Slashdot Mirror
The State of X.Org
An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has up an article looking at the release of X Server 1.4.1. This maintenance release for X.Org, which the open-source operating systems depend upon for living in a graphically rich world, comes more than 200 days late and it doesn't even clear the BugZilla release blocker bug. A further indication of problems is that the next major release of X.Org was scheduled to be released in February... then May... and now it's missing with no sign of when a release will occur. There are still more than three dozen outstanding bugs. Also, the forthcoming release (X.Org 7.4) will ship with a slimmer set of features than what was initially planned."
It's Open Source -- unlike proprietary software, we're not at the mercy of a company to dictate the release schedule or fix bugs if they get around to it. If bugs aren't fixed, it's because we failed to fix them.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I don't know whats stopping them from fixing the bugs in it.
The salient question would be: What's stopping us from fixing the bugs in it.
There's a LOT wrong with X.org right now, even mentioned in TFS. I personally wish they would put a lot more work into the transition to evdev and HAL, so we can get rid of xorg.conf and finally make strides to being as user friendly as "the other" OSes.
But network transparency? You're fighting the wrong battles here.
People aren't going to work on X because a lot of developers want to make new stuff, not fix up someone's old junk. So, the only way to get them to do it is to pay them. There's not enough money for that. Bounties are nice and all, but you really need to have a foundation with big money coming in to get the people to actually work on this stuff.
This is my sig.
I agree wholeheartedly. The current release of X is suitable and works well for me.
The "upgrade every year" mentality is the wrong one to have. They missed their date? Okay, that's fine. As long as they don't buckle under the "release schedule" mentality compromise quality. I may be naive, but I don't know any reason they would want to push/rush their next release.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
export DISPLAY=skarabrae:0.0
and get actual work done fast!
Network transparency is *the* feature of X.
Open source does not work like big business. It doesn't stagnate because there's no competition. It stagnates because people don't want to work on it. There isn't much competition for the Linux Kernel either. That doesn't slow down it's development.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Bribery? I completely fail to see your logic here.
BattleCat needs to have a bug fixed. He approaches coders who, for free and in their spare time, code.
"Hey there, coderman. I see that you do this sort of thing for free and for fun, but what would you say to doing that coding thing that you love to do, hitting this one bug that I really need fixed, and ending up with all the satisfaction that you normally get from your work and a shiny nickel on top of it?"
"ZOMGBRIBERYYOUCALLOUSBASTARD!"
Really? Is that what you call bribery? Where I come from, bribery entails a breach of ethics. All BattleCat wanted was to add a little icing to the job that people were already doing for free in an effort to have something fixed that was a priority for him. That's about as straight-up, ethical, and non-bribery a way to get things done as I can imagine.
Ahhh, because Windows' display manager is truly amazing.
Now, let me just open an application on another machine, and show it on this one's X server... hmmm... what's that - I need to be running Windows 2008 Server, and have a terminal server license?
How about running multiple display managers, so that I can have more then one person using the machine with seperate monitors and input... no. Thought not.
I could go on, but I think you'll get the point.
or new developers to tackle bite-sized portions of the stack without being overwhelmed. Anyone care to comment on whether this was done?
/didn't do/ all those gee-whiz window explodey effects?
/. story is inflammatory flamebait. Loads of pretty cool new stuff has appeared recently in X.org. Actually, IMO that's more likely why the release schedule slipped - stuff like MPX is very cool but represents very major changes.
Yes, it was - hence rapid development things like mpx, xrandr, xrender, composite xinput 2.0 and so forth. Have people really forgotten so fast that a couple of years ago linux
Really, the
Emacs' release schedule recently slipped too - but it was because they're merging ECB and window groups into Emacs 23, not because emacs devel has stopped!
What you are attempting to call bribery is what damn near everyone else in the world calls a job offer. He was attempting to hire someone, not to bribe them. If that was indeed bribery the job market would be a very scary place where employers could be convicted for making job offers for perfectly legitimate work.
Sounds good to me. Working for money is the antithesis of integrity, and the social systems that make it necessary are constructed for the purpose of overcoming the integrity of the individual so they can be put to use like some inert tool. Personally, I consider every job I accept to be a moral compromise.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Not entirely true, IMO. Even though no money is directly involved, a team of open-source developers will still want their project to be successful over competing projects as a matter of personal pride and potential business opportunities.
If there's no competition, they have one less motivation to keep up work.
They aren't.
Well, the drivers are. But obviously at this stage they DO have to be coupled to the server for a variety of reasons, not least that no one else wants to take over.
But let's face it, twm hasn't had any major work in a long time, and the window managers we all use on a daily basis are nowhere near the X.Org codebase.
Do we really need network transparency?Yes, we do need network transparency. I use it all the time. It's a major feature. Keep your hands off my network transparency!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A lot of Mac's success *IS* because its gui framework.
The GUI framework on the Mac is Cocoa. The equivalent of Cocoa is Gnome (or KDE). The underlying display server, the equivalent of X11, is Quartz.
it appears to be managed in frame buffer
But it isn't. OS X has the same client/server display architecture as a Gnome desktop.
with custom rom that makes sure you never see bios info -- just pretty pictures.
