc) are amongst the things that have apparently broken.
To "unbreak" them you need to set a magic environment variable but as of yet there is no automatic blacklisting mechanism in place for userspace apps so .... you just have to be able to diagnose this breakage yourself.
Hence the fact that it's described as unstable.
ISTR that one of those things Xorg wanted to do was to separate the X client and server packaging. It's generally frowned on to install an X server on a server machine, but it would be nice to have X client software available there. The current Xorg/XFree packaging isn't friendly to splitting out the X client libs, or making the package control system recognize that so you could install X clients.
I don't see anything about separation of client and server libs and packaging. They have some other projects listed elsewhere, but nothing terribly solid about client/server separation.
Looking at the Xorg release plan (closest I could find to a roadmap) at http://wiki.freedesktop.org/XOrg/XorgReleasePlan
Anyone aware?
Another thing that would be neat to see is integration of the GLX/DRM work on the S3 Savage line of chips. According to the DRI page there's some work being done on this, though it's not ready for prime time. My laptop has a Savage, and my Mom's computer uses the Via KM133, which has an imbedded Savage. Of course this is an area where perhaps I *should* be trying to help.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"When will we see fully improved network/remote access?"
:) )?
What's wrong with ssh (besides the occasional "oops, wrong machine" moments
"When will we see some innovation instead of eye candy?"
In case you missed the point, this is about innovation, eye candy is just a nice side-effect. For example, XDamage improves X over slower network connections.
"The hooks for modular gui plugins should be there"
You mean something like the extensions for X?
"Why not work on something to compete against microsofts new gui/api interffaces based upon 3d rendering instead of pixel rendering? why not kill 2d before the competition and work on an graphical interface that is competitive instead of intriguing."
Well, it would be time to make up your mind on eye-candy.
3D desktops so far were nothing but neat eye-candy, from a usability point of view they have added nothing (one can argue that in fact they are worse than 2D ones). But anyway, I had the impression that the people of X.org are working on something like that.
If you want something to change, help them - but first, please, get your facts right, because spewing uninformed bullshit on slashdot does not help anyone.
Real life is overrated.
our new translucent overlords.
;-D
Seriously, I've now been using an RC for some time now and the work the xorg guys did is just amazing.
And when you look at freedesktop.org you'll notice that this is only the begin. Cairo and glitz anyone? Or what about xcb/xcl?
Thanks to all those involved for putting X development back on track and a lot of fun back on my computer.
Sun [calls] their version of X11R6 OpenWindows
I've always thought this was a daft name. Open windows aren't particuarly useful -- they're just like a hole, really, whereas a closed window keeps the wind and rain out while you can still see through it.
Just a thought.
I think it needs to be made clear (no pun) yet again, that all this work is not just about drop shadows (they are just one thing you can do with it) or "useless" eye-candy (sometimes beautification is critical to the user). This work is about new options in enhancing usability and improving performance. These new extentions do far more than just add shadows and transparency (no, not translucency, that is something else).
Off-screen compositing allows new effects that can add emphasis to certain user interface elements. They allow for windows with arbitrary shapes that do not appear "jagged" and "rough". Better performance means we can create more fluid effects in windowing systems. For instance, users are much more comfortable with things that slide around or fade smoothly rather than just snapping into position. It allows the eye to keep track of what's changing. Tools like Exposé are now possible. Overall, there are more possibilities for open source user interface developers to add significantly more polish to the desktop without resorting to cheap hacks (such as the static transparency found in KDE, Eterm, and Aterm).
And just to reinforce the classic uses of this: drop shadows really do add emphasis to the current focused window (I write this on an OSX box). Also, it can be really convenient to have window transparency in many cases (for example, when I have multiple Terminals open I can read a man page behind the console I'm currently typing in). Again, keep in mind that these features are not the goal but simply benefits of the new extentions.
The future of the F/OSS desktop is really looking up thanks to new technology like this. Eventually these things will be hardware accelerated (like Quartz Extreme) and then some really cool things will be possible.
So, in conclusion, don't knock or belittle the work that's going into X.org these days. In the future, most of you will appreciate them the same way you appreciate the flexibility you have now with choosing how to configure your window managers to your liking. No doubt a lot of people will take this stuff and produce a lot of crap, but we'll definitely see a lot of excellent work that will use it to improve the user experience.
Why bother.
Because some geeks like transparent terminal windows.
Simple, really.
Check out the X.org 6.8 Screenshots at LinuxReviews, showing off the new real transparency and drop shadow technology. These things may not increase your shareholder value, but it will allow you to impress people in a big way.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
When can we see a trusted computing environment? (gui down) When will we see fully improved network/remote access? When will we see some innovation instead of eye candy? Why does something have to be invented on OSX or Windows instead of pioneered on linux?
When someone writes - without smileyes or indication of joking of course - things like these above, I cannot in my life understand how in hell or heaven can it be moderated to Interesting.
Oh yeah, right, interesting in the way it shows linux&*nix ingorance.
Nothing to see here.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
When can we see a trusted computing environment?
SELinux integration with the X server (SE-X) to allow you to lock applications down tighter is being worked on in a branch of Xorg CVS. It's not done yet AFAIK. The idea here is that you can take the features of "trusted" military-strength windowing systems where it's possible to have secure windows such that you cannot screenshot them, other apps cannot send events to them and so on.
When will we see fully improved network/remote access?
This statement is meaningless but NX compression is clearly the way forward here.
When will we see some innovation instead of eye candy?
Again, totally useless statement. Nowhere do you define "innovation" or even show that it's a good thing (hint: I'll take an efficient and usable desktop over and pointlessly innovative one any day).
The hooks for modular gui plugins should be there - just as with any gui. OS/2 had the object based interface, windows has the pretty indepth theme integration and OSX has the PDF display..
Again a meaningless statement. There are actually some pretty convincing arguments out there that DPDF/DPS type systems are the wrong way to implement a graphics system, and that XRENDER type trapezoid rendering is the right way. I suggest you investigate first.
Windows XP has themes - great. You realise that Linux has pioneered the way when it comes to theming? It was the first to have a totally themable desktop (I think this is true even if you include gross hacks like WindowBlinds), still the only OS to have systematic icon theming, the only one I know of that has mouse cursor theming etc.
Why not work on something to compete against microsofts new gui/api interffaces based upon 3d rendering instead of pixel rendering?
I think you've misunderstood what Avalon is. It's not about 3D GUIs, it may include using 3D acceleration to speed up rendering on machines that support it but this doesn't affect the APIs.
Quick release cycles don't do anything for corporate adoption. Give us the "killer app" - in this case a desktop/windowing system that delivers everything we seem to bash in other systems as insecure or proprietary.
I don't know of any other open, standardised windowing system with the security features X has. If you can show me one, I'd be interested.
Sorry for the foul language, but I'm really getting tired of stupid mods modding up even stupider posts just because we are oh so critical.
Please look again at parent, it's nothing but a stupid incoherent rant and the only time it is criticizing something directly one look at freedesktop.org would have been sufficient to see that parent is talking bullshit.
As for the ".8.0" bit, some time back, someone at the old X oversight group (the name escapes me, now) decided that X11R6 was going to be the *last* X release. So I guess that meant that there wasn't going to be any X11R7, so we started into X11R6.1, X11R6.3, etc. ISTR X11R6.2 had limited enhancements/features, and never really made it to prime-time before X11R6.3 was out.
Somewhere in there the XFree86 project was off on its own numbering scheme. I particularly remember helping beta GLX stuff on 3.3.6, and then we into the 4.x stuff, 4.3 being the last before the license change. ISTR there was some sort of correspondence between the 3.x/4.x numbering and the X11R6.y numbering.
In all of this, the group that said that X11R6 is the *last* X has faded into de-facto insignificance, but we've all apparently stuck by their decision.
Maybe Xorg will get really gutsy at some point, and give us X11R7.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When will we see fully improved network/remote access?
"Fully improved"? Please explain what you want in English. You appear to be using English words, but when you put them together, they make no sense.
When will we see some innovation instead of eye candy? Why does something have to be invented on OSX or Windows instead of pioneered on linux?
Since when do Microsoft invent stuff?
Why not work on something to compete against microsofts new gui/api interffaces based upon 3d rendering instead of pixel rendering?
Project Looking Glass. And, to answer your question "why not", because input and output is still 2D, so a 3D GUI is much more awkward to use than current GUIs.
I found it slightly frustrating that no one has created an APT repository for any x.org release that I can find. I know I could do it, but I have neither the resources or energy to actually figure out how to make up that rather... impressive package.
--- My novel, The Mummy's Girl is now for sa
Eventually I'll be able to do stuff like close out a X server session on one computer, move to another computer and re-open it. Thanks to improvements in X.org.
