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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?"

62 of 463 comments (clear)

  1. Is it as good as Citrix? by jkrise · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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....
    1. Re:Is it as good as Citrix? by listen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Citrix is a hack.

      X may not perform as well, but at least it is designed properly - so you can share per application, or even per window, rather than having a goofy desktop in a window.

      The best performing remote desktop solution for X is NX from nomachine. And yes, it does perform better than Citrix.

      They have primarily pursued the goofy desktop in a window model as well. But there is nothing in their protocol mandating this : it is merely a limitation of the current client.

      Best of all, NX is Free Software released under the GPL. Its a seperate process than the X server, so no legal viruses are going to eat up your nVidia driver.

      NX sell a proprietary packaged up version. There is a project called FreeNX aiming to produce a fully Free set of NX tools ; however they appear to be closely allied to KDE, and aim to make it a feature for KDE to lord over Gnome. I hope I'm wrong.

    2. Re:Is it as good as Citrix? by Perky_Goth · · Score: 5, Informative

      On the other hand...

      Fabian Franz: In fact, our FreeNX implementation is only the last piece of the mosaic. 99,9% comes from NoMachines's GPL/NX components, that we simply use unchanged in FreeNX.
      [...}
      Kurt Pfeifle: In the last 15 months, there have been servere misunderstandings concerning the whole NX software, which was considered to be "non-Free" by several Open Source developers, just because NoMachine also based its commercial products on top of it.
      Without having a deeper look, rejecting NX as "practically unusable, if only the libraries are released under the GPL whereas the NoMachine NX Server remains proprietary". These biases simply overlooked, that a commandline tool was shipped by NoMachine almost from the beginning, including the source code which allowed everyone who was interested to build an completely working NX tunnel.
      [...]
      Fabian Franz: Our implemementation was intentionally kept simple. It's a simple Bash script...
      You are surprised? Yeah, right: FreeNX Server is a Bash script, which glues together GPL library and executable components of NX to a working whole. All that stuff existed for 15 months untouched.
      The fact that it is Bash means that every Linux developer can fix errors in our FreeNX server. ;-)
      Kurt Pfeifle: I was merely a mentor for the FreeNX development and I do the documentation. But I can confirm: Fabian isn't lying... ;-)
      FreeNX consists of less than 500 lines of Bash code (additionally to the NoMachine/NX source code parts, which are under the GPL).
      Fabian did the implementation of the FreeNX server all by himself. First of all, Fabian is a true Bash wizard.
      Secondly, this implementation should prove how "complete" the GPL components of the NX are already since 15 months.

      So, i'd be guessing anyone from Gnome can code that up in a couple of days as well, there really isn't a whole lot of magic here.

  2. Gentoo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...)

    1. Re:Gentoo! by IdleTime · · Score: 5, Informative

      I accept it as a joke :)

      When that is said, the latest release, the 904 drop, compiled in 21 minutes on my machine and has been running perfectly fine for a few days. Ofcourse, I'm running an AMD64 based machine. Your "joke" is actually true if you run a P1 160Mhz box, then it will take weeks to compile ...

      --
      If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
    2. Re:Gentoo! by huge+colin · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I run Gentoo, and I've had the Composite extension working to some extent since RC2. As of RC4, it works more or less perfectly and X is just about as fast as without it.

      Future enhancements to various window managers and applications should take advantage of these new X features. (xcompmgr and transset are clumsy utilities intended only for proof-of-concept.) For example, KDE's feature plan notes that true transparency has already been implemented in Konsole.

      Runs shadows/transparency smoothly:

      GeForce FX 5900

      Athlon XP 2000+

      --Colin

  3. "Why not give it a shot?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I run XFree, you insensitive clod

  4. Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope this finds it way into Debian soon...

    1. Re:Debian by SnowZero · · Score: 5, Informative

      It should, now that X developers can work with package maintainers rather than having an establishment work against them (the XFree86 way). Yay for more code and less politics.

      Previous long lead times, according the Brandon (Debian's X release manager) were brokenness on some of the platforms Debian supports about which the developers in power didn't care, as well as reams of patches they wouldn't accept (like ones from ATI supporting "new" cards that weren't accepted after 6 months).

      The whole point of FreeDesktop was to help everyone coordinate so that the process could be smoother. Most of the poeple on both sides were fed up with the politics and are working to make that the reality now.