What you see on OS X is that the boot loader quickly throws up a gray screen to keep you from seeing the boot loader text; the text itself is still there. If you like, you can boot OS X completely in text mode, just like a Linux system.
the removal of large swaths of abstraction make it load and "talk" faster.
The OS X display server has at least as many layers of abstraction as X11. It is not intrinsically faster than X11 (if anything, it's slower). Mostly what you perceive as speed on OS X is massive amounts of backing store.
the use of pdf rendering
OS X doesn't really use PDF rendering.
and enforcing policy rather than just providing tools means that things like cut and paste work from app to app, every app.
I own several Macs. The notion that "cut and paste work from app to app, every app" is laughable, and Apple couldn't enforce that if they tried.
Furthermore, if anything, policy is determined by the GUI framework, not the display server.
That is the sort of thing that X fails on for the casual or home user.
Whatever problems you think the Linux desktop may have, they have nothing to do with X11; consistency and policy is determined by the desktop environment, not the display server.
My personal bet is that X is overly complicated.
E.g. it takes 20-30 minutes to start doing something with Linux kernel. Entry bar is set low - many people like to participate. Needless to mention that to compile (properly configured) Linux kernel (with subset of drivers and features you really need) only few minutes. There are piles and piles of documentation and forums where you can find anything.
E.g. KDE + Qt. To compile KDE - you might need days. Or just grab precompiled binary packages. But after that you can in 5 minutes create something useful and interesting. Documentation is near perfect and complete. Also reading source code is quite easy, since most of the code is human readable.
But X is different beast. Even compiling it is challenge on itself. There is literally no documentation on its innards. There is no "Hello World" for X. There are bunch of example modules which you need to spend hours after hours to only understand where they plug into the all X mess.
I'd say main X problem is its strive to be cool and sit on all chairs. I'd say they need to scale down the project and split it into smaller independent pieces. Forget large releases (installing apt-get would help! kidding). The smaller sub-projects would have more chances attracting people, since (at least theoretically) then entry barrier would be lower.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
From my cold, dead hands! As far as I'm concerned, that "network transparency cruft" is the only compelling thing about X!
I agree 100%. I'm not an Xorg developer, but recently I put together a hackintosh and started playing with developing a framebuffer driver for my old Radeon X1400 Mobility. Comparing IOPCIDevice and IOFramebuffer with libpciaccess is night and day.
Firstly, and I don't really mean to be insulting here, but libpciaccess just sucks. It's a step in the right direction, but comparing this with IOPCIDevice is... well, it just doesn't speak well for the open source world. The API documentation tells the story pretty well. This is a stable API that hasn't changed in a good, long while. And why should it? It does everything you need to do to speak with a PCI device, it's easy to understand, and it works.
Secondly, IOFramebuffer. Again, an API that hasn't changed in a good, long while. It's simple, it publishes a framebuffer and lets everyone go on with their business. It completely separates modesetting and the publishing of a framebuffer from acceleration. This is a huge win.
The IOAccelerator header docs aren't published, but given what we've seen so far, we can infer that it's clean, it hasn't changed in a while, and it works. Why can't we have this sort of fundamental cleanliness accepted in the open source world? I feel like this stuff is about a decade ahead of Linux.
And the X protocol itself? Well, it sucks. I have an 802.11g network here at home, and X sessions are completely unusable over it. This is failure. It is abject, complete, utter failure. We're not talking long distances, we're talking both machines and the router all within 20 feet of each other. With compression, without compression, over ssh, not over ssh: FAIL. This is a common modern use case, gentlemen. If the X protocol fails it on a wireless home network, what the fuck is the point of it? Xlib is an anachronism. It is the single shittiest piece of the GUI development stack on Linux, and there's plenty of fail to go around. Ditch this bullshit, I beg you.
Follow the Apple model, provide a simple VESA modesetting driver and a software renderer and ship the fucking thing. Why has no one looked at the preeminent operating system for graphics professionals an said "hey, maybe these guys know what the hell they're doing? and omg, some of this stuff seems to be open source!" - I'll tell you why, not invented here syndrome. Those macfaggots created it and fuck them, we'll show 'em good with our 1980s network protocol and 600 pages of completely unreadable API documentation (joke's on you, it's out of date anyways!). How's that working out?
This unholy mess needs to be fixed if Linux is going to stand any real chance on the desktop.
I say we nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
P.S., I know this seems critical but I hope it's interpreted as constructive. In case it isn't, props to the Xegl crew, David Airlied, and the whole RadeonHD team. You guys made a driver for a wide range of modern hardware that basically anyone (if I can, you can) can read through and get an understanding of pretty easily. No simple feat. A lot of truy extraordinary developers have contributed a lot to X, and I salute their efforts and could never hope to be half the programmer that they are, but I recognize that there's only so much lipstick you can put on this pig.
>E.g. it takes 20-30 minutes to start
>doing something with Linux kernel.
That may be true in some cases...
>There are piles and piles of documentation and forums where you can find anything.
Ahah... ahaha. No. The Linux kernel is very poorly documented. Your comment should read "there's *out of date* and *useless* documentation, scattered around the internet where you will never find it."
Unless you consider the source itself documentation... which is hard to argue for a source tree that is millions of lines.