I already do this every day, using a SunRay. Thanks to X, of course, not X.org.
How appropriate. You fight like a cow.
I use a Cygwin/X window ot login (via XDCMP) to a unix host. this is fine for local network. But sometimes I want to ssh in to my home box and run mozilla. Being over a cable modem, it is quite slow. I'd like to use the XDamage extension to reduce the data over the wire.
Where do I have to install X.org? Remotely? Do I have to upgrade mt Cygwin/X?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Thanks for the clear answers. But why do we talk about a "protocol" ? Isn't X a program for displaying stuff ? I know we can use remote display on a network with X, but why isn't it only a feature ? Why is X so focused on network terminology ? And how about differences between XFree.org and X.org ? And OpenWindows ? Are they three implementations of functions (same ".h"s) for displaying windows and drawing things ?
Windows alpha support is basically "Make this window sorta transparent". The Windows desktop isn't actually composited: only when a translucent window is over another window is the contents of that window buffered. The rest of the time you're still in flicker-land.
I guess back in 2001 when XP was released average machine didn't have enough RAM to make it doable. Many perhaps still don't, but nonetheless Windows is last in the composited desktop arena.
I am now running Debian unstable unstable. The second unstable is for when I install alpha and beta code onto a Debian unstable - which for some odd reason is surprisingly ... well... stable.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Or you can use lbxproxy.
I use both of them to throw windows quite some distance - even across dial-up connections sometimes. Dial-ups are still slow, but not interminable. Cable or DSL, while not as snappy as local access, are still well within acceptable limits.
Oh, and Citrix sucks. The Citrix X server has got to be the worst one I've ever used. Constantly crashing, can't handle lots of applications like some versions of Mozilla. All in all, Citrix is a giant, stinking turd.
I'm not satisfied with the above answers, so I'm going to try one myself.
The X Windowing System was originally an MIT project for unix (not linux specifically, it works with linux because linux carries on with the unix specification) that was made open source and turned into open source. X is just the name of the system, the 11 is the current version of the specification. 11 has been active since 1988.
The XFree86 organization managed the X-Window-System until version v4.3. Earlier this year, though, they released v4.4 under a license that was thought incompatible with the GPL, which caused a split. Alot of politics went on and alot of people got angry, which caused the birth of the X.Org foundation, which is now industry backed and also backed now by most major distributions such as Slackware (I think they were the first?) and Mandrake, Redhat, Gentoo. Others such as Debian still use XFree86 v4.3 instead of updating to 4.4.
The first version of X.Org was version 6.7 (which carried on the MIT X versioning system), which was released on March 31 this year. Now X11R6.8 has been released, carrying along again with the numbering system.
I hope that explains it for you.
http://ftp.sh.cvut.cz/MIRRORS/Mandrake/people/svet ljo/mandrake
xorg_6.8_rc4 can be found there for 10.0 and cooker (use "probably_broken" dir). i think 6.8 final will get there soon.
this is running here fine.
``But as you get more and more modular, stability will increase as will speed of developement.''
I keep hearing this argument. However, I am not all that convinced that modularity will improve stability. After all, things tend to break around the edges. More modules means more edges, thus more opportunities to break.
Also, modules only work by virtue of well-defined interfaces. What if some of the interfaces turn out to be suboptimal? Retaining the interface can severely burden development and innovation. Changing the interface can require massive code changes.
I am all for modularity, but I can't assume that it will lead to more stability and productivity.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
weird thought it is
Man I can't wait for the autotooled X.org releases sometime in the future (debrix or whatever the branch name is called).
Building this beast is a trip down memory lane to the bad old days. Half way trough it bombs out on me because it can't find bison (now there's a program I haven't yet needed this century). So you install the program and continue on with "make World". What follows is the longest "clean" operation I've ever seen. Forget about just picking up compiling where it left. You're better of deleting the whole tree and unpacking the sources again, trust me, you'll save time.
Imake was a piece of shit when it was new and unsuprisingly it still holds true in 2004. However if it wasn't for X.org and Freedesktop I bet we'd still be compiling XFree86 5.0 with this pos a few years from now, at least someone at X.org is working on moving to the autotools for the next release.
It's like deja vu all over again.
Did you mirror it? It doesn't work anymore
There's also the overhead of X's network transparency: all communication between client and server is network traffic rather than the simpler, less-flexible system that Windows uses. The X protocol is also fairly verbose.
> Does Quake3 work over a network? No!
Just tested again, but my memory was right: Of course it works over a network! With hardware acceleration.
I played both via ssh-forwarding (which is a bit slow, because of the compression, but is otherwise perfect) and via normal X protocol (only the XF86VidModeClientNotLocal calls failed (which is a _security_ thing apparently), so it was in a frameless window and not gamma corrected, but really fast enough).
One of the reasons SGI even invented OpenGL, was to get the network transparency right. Its predecessor gl had beed designed for local hardware data transfers and got network forwarding implanted in a somewhat ugly way.
Thats really funny ! ROTFL ... Id mod you up for comic timing but unfortunately i dont have mod points at the moment!
;)
Way to go matey! Nothing better than the truth
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Thanks for taking my question as a serious question and not me whining etc.
This was very interesting:)
I tired it with Win2000 and it crashed more than usual.
The worst you have the right to say is "I hope they take care of it in the next release".
No. You can hope that the next release will fix <insert bug/problem here>. If you can't patch the thing yourself that is all you can do, apart from reporting the bug/problem.
What you can't do is to expect them to fix it. They have no obligation to do so.
So, if you say "I hope they'll take care of it" and mean it like you said it, there's nothing wrong with that. If you actually mean "I expect those lazy bums to fix my problem, even though I never paid them for their product", yes, that justifies a big STFU.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Because really, that's the only standard they have.
No, you're wrong on two fronts. First, the virus is working correctly by wrecking the machine, so my original response doesn't apply. Second, I didn't accept the virus, it was surrupticiously installed on my computer.
Stabbing me with a knife isn't the same as having a table of them and saying I can have one if I choose.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Hopefully it leads to per pixel transparency...
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Overruled. That isn't the same at all. A virus author is very clearly intending his software to be malicious (whereas the X.org developers are doing anything but that), and you also get viruses (virii?) by accident -- never intentionally.
I don't recall ever installing an X server by accident.
--Colin
Wow. Telling people to mod your own post up. Desperate, much?
Game... blouses.
I wonder if it will make it into FreeBSD 5.3, according to the schedule the Ports where frozen on the 3:rd of September; it would be nice if they regarded this a fix for the one in the Ports, otherwise I will use the latest stable XFree86 release.
As long as the S3 drivers suck, I could pick either and not really care; without better drivers my laptop mostly runs a VT100 console with a bit higher resolution thanks to vidcontrol.
When can we see a trusted computing environment? (gui down) When will we see fully improved network/remote access?
there was in issue around ownership of tmp file fixed in this release, and integration with selinux should be not far behind.
When will we see some innovation instead of eye candy? Why does something have to be invented on OSX or Windows instead of pioneered on linux?
do you have any idea how this stuff was done? completely network transparent window rendering and compositing? windows and mac can't do that!
The hooks for modular gui plugins should be there - just as with any gui. OS/2 had the object based interface, windows has the pretty indepth theme integration and OSX has the PDF display..
and render and and composite are extensions to the X protocol (i.e. plugins). Gnome and KDE have object based UIs and indepth theme integration, and render is a Porter-Duff based compositing model that can be hooked into Cairo for a PDF like API. I'm starting to think I have just bitten into a troll here...
Why not work on something to compete against microsofts new gui/api interffaces based upon 3d rendering instead of pixel rendering? why not kill 2d before the competition and work on an graphical interface that is competitive instead of intriguing.
that was the whole point. or maybe you haven't been paying attention?
Quick release cycles don't do anything for corporate adoption. Give us the "killer app" - in this case a desktop/windowing system that delivers everything we seem to bash in other systems as insecure or proprietary.
The time based realease plans now being used by Gnome and X.org have given us some pretty cool stuff in a short period of time. I'm really not sure what you're complaining about.
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
I'll leave it to your logic-addled brain to figure out which one matches up to the release of X11R6.8 and which one metches up with your hypothetical (I hope...) release of a virus.
Umm. they have had that for sometime now, its called 'seamless windows' in citrix-speak. And has been out for at least a couple of versions now.. ( we expiremented with it 5 years ago, might have been beta then.. dont remember now to be honest )
You simply "publish" a single application specify that its 'seamless', and run it as a single window.. no 'citrix desktop' required..
We do it every day now, with hundreds of clients...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I've been trying the Xf86 ports and vmware driver, but it's hell off wheels (hell on wheels would be fun, at least).