    2. Re:Debian by fred3666 · · Score: 4, Informative

      For now, Debian is tied to their heavily patched xFree86 4.3

      They have stated that they will not move to x.org until the modular version is available. Apparently it would take a lot of work to modify assumptions made in the apt-get respositories and they don't feel that the current release of x.org justifies the effort. Debian does acknowledge, however, that x.org is the future.

      http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2004/05/msg0043 1. html

      I am making the assumption the x.org's X11R6.8 is still a part of the monolithic tree.

      More information here:
      http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2004/06/ms g00084. html

  5. Re:Release notes by dJOEK · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think you mean http://freedesktop.org/~xorg/X11R6.8.0/doc/RELNOTE S.html

    as in 6.8.0

    --
    Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
  6. composite rules! by linuxpoweredtrekkie · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:composite rules! by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative
      Well, there are a lot of reasons.

      The first, and biggest reason (as far as I know) is that modern Linux widget toolkits are doing a lot more work than the Windows widget toolkit is.

      For instance, full UTF-8/unicode rendering support combined with containment based layout, along with stock clipart using an alpha channel which is all double buffered simply requires more CPU time than a positional based toolkit which doesn't really support alpha-blended images (or indeed, stock artwork at all), flickers constantly and whos i18n support is patchy at best.

      These are features which are useful and you don't want to lose. They make the GUI look great due to having professional artwork, smooth when resizing (internally), support users from all cultures and mean that resizable windows which react properly to font size changes are the norm not the exception like on Windows.

      There are other issues. The focus of most Linux developers has not been optimization as of yet, as development effort has been concentrating on filling in the missing pieces (like HAL) and on catching up with the competition (this sort of X work). As an example I think Xrender and therefore font renderning had some serious bottlenecks until recently. There are a few notable exceptions. Soeren Sandmann for instance has been working on optimizing Linux graphics and GTK for some time now, and has been doing a great job.

      Then there are scheduling/kernel issues. Con Kolivas mentioned some issues with respect to scheduling lately, I forget exactly what, but he seemed to think some change in the X server could allow the 2.6 scheduler to do a much better job. Also last time I checked the kernel did not expose vertical retrace intervals to the X server.

      Finally there are issues within the toolkits themselves. GTK+ seems to really suck at rapidly responding to Expose events. I'm not sure why. However on COMPOSITE enabled machines this isn't an issue as everything is double-buffered at the server level anyway so time taken to react to Expose events isn't a factor. Just try the new distros if/when they come out with compositing enabled - they will feel a lot faster due to this change alone, assuming you have enough memory.

  7. Re:Why do people care so much about drop shadows? by julesh · · Score: 4, Informative

    Really, why?

    What is it with drop shadows?


    They're something that's easy to define, work well in MacOSX and Windows XP, and don't work very well in (some) current X11 servers. So obviously, you're going to get loads of graphics geeks rushing to fix it.

    That said, the drop shadows in KDE on XFree86 look fine to me already.

  8. Re:Wrong link- try this one by bach37 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here for 6.8.0.

  9. Gentoo fans by barcodez · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you want to find out when it is available in portage without sync then check the portage database

    --

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  10. Great News, but... by wackysootroom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. Screenshots by makkverk · · Score: 5, Informative
    1. Re:Screenshots by mc_barron · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Man, I wish there was a way to identify all the components within a screenshot - too many times I see an amazing linux desktop but have no idea what applications are running to get it looking that way.

      For instance, where did they get this kicker bar:
      http://img38.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img38&image=screen_ lynucs_1759409500411796a9ba106_1.jpg

      Also, will drop shadows and tranlucency work with any windows manager (i.e. XFCE4), or do I have to be running Gnome/KDE?

    2. Re:Screenshots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I believe they got it from Apple, or at least all the ideas and the graphics.

  12. Re:Why do people care so much about drop shadows? by mccalli · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Really, why?...What is it with drop shadows?

    They look good.

    That's it. No hidden meaning, no technical advantage, no uberl33th@x0r nonesense, nothing about skinning...just straightfowardly it looks good. No deeper explanation exists. Or needs to exist.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  13. how much of this is affecting X11 *the* protocol ? by Gopal.V · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'm all for innovation and all that, but I've been burned a couple of times with protocols moving around a bit too often (for example mysql protocol between 4.0 and 4.1).

    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.

  14. Re:Why do people care so much about drop shadows? by Draoi · · Score: 5, Informative
    Personally, I find that dropshadowing allows layered windows to be clearly delineated even if there isn't a thick (read 'wasteful') border around the windows themselves.