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
When will we see some innovation instead of eye candy? Why does something have to be invented on OSX or Windows instead of pioneered on linux?
Because for the most part, that is not, and will probably never be, the way Linux development has worked. UNIX, yes, but Linux, traditionally not.
Now, before you put gasoline underwear on me and get ready to strike a match, hear me out. For the most part, Linux has been an environment where the best ideas from surrounding computing environments have been taken, sythesized, sifted, reviewed, and eventually had the creme-de-la-creme added to the mix. It's like making chocolate chip cookies but you've reviewed every chocolate chip and grain of flour prior to inclusion.
Now, this being said, has nothing been invented on Linux, is it all a facsimile? Of course not -- lots of apps exist in Linux that are unique. However, think about how music is composed nowadays. Most music written is a combination of theory, heritage, culture, and style. There's nothing really groundbreaking about it; no one is out making music from the sound of tomatoes rotting. However, the music is still new -- it's just another rendering of the general mish-mash.
Hence is Linux and Linux development. It doesn't always have to follow a pioneering stance; indeed, it rarely has. Nor is there a need to start now. I think in a lot of ways, the community does better if it takes the best of the already-field-tested and manipulates that into a successful product. Let the others take the heat and trials of something new and potentially groundbreaking (MS Bob, anyone?) and let us reap the goods.
Blog,Twitter
I'am pulling http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux /core/development/SRPMS/xorg-x11-6.7.99.903-5.src. rpm right and will atempt to compile it. :-) But my question (as I cannot get to xorg servers to see ChangeLog) - has anything important changed since 6.7.99 -> 6.8? Or is it just cosmetic release number (with no changes behind it) with the same code as 6.7.99?
Take another look; I'm not limiting the userbase to those who code. I said "if you have any time & talent". It doesn't take programming skills to retest, i.e., rerun the app and see if the problem is still there.
You might not like how the developer is behaving under the pressure, and you might complain, but can you seriously say you are in the right to do so, since you haven't paid him a Peseta to work on the project? If you don't have time yourself, and you won't pay him for the feature, try saying this to yourself, "I hope he takes care of it in the next release".
Promises are broken all the time. Sourceforge is full of stalled projects which would have been very beneficial. Most of them are from people who had good intentions.
And the STFU was directed to one person, so don't take it personally unless you are one in the same.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Thanks for the clear answers. But why do we talk about a "protocol" ? Isn't X a program for displaying stuff ?
Evidently the answers weren't all that clear to you. X is a protocol, not a program. It was designed from the start as a client/server display protocol. The programs that implement X are called an X server and an X client.
(Somewhat confusingly, an X Server is a program that generally resides on a network client, and an X Client is an application that is often, but not necessarily, on a network server.)
At work, we run X Servers on our Windows desktops to run GUI apps that exist on our Solaris servers.
And how about differences between XFree.org and X.org ?
Two different implementations of the X protocol. Specifics have already been answered in this thread.
And OpenWindows ? Are they three implementations of functions (same ".h"s) for displaying windows and drawing things ?
Plain X, by itself, is pretty boring. The windows, for example, don't have any of the trim you expect from a modern GUI. This is where window managers come in. One of the nice things about X is that it is decoupled from the window manager and therefore you have many choices. OpenWindows is the window manager Solaris has used for years (personally, I've never liked it). More information on window managers can be found here.
No, the X Server is the program for displaying stuff. X11R6 just specifies a standard protocol. The protocol doesn't need to be a network one (and on your local machine, none of the X clients talk over your TCP/IP stack).
Anyone can implement an X server that adheres to the X11R6 protocol (and several UNIX vendors have; in the closed-source UNIX world Sun has their own implementation, and I bet all the others have too, although they may be based on the reference implementation - the old X Consortium X server). In the open source world, we have two implementations (which are very similar but now diverging - the XFree server and the X.Org server)
I don't know the historic reasons for why X was designed because I was only a small child in 1986 (I dare say somewhere on the Internet has the story as to why it was made in the way it was), but separating the client and the server like they have is extremely useful - the client doesn't care where the X server is or what the X server is. It means the client is well decoupled from the implementation of the X server - an X client running on HP/UX will display correctly on an X.Org X server running on Linux and you don't need to worry about DLL hell to make it all work - it just works. It's a very clean design and that's one of the reasons it's lasted so long.
As for the different implementations, X clients (i.e your programs) aren't linked to the X server or its header files. OpenWindows could be a radically different internal design with no header files in common with X.Org's server. What the clients link to is not the X server's header files - but XLib. XLib implements the client part of the deal, including the header files a C programmer would use. And XLib isn't linked to the X Server - it implements the X protocol (and that's why a Linux program written with Vendor A's xlib will work fine with Vendor B's X server running on some completely different architecture).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
This is not what X can do. Under X, the servers CPU runs the program, and your GPU helps with graphics.
Under Win98, all the remote OS does is to act as a fileserver. But both the local CPU and GPU work on the program.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
You can do this in X today with the help of NX (1.4 version required, which is in beta.)
"But why do we talk about a "protocol" ? Isn't X a program for displaying stuff ? I know we can use remote display on a network with X, but why isn't it only a feature ? Why is X so focused on network terminology?"
.h file to create windows, draw primitives, etc. Your program is compiled against some libraries that contain this drawing code directly. If you want to do remote displays across a network, you have to use some sort of add-on software or custom library. If you are coming from this paradigm, what you are asking is a very good question.
The fundamental design of X is different than say, MS Windows. It is always network-based. We have to talk about a network protocol because that is how every X client program communicates, even locally. It's not just an optional feature. Its the entire design.
In MS Windows, you write a program that calls functions in a
The difference is that every application that runs on X communicates over a "network". Whether you are opening Firefox on your own desktop or running an application on a remote server thousands of miles away, the application you are running connects to your X server and sends drawing commands over the "network". There is never any direct link to drawing code like there is in Windows - all commands pass over the "network". Of course if the application is local, optimizations are in place to make this communication very fast and not pass through the OS's networking stack.
This lets you do a very neat thing: Every graphical X-based program you have on your linux desktop can be run on any other X server. I'm not talking about just the few special ones that support it or link some special library. I mean every single program. Since you have to use the network even if you are running locally, to run on a remote server you just tell it to use a different IP address for the display. This is true network computing. The display is just an IP address and a port/desktop number.
Download an X server for your MS Windows desktop. Then log in to a Sun/Linux/BSD/etc box and you can run most any X application. There are a very small number of exceptions (like a program that requires an extention that your X server does not have, I.E. OpenGL for Quake3), but those are very rare.
In many ways, X is the most conceptually advanced and "network aware" desktop display system, despite being designed in the 1980s. Unfortunately, it is also painfully old in a lot of ways and painfully lacking in other, non-networking areas. The concept is really great and it works pretty well, but it would be nice to have a crack at redesigning the protocol based on other advances in computing. But failing that, I'm really glad that X.org is pushing things along and modernizing. The XFree86.org team had basically stalled out in a quagmire of politics and a need to cling to the past.
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
NX uses the X protocol with the living daylights compressed out of it and the vast majority of roundtrip queries locally cached out of existence. NX also includes conversion from at least RDP and VNC and is roughly twice as fast as "native" implementations of those protocols. The basic pattern is:
[Client][Proxy][Application]
"Application" might be an X application, X server, VNC server, RDP (Terminal Services) server and potentially others as well.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Towards the end of the pixmap bug report you can see that one of the developers provided a fix that appears to have solved the problem.
According to the Changelog the fix went in on 2004-08-27 (Fix for XV memory allocation) and is in the branch for 6.8.0.
[NX Client]===nx=over=ssh===[NX Server]===native=protocol===[Application]
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
OK, so let me see if I understand this correctly. An X "server" isn't a server in the traditional (UT2K3) sense, but rather a piece of software which controls the display. An X "client", then, is the software which tells the server what to draw. The server then figures out how to draw it. Is this close to being right? It's a bit confusing thinking that the server is the thing the user deals with directly and the client could be on a rackmount thousands of miles away, but it makes sense when you think about it for a few seconds.
Aside from advanced support for 3D accelerators, what's really missing out of X as it is now?
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Windows XP has themes - great. You realise that Linux ...(snip)... the only one I know of that has mouse cursor theming etc.
Linux is the only one to support mouse cursor theme'ing? Now I'm a Linux fan, but maybe you could explain this a little more. The last time I made a cursor theme for enlightenment, I used some samples from a Windows animated cursor theme pack...
Windows 95 had mouse cursor themes. I remember that years and years ago I used to use Sonic the Hedgehog animated and colored cursors.
If I remember correctly, GTK 1.2 is the first toolkit that's fully themable. But I think WindowsBlinds predates GTK 1.2 (though I also heard that WB is awfully slow).
Most people don't startx at all these days, gdm or kdm is launched from init!
The XF86Config file itself should "go" (well, it shouldn't, but it shouldn't be _necessary_) - X should autodetect and do something sane in the complete absence of a file, and allow on-the-fly dynamic tweaking of screen layout, color depth and basically all other parameters (see XRANDR, but do it for _everything_, except maybe actual card changes), then allow persisting the current settings to the Config file.
Edit text-file, restart x, edit text file, restart x is NOT ACCEPTABLE on the desktop. I didn't put up with it on my 1993 amiga, for feck's sake!.
It doesn't take programming skills to retest, i.e., rerun the app and see if the problem is still there.
Depends on the user. Ever work on a helpdesk? Ever spend a solid 4 minutes trying to explain to a user that "to compose an email you need to click on the 'Compose' link" (web-based email). Not everyone can even grasp a general interface, much less have the foresight to do any sort of "testing" if they run into a problem.
You might not like how the developer is behaving under the pressure, and you might complain, but can you seriously say you are in the right to do so, since you haven't paid him a Peseta to work on the project?
Why not in some cases? Not all developers are working "under pressure". Like you mentioned there are plenty of dead SourceForge projects sitting out there. They may have had good "intentions" but it takes more than that. I'm simply saying that there are some hackers out there that turn into brazen assholes if you even dare suggest that there is either a design flaw or that their code isn't all that clean. BTW, since when does the right to complain only come with the exchange of money? Joe Hacker has just the same right to ignore Bob User as Bob User has the right to complain. Complaining is just vocalizing an opinion. Said opinion may be nothing but useless whining (I hear it at times as well), but I don't buy the notion that there is no "right" to do it until money is exchanged.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
good job repeating exactly what the parent said
WindowBlinds is a pretty old app but it's not exactly a shining advert for Windows. Yes it was slow but more problematically it destabilised the system quite significantly. It worked by overriding and hooking *large* parts of the Windows API, changing the semantics and behaviour of those APIs out from underneath the apps. Windows provided no native support for this until XP, and even then applications have to opt in to it. Adding theming to Windows was a breaking change, that's why some apps on XP are themed and some aren't.
So many people crap all over XFree. We should thank that group for getting us this far. X.org was not written from scratch. Thanks to open source, a new group was able to build upon their excellent work and create an even better product.
We stand on the shoulders of giants.
I wrote up a guide to setting up Xorg 6.8RC4 + X Composite with shadows and transperency the other day. These steps should also hold true for 6.8 final of course. Enjoy.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
I've been reading about the XFree86 license issue from time to time, so I think I have that pretty well understood. But I haven't seen anything about what has happened or will happen to XFree86 now that fewer distros (perhaps none?) are shipping it. Did the project just die outright, or is it still chugging along somehow?
Just curious...
- Leo
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
There will be a protocol in any case. What people don't get is that for a program to communicate with a GUI some protocol has to exist. In both Windows or Linux there is a protocol, which is just the set of rules that say how do you ask the GUI to put a button where you want it.
A different issue is what medium you use to send this protocol. X is a separate process on the system, so you need to connect to it somehow to ask it to do something. On UNIX, the most elegant way is UNIX sockets, which work the same way as a TCP/IP connection, except they're faster because it's all done locally. You can easily use a TCP/IP socket instead and instantly get network transparency.
There are other IPC (Inter-Process Communication) ways on UNIX, but they're mostly less comfortable to use, and some just work in ways that would make things more complicated that they need to be. For example, you may have heard of mmap, but if you tried to only use mmap to send commands to the X server it'd almost certainly be much messier and slower than it currently is.
Think of it like this: The side which is initiating the conversation is the client (just like a webbrowser). The one responding is the server (just like a webserver). When an application wants to draw something on the screen, it will initiate the conversation, so this is the client. The display is just quietly waiting for somebody to give him something to do.
What exactly is an "extention?" Do you mean "extension?" If you did, why not go ahead and publicly make that correction, because a quick search of the comments for this post reveals that a handful of people are using your poor spelling. Don't tell me it's British either, because it isn't. There is only one way to spell the word in the English language.
I am feeling fat and sassy
But why do we talk about a "protocol" ? Isn't X a program for displaying stuff ?
Nope. X is a protocol for sending drawing requests. An X server is a program for displaying stuff.
I know we can use remote display on a network with X, but why isn't it only a feature? Why is X so focused on network terminology?
Some features are just minor tweaks to a basic design that could exclude them, other features are fundamental to the design. Network transparency is fundamental to the design of X. Even when you're not using a remote display, you're always using the X protocol, but over UNIX sockets rather than TCP sockets.
And how about differences between XFree.org and X.org ? And OpenWindows ? Are they three implementations of functions (same ".h"s) for displaying windows and drawing things?
They're all programs that receive drawing requests in X protocol messages and then do their best to fulfill the requests by drawing stuff on a display. XFree86 and X.org are mostly the same codebase as well, but that's not really relevant to their functions as X servers. There are lots of other X servers around like OpenWindows, Hummingbird EXceed, MetroLink, Xi Graphics, XVision, and bunches more. Pretty much any X client application can use any of these X servers, locally or remotely, to display windows and draw things. Some X servers have more features than others, some have better performance than others, some support more graphics cards than others, but all implement the same standard protocol so they're all to some degree interchangeable.
But you asked about differences, not similarities.
Those are some examples of X servers and how they differ from one another. There are many, many more, particularly in the commercial X server space, but they all work with all X clients, locally or remotely, and the common thread that binds them all together is the X protocol.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The 3D drivers work better on MS-Windows out of the box because if they don't then the card manufacturer sells practically no cards. There has been no incentive for the card manufacturers to write drivers. A stupid, selfish, short-sighted attitude among businesses along the lines of "everything we hoard will make us money" means that very few card manufacturers release any specs at all. Now that Linux has maybe 5% real desktop share (as distinct from market share) and a few serious 3D games, and growing, this will change.
ATI has released some code (albeit only for older cards). XGI have released some code (albeit not for 3D). NVidia haven't released anything significant, but some FOSS people did a "clean room" reimplementation of their NForce ethernet driver and others have bullied their 2D hardware into working reasonably well. The first one to completely break ranks and GPL their drivers will pretty much completely own the Linux desktop market.
There is a thin sliver of the computing population who are bright enough to care but dumb enough to have trouble with manually tweaking stuff. Linux is not yet for them, although distros like Mandrake come close. In fact, MS-Windows is not really for them either, since you often have to do driver-tweaking (and/or registry tweaking) there to eke the last ghasp out of your hardware. Linux is for everyone else, those who don't care about getting 10 more FPS out of their graphics driver or those who give enough of a damn to tweak things to get it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Please, please please go back and read what I wrote. I said "can you seriously say you are in the right", not "you don't have the right". Everyone can complain about anything, but only some people are right^H^H^H^H^Hcorrect in doing so. And it's not just exchange of money. It's money, time, talent or retesting.
Like I said. If you continue reading by keyword ("right", "money", "complain"), I expect your next response to say it's ridiculous to suggest that all development projects be compensated in Pesetas!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
And low-bandwidth X is an extension IIRC - and not all servers support it. Heck, I don't think all client-side implementations support low-bandwidth X. (Hint: Sun...)
Great, no I'm flamebait.
Great indeed.
I'm right anyways.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
"I just wish X11 would use my Video card instead of hogging CPU for those purty gradients and translucent windows."
A-friggan-men
Slackware was one of the last major distros to change over to X.Org.
I dunno what you mean by 'advanced' support for 3D accelerators (I'm very impressed at how well RTCW:ET runs on FC2 running the X.Org X server - it's at least twice as fast as XFree86 on RH8.0 on the same machine) but the 3D support is getting better all the time; it's just a real shame the NVidia driver isn't open source.
Talking of games - the fundamental network design of X and the display program being the X server (essentially a daemon) means my Windows-using ET playing friends are envious of how I play the game in Linux. I simply start up a second X server. That's all there is to having two entirely separate desktops on one machine. Just start another desktop. The clients (such as my game) don't even have to be aware of this functionality - they just display to unix:1 instead of unix:0, as set in the DISPLAY environment variable. I can hot key between the two desktops with Ctrl-Alt-F7 and Ctrl-Alt-F8, so I can run ET in fullscreen and easily flick back to IRC.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I can run multiple X servers running from multiple machines.