    I've five iTerms going right now (yeah, MacOS X). They're all the same colour yet I can easily see where they intersect *and* I can see the text below through the shadow. It's an efficiency thing ...

    --
    Alison

    "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein

  15. NO T JUST EYE CANDY!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting


    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.

    1. Re:NO T JUST EYE CANDY!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I do this with Unreal Tournament. Start it on my brothers computer with a fast CPU, and run in on my own with a fast GPU.
      The X protocol _does_ already stream OpenGL commands, so I get best of both worlds. A fast CPU and GPU.
      Quake3 doesnt work, because it expects som OpenGL commands that X doesnt stream. When this is fixed in X (or libopengl.so), Quake3 will also work over network. I really doubt this will happen on purpose, and I therefore dont think we will see this functionality in the first 5 years.

      But try it with other games, UT, Savage and the like - wonderfully to run from other computers :)

  16. NVIDIA (nv) driver enhancements by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is awesome! From section 3.3 of Release Notes:

    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/RELNOTE S3.html#3

  17. Re:Double standards by 955301 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?
  18. Re:not stable ? by lrandall · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  19. Re: In Soviet Russia... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny


    > .. the software shoots you!!

    > > Why not give it a shot?

    Aaaiiieeeee! Top-posting makes its debut on Slashdot! [head explodes, intarweb collapses]

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  20. Re:Why do people care so much about drop shadows? by Draoi · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Firstly, I have 2 eyes, so I can already do depth.

    That's of zero use on a 2D screen! Close one eye. Spot the difference? Nope, me neither.

    Second, without drop shadows, it is really easy to see which window has focus:

    Your URL screwed up. Try this. I disagree with the point that drop shadow interferes with focus. Right now, my focussed window has a *deeper* dropshadow than all the others, giving the illusion that it is actually 'closer', not to mention the outlining, title bar colouring, etc, etc

    --
    Alison

    "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein

  21. Re:how much of this is affecting X11 *the* protoco by sxpert · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  22. Having both both "nvidia" and "nv" in xorg.conf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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 :)

  23. Re:Why do people care so much about drop shadows? by julesh · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes. You perceive how far away from you the monitor is.

  24. Goodbye to XFree forever by lrandall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Goodbye to XFree forever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      People fail to realize that a lot of this work has been going on for years. I mean, sure we are making significant progress, but Keith has been investigating a possible "X translucency extension" since a paper he wrote in 2000 demonstrating its feasibility. Remember that because of his grand ideas and the fact that he wasn't sharing information with the incompetent XF86 board of directors, he was exiled from the group.

      So these extensions didn't happen in the last 9 months. They have been brewing for a while and are a lot further along than you might think. There is a ways to go, and Keith said that we are going halfway there on xserver (I think he means that we have opengl rendering and other backend tweaks to do in the future). But X is definitely getting a facelift.

  25. Help ! I'm all mixed up with X version numbers... by dom1234 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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 !

  26. Re:first "emerge it" post by SnowZero · · Score: 4, Funny

    "A man alone in the forest talking to himself and no women around to hear him. Is he still wrong?"

    No, he's just waiting for Gentoo to compile X11.

  27. What?! by doob · · Score: 3, Funny

    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!
    1. Re:What?! by CaptnMArk · · Score: 4, Funny

      It requires a very fast printer to run glxgears.

    2. Re:What?! by GeekDork · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually, OpenGL can be set to output a set of "simple" drawing commands instead of drawing to a display context, that can be converted to pretty much any required output format like PostScript. So theoretically, it's easy to create high-resolution output from any OGL surface.

      --

      Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.

  28. Re:Translucency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  29. Re:Why do people care so much about drop shadows? by FromageTheDog · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have a Windows XP box on my desk right now; the only drop shadows I see are under the icon text. I'd be hard-pressed to compare that to the (gorgeous) Mac OS X effect or this new X effect... - Fromage

  30. Re:Help ! I'm all mixed up with X version numbers. by Alioth · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    The .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).

    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).

  31. Re:Why do people care so much about drop shadows? by archen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    To me drop shadows add a bit more depth and make it slightly easier to determine the active window by giving a perception of which window is 'on top' of the other. It seems to make it a bit more intuitive then just changing the titlebar color.

  32. Re:how much of this is affecting X11 *the* protoco by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 4, Informative
    The new extensions are just that, protocol extensions. They haven't changed the wire format.

    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.