X lets you do amazing stuff that is impossible in windows. For example, you can take two different machines running on the same network sitting next to eachother, and use x2x tunneled through ssh to connect together their screens securely into one large desktop. I have a setup with one machine that's always on detecting when the machine right next to it boots up and automatically sharing its desktop with it. The only criticism I can give it is that it's not possible to redirect windows automatically from one X desktop to another.
Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is to embrace a traditional client-server sence instead of thinking about it as "just a piece of software". Imagine your computer was split up into several other computers. You had one computer controlling the graphics, which has a cool video card in it, another computer controlling the sound, and another computer controlling the internet stuff, etc. The computer that you use would transfer messages over the network saying, for example, "I want you do display this now", and it would display it on the screen. You would naturally say that the computer controlling the graphics is a graphics server, and the computer controlling the sound is the sound server, and the internet controller is the internet server.
Linux is modelled off networks, and that is where the server concept comes from. You are right in that the X server controls the display but it is actually a server in the traditional UT2K3 sense. All the programs actually send messages to it, but instead of sending them over the network like in the example before, they just send it through the system directly to the software. The cool part is that the server doesn't need to be on the computer, it can be over the network - the messages will be sent to the X Server along a different path, so instead of going directly there you'll go along wires and cables, but they're still just messages sent to the server, like the "Give me HTML" messages your browser is sending through the internet.
There is actually nothing really "missing" out of X. 3D accelerators are the driver manufacturer's problem, and so far NVIDIA are brilliant at supporting everything, while ATI are crap. It's just accepted now-a-days. X can probably do everything that Windows can, infact even more, though slightly slower in most cases. They're just now getting into the nitty-gritty eye candy like the shadowing and cool transparency, which incidentely I don't think is supported in Windows (Avalon will support it though I'm sure).
really? I think I'm just getting mixed up with the hoo-haa cause Slackware is usually quite conservative and it was a surprise that they converted to X.Org. All I know is that my distro Debian still hasn't changed over!
For those of you not keeping track of the mailing list, I present you with the following:
http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-Septemb er/003013.html
For the lazy of you, I paraphrase: someone made an announcement without authorization from the x.org release team.
I followed those links but I havn't found anything, is there anything I'm doing wrong?
------- In the end there are no begining
Maybe Xorg will get really gutsy at some point, and give us X11R7.
As I understand it, when they move to the kdrive-based driver framework, they'll bump it up to r7.
Dunno. Perhaps the modularized version will solve this.
I have found the answer on this question here.
igor
What may not seem "correct" to the developer may seem correct to the user, and vice versa.
I expect your next response to say it's ridiculous to suggest that all development projects be compensated in Pesetas!
All compensation is voluntary unless required by contract. 'nuff said.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Now where can i get the RPMS for FC-2 for xrog. :)
Because I run Debian, you insensitive clod!
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
ATI's driver already drops back to 2D-only mode when it can't load the kernel driver. I think either the distro makers/driver programmers need to recompile these modules at boot-up whenever they become outdated, or NVIDIA should adopt ATI's approach. Granted, NVIDIA's Linux support still rocks ATI, but the 2D fallback feature is quite helpful.
Almost right.
At some point in the early 90's, MIT turned the X Window System over to the Open Group (which also owns the UNIX(tm) trademark and compliance tests). TOG has been providing the reference implementation all along, and is the keeper of the versioning scheme. In recent years, XFree86 has been the development center for the most popular implementation of X, based on TOG's reference implementation. For the most part, TOG hasn't coordinated any development effort, they've just occasionally released the Reference Implementation with patches from major contributors, including XFree86.
TOG, under the guise of x.org, still controls the reference implementation, and XFree86 still maintains their own implementation. The difference since the license change is that X.org, X developers and major contributors such as HP and Sun have joined forces to create the X.org foundation, which is coordinating development efforts for the x.org/TOG reference implementation.
But I think WindowsBlinds predates GTK 1.2 (though I also heard that WB is awfully slow).
Early versions of WB weren't fully themeable anyway I don't think. I seem to recall being frustrated with WB because there were a few widgets I couldn't theme.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Ah yes, you're right - though for the MIT thing I was meaning that they still use the MIT versioning system as opposed to MIT controlling what version releases what, which is true. That and the slackware thing. (/me fingers the hypothetical "edit" button)
Can you tell me more about kdrive? After a bit of searching and reading, I see that it's a rename of TinyX, and I get the impression that it's a bit of a RISC philosophy applied to Xlib. In other words, Xlib had lots of primitive capabilities that today are getting bypassed in favor of more sophisticated rendering. So they streamline/speed the render path, then move the old primitive capabilities on top of the new path, giving an overall simplification.
Is that close?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
X can probably do everything that Windows can ... except copy and paste correctly. ;)
And it's still years behind Aqua in OS X. But since Linux users mostly compare things to Windows and not Aqua, X11 needs to get its butt moving to compete with some of the advancements Microsoft is making in Longhorn.
Comment of the year
Old my ass.
It runs MUCH better with XP than it did back in the 98 days. I currently use it on one of my logins to get a true OSX Panther window-look (uxtheme doesn't allow moving the buttons).
FC Closer
Longhorn, .NET, WinFS, Avalon, Indigo, Blackomb....???? XP SP2 for 1 year????
If youhaven't realized it, computers are still in pre-alpha stage and all seems that they'll never get out. Either front-page about beta or there's no news
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Apparently the announcement was a hoax:
/~xorg btw (that still only has 6.7.0).
more information will be released later today.
Announcement"
----
on Wed, 08 Sep 2004 13:34:10 +0100 Alan Cox wrote:
>
>On Mer, 2004-09-08 at 09:10, Linux Power wrote:
>> xorg 6.8.0 released
>>
>> http://freedesktop.org/~xorg/X11R6.8.0/src/
>
>Link missing from
>
>Alan
>
we know.
someone made an announcement without authorization from the x.org release
team.
leon
----
Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?
Is it there any hope we can have VSync feature in the X server in the forseen future? (Like in MAC OSX)
What was just released was X11R6.8.0; this is the latest in a series going back to the original X. What this is is the X distribution, which includes a lot of things like clients, fonts, libraries, and so forth. For a long time, it didn't include an X server, because there wasn't an X server that they could distribute, because this distribution was supposed to be cross-platform, and there wasn't a portable X server.
.8.0 of things that didn't break X11R6.
What XFree86 would do is get the latest X distribution, add an X server for x86, and release the whole thing. XFree86 had its own version numbers, which were the version of the server. The version of the X distribution was reported in the release notes.
There was also some discussion of the X distribution changing license to something not compatible with the GPL, which meant that XFree86 took over from the X consortium as the trusted open source organization.
Three things happened: XFree86 started supporting non-x86 platforms, and became a reasonable thing to include in the portable distribution, the license-changing mumbling on the X distribution side ended (with a change of organization), and XFree86 had developer interaction problems and changed license. This meant that X.org, now in control of the X distribution, decided they had to take the standard back, took the XFree86 server, put it in the X distribution, and announced themselves open for development on the complete system, including the server and the libraries.
What you have is actually X11R6.6 with XFree86 4.3 added, packaged by the XFree86 folks. What was just releases was X11R6.8.0, which includes a new X server derived from the XFree86 one, but with further development at X.org.
X11R6 is the major version, which is to say that all X11R6 programs should be able to interoperate (although they may end up figuring out that they need unsupported features, and not actually work). X because they felt like it, 11 because that's when they got the protocol design down, R for "release", 6 is where they got the protocol contents down, and we're now up to
The reason you publish today is to support their web based interface/portal, 'nfuse'...
..
This gives you the ability to launch any application from a secure web page, giving the appearance that its running on your local machine, with all the advantages of clustering of your applications on the 'big boxes' back in the server room. You also get a really low network profile, ICA/RDP is pretty network friendly. And the client is multiplatform
Before Nfuse, the admin would stick items in your start-menu for you.... you click on "word", and poof, word appears.. The user never knows the difference.. ( this can still be done, but they are pushing the 'portal product' like everyone else these days..
You can still publish a complete desktop for Winterm type users..
And yes, to answer your question, dialogs and pop ups are in separate windows.. this is NOT some 'desktop hack'..
You can also have stateless or statefull connections.. Something raw X is not too great about, you loose your connection, your app/desktop closes..
You might try to get a chance to take a look at their products, you might be pleasantly surprised.. they are however, really damned expensive... I only have worked with the windows based products, since 'winframe', but I guess they also have the same sort of product based on Solaris too..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-Septemb er/003013.html
"They look good."
Well ray-traced graphics with photon-mapping look good too. When's that coming to a windowing environment? Gosh darn it! I want all that so I can be vain too.
I'm not really up on things either, but as I understand it tinyx/kdrive/xserver was a rewrite from scratch, and has a vastly simplified architecture and a modern build environment.
The parent post is correct, Quake 3 DOES work over the network providing the "server" supports GLX extensions. It won't be super fast but it's better than you might expect.
It will certainly be interesting to see what the effect of using OpenGL surfaces for most windows would make... I wonder what effect limited texture memory would make.
Write a Perl script, that runs XFree86, checks the exit code, swaps in the nv file if it fails, and re-runs XFree86.
Or find someone else that has already done it.
make 2 layouts one callled 'nvidia' and the other 'nv' then run startx -- -layout nvidia || startx -- -layout nv easy, eh
I want my desktop to look sweeet.
I think cartman said that. Dont quote me though.
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
Methinks you've missed the news. ;-)
And copy and paste in any modern wm is much superior to the windows world.
It's not confusing at all, provided you start from the correct point of view. :-)
Seriously: a server is an entity that offers a service, a client is an entity that requests to use the service. This actually is the only definition that logically holds up in all possible application areas of the client/server concept.
Whether or not the user directly deals with something is irrelevant. Besides: when I'm typing into an xterm, am I dealing with the xterm client, or with the X server program? Honestly, as a user, I don't care for one second about the answer to that question, but if I really want/have to answer it, I'd actually rather think of it as dealing with the xterm client, not with the X server.
Linux user since early January 1992.
I'm not happy with this explaination either (in terms of XFree vs. X.Org). I think they were planning to break away from XFree86, even before the licensing change. There was planning of an x.org release on the old xdg-list back around November 2003).
There was a lot of acrimony between the two groups, as evidenced on the xfree-dev mailing list, even before the split.
Thanks, Mr. X.org spokesman!
True story.
I hear all of this about how nvidia chips run X more smoothly with all the fancy driver options enabled and whatnot, but what about ATI? Are there speed-enchancements for ATI chips, or anything to get it running faster? I can recall the last time I used Linux and Xfree86 with an ATI card, and it wasn't exactly great.
It was just a simple question. Anyone out there understand why this is classed as a troll?
Sorry, I don't. Seems eccentric to me. Too bad there's no system for moderators to attach short explanations so we would know what they were thinking.
Then again, since labeling a post "troll" is an ad hominem, there might not be terribly interesting to the moderators' line of thought in this case. See Troll
Perhaps, but if the drivers are proprietary then we stand to gain virtually nothing. Our community doesn't benefit from being treated as a market. If the card manufacturers are willing to work with us and release complete specs that can be developed into free software drivers or license code to us under a free software license, I think many would be willing to enthusiastically encourage the purchase of those cards.
If the GNU/Linux OS grows toward popularity and gives up software freedom this OS will never become popular enough to compete in the way that will make Microsoft Windows a less attractive option. But if GNU/Linux popularity increases on the basis of keeping software freedom then we will have something to offer which no proprietor can compete with -- something which will constitute a genuine contribution to society.
Digital Citizen
you surely mean x86? That's right.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
There are a very small number of exceptions
Now there are. But wait until all of these new server extensions become expected functionality for the clients. You mentioned OpenGL, but what about all of these posts under this story hoping for the 100% OpenGL based GUI? What happens when the desktop itself demands OpenGL?
I'm thinking that the traditional X client/server model is going to collide head on with the everything-is-local model people from Windows and Mac expect. Applications are going to be written expecting the server to be local. If the application expects and assumes XComposite to draw the widgets, and the server doesn't have it, what happens? The application may very well be running, but it's not going to be very usable.
Think I'm crazy? You get this right now with certain fonts. A font that looks good antialiased but crappy when it's not, is going to look crappy when its displayed on a non-XFree/Xorg server, such as OpenWindows. Now imagine that every translucent composited region on an application's display were rendered as solid black...
I really don't want to see a world where Xorg clients are only usable on Xorg servers.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
More like Apple and then x86.
...
btw. I do own 2 OSX computers (besides others, 8 linux, 2 XP, 1 win2000server) and they are far from being what I would expect from polished.
Apple and OSX has far more flaws under its hood than any other OS or hardware. There's just too many flaws.
To name few:
Chooser (Finder - Go - Connect to server) - now sucks.
Network in finder - Ok, where's my other Apple???
Mounted drive - Command I ??? WTF? Where is this share from, I know that it is Appleshare but which computer
Printing - CUPS doesn't support CMYK, so forget to import CMYK profile like you were used in OS9
Safari - Konqueror ripoff without tabs, konqueror sucks
Mail - C'mon, who designed this, and a big flaw with deleting all POP accounts, try it. It managed to disable option of editing new user and always recreating new one
Terminal - try changing fonts, you'll know what I mean
theme sucks - it is a real pain, I can't stand brushed metal but that's just my preference
Window manager - No more rollup??? WTF
FS - God, I love this tracking where's this file in terminal, it's crosslinked to instanity
Netinfo - WTF????
Firewall - Is this a joke???
Monitor support sucks - If I wouldn't have broken 22" Mitsubishi I wouldn't know. When I connected 17" monitor it just blanked when starting system without detecting new monitor. Since this was my main monitor I got fucked, Either one 17" was blanked or the second one was (Didn't detect new, so I removed and hoped it will use second one with its prefs, but OSX used second one with 22" prefs). It was really enjoyable for me to drag another 22" monitor just to change resolution
Need more??? Or do you prefer me explaining why Apple hardware sucks???
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Lol Slashdot got also pulled in this mess.
Just a clarification of the posting. 6.8 is actually not released yet. Someone on the development team jumped the gun and the the trickle down effect took its place. The *official* anouncement is now taken down and the stable release is still to come.
Sorry for the disappointment.
So, Bob took a copy of a Unix port of the "W" window system (written for the V kernel) that Chris Kent had done with Paul Asente at Stanford, changed it from be synchronous to asynchronous, and dubbed it "X" (from then on, we teased him that we'd never let him name anything again :-).
The early version of the X protocol (up through X10) were focused on fixing various things that came up as the system was ported to different architectures. Initially, the design center was referred to as "3M": 1 megapixel, 1 MIPS, and 1 megabyte.
The X server was quickly ported to a variety of workstations, to DOS, and to terminals. At the time, it was one of the few places where warring companies came together to bring a little bit of unity.
Remember that Jim Gettys was one of the original designers of X from its inception; he's REALLY BIG on backward compatibility, and wants to still be able to proudly declare that 2004's X clients will still display properly on a 1987 MicroVAX running the same protocol.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The only thing that confused me when I first encountered X was people telling me "oh, it's the opposite way round to the way you think" - and it certainly wasn't, in my case!
"X.org is a good thing....yeah...bring on the Aqua-like eye candy I say."
Blender does it's GUI using OpenGL.
Yeah, but it's rock-solid. Macs' HW is not a great one, it's the OS that's great. 1. Remember that's a BSD; 2. Proprietary = Support, Opensource = Lot of apps. osx got both. 3. Look 'round for other programs (yes, the terminal sucks, but if you try iTerm you'll never blame - Mail sucks? try Thunderbird - iChat is crappy? try Fire). 4. It's the one OS that REALLY uses the high performance graphics card (Quartz Xtreme is a superb engine). 5. Safari is the fastest web browser outa here (but you can install firefox or camino or mozilla). 6. The priniting engine is very good by the way (what you see is really what you get). 7. Aqua is very exciting, nothing to say. 8. Remember that's a BSD. On a fact you're right: 1. Networking is very crappy (eg. you cannot have persistent smb mounts without external programs) and computer browser is simply stuck. The only thing that really sucks (a lot) is the one-button mouse: under linux (I use GNOME) U really use the 3 buttons (browsing with linux lets you drop the keyboard). However osx is and can be a good example for making Linux the best OS all 'round here: Linux is good, but now misses good video drivers (none of the existing ones is good enough), a consistent set of apps, an unified package management system (cross-distro) and a very good looking ui. But GNOME is on the way (in my opinion kde is very out of the way) and GNOME and Freedesktop guis are doing a great (more... greatest!) work to make it better. Maybe one day linux will have all of this, and will be really better than osx. I didn't mention wxp and others: too crappy, it simply sucks.
*I* already do this every day, using a GNU screen. Thanks to GNU, of course, not X, or X.org. :-)
---
Let me try to put things simply.
X is the name of the windowing-system project invented at MIT in the 1980's. It was the successor to 'W' (stood for 'Window').
X.org, formerly the X Consortium, a bunch of industry-types (HP, Dell, DEC, IBM), tasked with developing X.
XFree86.org started as a port of the X code to PCs, and for much of the late 1990's and early 2000's, was the standard-bearer of X development.
Freedesktop.org is an umbrella project for *NIX GUI development.