  33. Xorg roadmap by dpilot · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    Looking at the Xorg release plan (closest I could find to a roadmap) at http://wiki.freedesktop.org/XOrg/XorgReleasePlan
    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.

    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.
  34. Re:Screw the eye candy, where is the integration? by dabadab · · Score: 5, Informative

    "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.
  35. To All The "Drop Shadow Nay-Sayers" (Again) by Lethyos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  36. REAL Transparency Screenshots by xiando · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  37. Re:Screw the eye candy, where is the integration? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is an amusing troll. If it isn't a deliberate troll then you need to learn how to express yourself more clearly instead of in vague buzzwords.

    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.

  38. Re:Help ! I'm all mixed up with X version numbers. by strider44 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  39. Archaic build by Sunspire · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  40. Re:X is slow? (Re:composite rules!) by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, the overhead of the X protocol is negligable. When doing profiling runs the bottlenecks are nearly always either in the serverhardware link or inside the toolkit. The applicationserver link doesn't really slow much down at all.

  41. "Single window" Citrix.. by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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 ----
  42. Re:Why do people care so much about drop shadows? by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 5, Informative

    Its not just that it looks nice. The technology behind it is what matters. The Composite extension for example double-buffers the windows (or something like that, I'm the person to speak about this) so moving your windows is much smoother, and you can notice that even now in this released version, where all those pieces are far from being "rock stable" or "fast". It also allows to have a miniaturized version of your desktop (one which is a _real_ miniaturized version of your desktop, with the miniature of a video player in other virtual desktop being updated, etc) much more easily. Damage can reduce greatly the amount of bandwith used in VNC-like clients, etc.

    Shadows and transparencies are just one of the things which you can do with all those toys, but the fact that the pieces behing them are there is what matters, using the hardware to do all this, etc. As a plus, shadows and transparencies are nice (I'd like to have them even in the light window managers at least). I don't know why people is so concerned about "shadows are not useful". This is a win-win situation, no drawbacks.

  43. Re:Help ! I'm all mixed up with X version numbers. by Alioth · · Score: 3, Informative

    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).

  44. Re:Help ! I'm all mixed up with X version numbers. by ageitgey · · Score: 4, Informative

    "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?"

    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 .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 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.
  45. Thank XFree for starting this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  46. A Guide to X Composite and its eye candy by GweeDo · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  47. Re:Help ! I'm all mixed up with X version numbers. by rakaz · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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.
    Correct. It is pretty confusing, because you have to look at it in a different way than what you are used to it. So, it is pretty easy to get these roles reversed.

    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.

  48. Re:Help ! I'm all mixed up with X version numbers. by swillden · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    • XFree86 and X.org are much the same programs, but XFree86 adopted a license that people didn't like, so much of the development focus shifted to X.org, and that seems to be the Free implementation that is going to be popular moving forward.
    • OpenWindows is Sun's proprietary implementation that only runs on Solaris, AFAIK. It's decent but not as featureful as XFree86 and X.org.
    • Hummingbird Exceed is a commercial product that runs on Windows, and exists primarily to make it possible to display on a Windows box the interface of apps running on remote UNIX boxes.
    • Xi Graphics is a commercial, closed-source X server for Linux and UNIXes that focuses on providing good hardware acceleration and support for a wide variety of graphics cards. Since they get paid, and because their drivers are closed source, it's easier for them to negotiate with hardware vendors for specifications.
    • Tarantella XVision Eclipse is another X server that runs on Windows and has some nifty features like the ability to suspend a session one place and resume it somewhere else.
    • xnest is an X server that doesn't know how to draw anything itself, but instead sends all of the requests it gets to another X server for actual display. So you can nest an X "server" inside a window on a real X server (and you can do that as many layers deep as you like). This is a useful tool for development.
    • vncserver is another X server that doesn't draw anything on physical displays. Instead, it does all of its drawing on a virtual screen, then it can send this virtual screen image over the network to VNC clients which run in a variety of windowing environments and display a copy of the virtual screen. You can even display the same virtual screen on multiple VNC clients on multiple physical screens at the same time.
    • x2x is an X server that uses a pair of "real" X servers to do all of its drawing, creating a single virtual display that is made up of two physical displays on different machines. This allows the user to create a two-headed machine without a two-port graphics card, or two graphics cards in a single box.

    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.
  49. Re:Why do people care so much about drop shadows? by escher · · Score: 4, Funny

    You fools! Four is the number of the pixels and the number of the pixels shall be four! Not two! Not three, unless one then proceedeth to four! Five is right out!