At MIT, X went through several incompatible protocol versions, culminating at X11. Version 11 of the X protocol is what most servers speak today. MIT then formed the X consortium, which continued to develop X.
At some point in the early 1990s, what would become XFree86 forked from the X Consortium code, and was intended as a distribution for PCs.
The X Consortium and XFree86 continued make releases, and merged code between them periodically. At some point, the X Consortium was renamed X.org. X.org releases went up to X11R6.6. XFree86 releases, which maintained their own version number, went up to XFree86 4.4 (4.3 corresponded roughly to the X11R6.6 code). During this time, XFree86 was the primary developer of X11.
After a license change at XFree86, and concerns about it's slow pace of development, X.org and freedesktop.org forked the XFree86 4.4 code (just prior to the license change), and released X11R6.7. X11R6.8 is the latest release from X.org/freedesktop.org
There is a great, detailed history here.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
X11 itself is just a protocol. It specifies a byte-stream for getting programs to do things. This same byte-stream can be sent over fast IPC on a local machine, or over a network link. XFree86, X.org, and Sun have particular implementations of servers that support the X11 protocol.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Even if you got to a 100% OpenGL GUI, you'll still have network transparency. OpenGL has a couple of quite good network protocols. The older one is GLX (which is what most people support now), and the newer one is called Chromium. OpenGL, like X, was designed from the beginning to allow network transparency.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You've got the general setup correct. It helps to think of the X server providing "display services" to all the client applications that want to display something.
X supports advanced 3D accelerators about as well as Windows does, though not quite as well as MacOS X does. A lot of the work after 6.8 will be on getting X to support 2D on OpenGL like Longhorn will.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Well, with X11R6.8, it's about caught up with OS X. Work is already underway to get X on OpenGL (like Longhorn), and the Cairo 2D graphics library already has good OpenGL-based acceleration.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You're conflating a couple of things.
kdrive is Keith Packard's X server, a rename of TinyX. It's not a complete rewrite, but is based on XFree86's (and now X.org's), device-independent code (DIX), coupled with it's own device-dependent code (DDX).
The Xlib replacement you're talking about is XCB, which is a library designed to simplify access to the X protocol from sophisticated clients like Qt/GTK+.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Thanks for the clarification.
It's good to see this kind of progress happening on X, again.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
An X "server" isn't a server in the traditional (UT2K3) sense,
On the contrary, it *is* a server in the usual sense - a program that manages a resource (the screen, input devices), accepts requests from clients (e.g xterm) to do something with that resource (e.g paint a window), and communicates back to the client.
> This release brings real translucency and allows
> one to set values on different windows...
What is the state of adding anti-alias font support
in the server? I tried to find some 6.8 release
notes but didn't have any luck. I assume it didn't
make it in. Any info?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Keep in mind too that a linux distro is very up to date with the latest technologies. WindowsXP is pretty long in the tooth at this point, and even that wasn't all 'that' much different than Windows 2000. I imagine a linux distro from back then would run at a pretty swift speed as well.
Everything will be taken away from you.
But what good if OpenGL network transparency when my local system still doesn't have a decent OpenGL implementation. Besides the commercial Unix systems like Solaris, I'm also thinking of my laptop which has a "mobile" video chip that doesn't have a 3D engine.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Maybe the 6.8 hiding thing was because of Bug 10600 60
http://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1
It's basically a "problem" that causes a library not to be built (libXp.so.6) by default, and this library is used by several programs (both the blackdown and sun java runtime binaries for starters, so these won't run, crashing your browser).
I sincerely hope that this library gets built by default, it doesn't hurt anyone...
Well, obviously, if your implementation doesn't have a good 3D engine, you won't be able to use the new apps that require one. X.org will continue to support non-3D systems, of course, and if the apps draw through Cairo, the X server will use software-emulated RENDER instead of OpenGL. If software-emulated RENDER isn't fast enough, and you don't have OpenGL acceleration, then you probably shouldn't be trying to run such a graphically-rich application on your machine.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Also, MUI was fully themable on the Amiga before GTK existed.
I'm talking about software transparency. Hardware transparency has been available through the NVIDIA drivers for just as long. In fact, I use it with XFree86 v4.3 on Debian.
Old as in "been around a long time".
Anyone have working mirrors??? Does it need magic to compile, or is it easy to get working?
:)
Better yet, anyone can point me to suse 9.0 rpms
Yeah, but it's rock-solid
/. page a lot slower than mozilla on my laptop.
.rpm .deb and dependancies
???? We're not from same planet, are we???
1. Remember that's a BSD;
Where's the point??? I worked with *X from SGI Indigo1 days. Not that BSD is anything special
2. Proprietary = Support
Guess you never tried to contact support out of USA
Opensource = Lot of apps. osx got both.
Take from OSS where it suits you and return only what you think it will suit you.
3. Look 'round for other programs (yes, the terminal sucks, but if you try iTerm you'll never blame - Mail sucks? try Thunderbird - iChat is crappy? try Fire).
Yeah, and install fink etc... Isn't easier to install linux???
4. It's the one OS that REALLY uses the high performance graphics card (Quartz Xtreme is a superb engine).
??? And the point is??? Software that uses it still sucks
5. Safari is the fastest web browser outa here (but you can install firefox or camino or mozilla).
Fast??? Where, (on G5) it renders
6. The priniting engine is very good by the way (what you see is really what you get).
Missed the point. Engine is driven by cups. Cups doesn't support CMYK
7. Aqua is very exciting, nothing to say.
As I said, it is a personal preference only. It is a pain for my eyes
8. Remember that's a BSD.
Your point 1 didn't matter, why would this one???
On a fact you're right: 1. Networking is very crappy (eg. you cannot have persistent smb mounts without external programs) and computer browser is simply stuck. The only thing that really sucks (a lot) is the one-button mouse: under linux (I use GNOME) U really use the 3 buttons (browsing with linux lets you drop the keyboard).
However osx is and can be a good example for making Linux the best OS all 'round here: Linux is good, but now misses good video drivers (none of the existing ones is good enough), a consistent set of apps, an unified package management system (cross-distro) and a very good looking ui. But GNOME is on the way (in my opinion kde is very out of the way) and GNOME and Freedesktop guis are doing a great (more... greatest!) work to make it better. Maybe one day linux will have all of this, and will be really better than osx. I didn't mention wxp and others: too crappy, it simply sucks.
Fact 1. You can connect 3 button mouse on OSX.
Fact 2. OSX sucks
Fact 3. Better than copying OSX, would be dismantle OS9, and take over from there. Apple tried that but screwed major.
Fact 4. Maybe that day is nearer than you think
Fact 5. Unified package managment? Here you step on a nail. Compile applications as static and you can just copy them. People still think too much about small distro software. Look at blender example. Copy and it runs. Firefox, Thunderbird, Openoffice.... Get the point? If app is compiled for unified use then unified use is no problem, if not here goes the trouble with
Fact 6. ATI and NVidia drivers are good, believe me
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
You cannot say that BSD is not a good OS: it's security and stability centric. Linux misses some of the features BSD has in the network layer (especially in pf), and on the other side Linux have based a lot if its net layer upon the BSD one. The 3-button-mouse should be provided by default not as an optional (what's the meaning of 1 button? it sucks!)! The application I've mentioned doesn't require fink because they're native apps fully integrated with the OS (you simply drag them out from the DMG into the applications folder). Using fink graphical apps still sucks, 'cause they depend on X11 (like gimp, that works at its best on linux). If Linux will have a real aqua theme and it hurts you, you can change it (you can do it also under osx, but it's more difficult). I've compiled for years EVERYTHING myself, so the installation problem is NOT my problem, but is the primary obstacle to linux diffusion: if I write an app I've got to provide rpms, debs, tgzs and ebuilds if I want that everyone can install it - I don't want linux to be only for experts - I want linux for everyone from the 1 year-old child to the 120 years-old people. Linux should be usable from the unix guru to the complete idiot. I don't understand why U don't appreciate some of the features of osx: gnome is basing part of the work on it (just think to spatial nautilus). I do use NVIDIA driver and it's good, but it's NOT at its best -- can be improved -- and nvidia knows this. ATI drivers are released very slowly and in my opinion they have not the quality of the actual nv drivers. OSX is NOT the best, but has features that has to be considered to bring tux at its best. I use Linux everyday for everyday work and I'm convinced that's the best of the bests, but can grow taking the good things of others, osx included.
http://irom.homelinux.net:6969/torrents/Xorg.torre nt?67AA3979FC740EA715382F7775F4C6A19A8DA37C
Once the manufacturers get used to the idea that we'll turn specs into gold code at no charge, and they'll sell more boards as a consequence (which is why it's as important to us to have visible market share as to have real desktop share) they'll kick themselves for not having boarded this particular bandwagon sooner.
They've got to overcome decades of negative "take it or leave it... and die" conditioning from Microsoft to reach that point, though.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Ah, I parsed that as "not been updated in eons". My bad.
FC Closer
anyone know what the panel/monitor in the top right corner of this screenshot is? http://img38.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img38&image=screen_ lynucs_1759409500411796a9ba106_1.jpg
and you don't have OpenGL acceleration, then you probably shouldn't be trying to run such a graphically-rich application on your machine.
The problem is that everyone and their uncle on Slashdot is advocating doing EVERYTHING in OpenGL. While I personally think this is ridiculous, they are serious about it. I have no illusions about runnning 3D applications on my laptop. But the future may be requiring a 3D engine to render every 2D X11 primitive.
Everything in the near future might be a graphically-rich application, rendering them unusable on most laptops, thin client, or anything with a non-Xorg server like Solaris, Exceed, ReflectionsX, etc.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Looking around I've found this http://harrington.com/QuadReadMe.html Maybe can help.
You cannot say that BSD is not a good OS
... again blender, firefox, mozilla, OO.o??? Obviously you didn't read what I responded.
.1 as it does with OSX.
Never did, all I said is that it is *X, and nothing special for this branch.
BSD has some good sides and some bad sides. Let's say threading model is one of the worst *X implementations
3-button by default?
If you'd be OS9 user, you would believe that this is not true. One button and OS9 was natural, never missed 3 buttons. But OSX and its UI (or UI flaws) does make your comment valid.
I've compiled for years EVERYTHING myself, so the installation problem is NOT my problem, but is the primary obstacle to linux diffusion: if I write an app I've got to provide rpms, debs, tgzs and ebuilds if I want that everyone can install it
Hmmmm,
I don't understand why U don't appreciate some of the features of osx
Why??? Ok, here it goes.
I started using my first Mac with OS7, left with 10.0 and was forced to come back with 10.2
Up to now I owned around 20 Macs (3 powerbooks). Now I own 2: G4 1.25 and G5. Both with 10.3
UI before X was strict and clean, everything was specified and respected. With OSX it just seems to me that Apple rushed into first applicable version being developed on few completely different divisions, while on the other side looking OSS where they can fill their gaps. Too much of their efforts has gone to eye candy which made OS inconsistent inside. If your comment about DMG and one install would be true, then applications wouldn't stop working when you upgrade OS for
Sorry, but if feelings towards OSX offend you I can't help it. It is as I said. OSX sucks for me (and I always specify that this is my own preference), but you must agree that I at least stand with facts. I loved OS9. UI feel in OSX has just gone down major if you compare it with OS9.
gnome is basing part of the work on it (just think to spatial nautilus)
Actualy that would be OS9. (spatial nautilus, model coresponds to OS9, check mailing list and look what discussions happen there when people want to implement nautilus like OSX finder) and OS9 is something completely different and gnome community is against OSX like finder.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
I'm sorry but I have never used os9 (I used os7 years ago), so I can't say much. On the threading implementation U are right, but the rest of OS in very good. Back to apps installation... Mantaining the current structure of the linux filesystem (with /etc /lib /bin /var etc) for many apps packages are necessary -- you cannot simply copy them like you do with firefox or openoffice).
By the way firefox needs gtk and friends, so, if a people is not a tech he has to install it, so it needs a package...
Please, try to understand me: you cannot say that installing ALL applications is simple under linux... try to install the applications found around... one need wx --- but what version, one need qt --- but the threaded or not threaded one --- one another needs libsomething --- and not everything can be found on something.sourceforge.net or www.something.com. Think that a non expert user never arrives to the... questions!
I can't take a firefox, openoffice, etc, session that I've been working on in the living room, detatch it from that X server, and attach it to the one in the bedroom. That's what's wrong.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Please, try to understand me: you cannot say that installing ALL applications is simple under linux...
Most of the reason is that people can't let go. Userspace program has nothing to do with the hierarchy you mentioned. Userspace is userspace. Programs that would need to be inserted in system are very rare, near zero count. To tell this to developers is a job for fd.o. They should make specs and those specs should be respected. Just like gnome HIG
But I must admit that wx (ok, python is even worst) example was a real bullseye. Applications needing qt or gtk are just too easy to install. That comes from the one that always uses one widget set only, I like to keep my computer as polished and consistant as possible. My choice was gnome and there's no other software that I use (ok, there's k3b, and hopefully I will find gnome app that will replace it, and OO.o but with 2.0 it will be real gtk app so I don't really count it). Gnome icons, layout (remember not UI feel and design) and simplicity reminds me on OS9. I think we both agree that if OSX would be so great I would use my G5 more. (I'm not some geek dreaming about eye candy I saw on some screenshot, I have 2 of them at home)
Personally, I hate Apple way. Make something up and throw all in face of the users. It will seem like a major change. Ok, it does seem like that. But not everything was carefully planned and checked. Correcting structure that already exists is much harder than carefully implement new one. That's the reason why I love Maya, scribus, inkscape, gnome (remember, I've bought Adobe collections and Quark, but still, whenever I'm not bound to some filetype, I never use them). Everything is just where it is supposed to be and nothing is rushed just to gain some functionality. Example, KDE had features like composite and damage solved internaly for a long time (At least to some point) and that's the reason why redrawing gnome windows and desktop seemed slugish. Now X.Org implemented those and I wonder if old solutions in KDE won't just make doublefeature and slow things down.
Same thing should happen with installer. First on the drawing board then testing and after that implementation. But not sooner than a moment when userspace app is userspace app and system app is system app (With a really thick steel wall between them).
btw. I've got few non-techie friends using fedora. Not even one had one single problem installing anything. They've all been lucky that I keep yum repositories with software and sometimes even respect their wishes. Maybe I should cut them with fedora 3 just to see how they would manage:) That would be probably the best field research. Since FC3 is near, the experiment will soon begin.
Personally, I think that I'm pretty correct when I predict that all troubles you mentioned will be solved in FC5 (One year from now).
And here is a question for you (based on all of my blabbering): Do you like features sonner or better?
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Better is better that sooner -- of course! But we are in rush. M$ will release longhorn in a couple of years and osx will evolve in a couple of years too, maybe resolving many of the issues you have mentioned. I don't think that M$ will do a revolution -- xp is too crappy to fix it without a from ground up rewrite :) but linux must be ready to this to do a serious break-in on the desktop systems.
Monopoly is very hard to break, but linux have the weapons to do it. In my personal opinion osx and macs will remain a system for a small elite -- not for the masses.
Linux can be for the masses but need to be simpler. You're right when you say that FC is great, but in my opinion the change from redhat to fedora core left users and potential users a bit confused (many people doesn't know that FC is an evolution of RH) this fact mustn't be repeated!
As I said in my other replies I think that Linux (and GNOME) hackers must look at other OSs to take some inspirations. I've understood the anger in your first post (simply I have never posted my temper about windoze :) ) and my reply wants only to explain you some of the features I hope to see in Tux/GNOME one day, remembering that a feature that linux "clones" simply becomes better: for example think about the linux kernel modules: they give you the advantages of a monolithic kernel with the flexibility of a microkernel -- no other os got this before linux... but this is a single example taken from thousands of other.
The thing that linux really misses is fast support for new hardware, bacause of the obtusity of hardware vendors that releases drivers just for the "king of the crap", most of the times we need a good hacker that have to do an enormous work to make it work -- reverse engeneer the hardware to make a favor to the vendor: it's ridiculous!
This situation is better in the last years: in a little bit of cases thanks to hardware vendors (like nv and ati), but in all others thanks to the great hackers we have.
For example most of the wlan cards today runs on linux thanks to the ndiswrapper driver that emulate the ndis subsystem under linux, but NO native support for now: like as linux is the last wheel of the wagon!
Some others SELL, oh my god, SELL DRIVERS for THEIR hardware... it's a scandal!
If this situation will change... then... there wouldn't be so many obstacles to linux diffusion.
[ :) Sry 4 my english :) ]
I've got an old Matrox G450, which has decent (but not terribly fast) 3d capabiities. Can I still take advantage of this?
Apple's Quartz Extreme requires a graphics card, for example, with 16MB of RAM and the ability to draw textures of non-power-of-2 sizes. Does this require that, too?
Say I have one x server that can do XComposite, and has a hardware accelerated graphics card. The other cannot do XComposite, and has no such acceleration.
Ok, if I run glxgears on server A, will it have dropshadows drawn around it's border, and run with hardware acceleration enabled? If I move that window over to the other screen, will it lose the hardware acceleration/dropshadows?
What if I move the window in between the two screens so half of it is on one screen, half is on the other?
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