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."

Comments

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[Doc Ruby]

So rather than help with the X.org that's letting you look at this post right now, you're trying to get everyone to drop it? Why don't you spend a little time actually doing something to make X.org better, even if only for your own desktop's good?

X.org is an open project. It's as good as its developers. The fact that millions of people's daily computing depends on it, but developers don't fix bugs very much, is the fault of the community.

"X.org" is you. Lift a finger to help sometime. That gives you the right to complain when you don't like it. Otherwise, you're just a mouthy freeloader like everyone else, except the too few who actually do something.

Re:Anything else out there?

[Nursie]

Oooh, cam I run an individual application, from another server running a completely different OS, on my windows desktop with that?

Uh no.

Fuck off.

Re:Anything else out there?

[bsDaemon]

I mean that BSD users and developers are more concerned with making a system that works well enough to just plug away and not really be thought about, while the Linux-types seem to want to "defeat" Microsoft and the Stallmanites in particular are on some sort of holy crusade mixed with political program.

I don't hate windows. I'm not obsessed with "free" software. I'm not out to change the world, one desktop at a time. I have projects that I like to do, and FreeBSD has always let me do them.

Linux isn't really playing in my court.

x is definitely

[sentientbrendan]

the most problematic piece of software on Linux in terms of usability and reliability.

It was a cool idea back in the day, but even the vaunted network transparency is much slower than the competition (it is uncompressed, and doesn't have standard widgets that the client knows how to draw without being told).

My question is, would it be possible to keep the existing X drivers, throw away the rest of the legacy code, and build a modern window server on top of it?

There's no real reason to retain compatibility with X at the API level, as it's easy enough to build X as a rootless window server on top of a foreign window server i.e. the way OSX runs X11 applications.

I'd like a GNOME based window server. Something that exports GTK as the primary interface, and integrates with gconf for easy configuration changes that don't require restarting the window server. As it stands, X is too low level and maintains an artificial separation between toolkit and window manager that other desktops have shown isn't particularly beneficial. Instead, I'd like a high level of integration.

Re:Anything else out there?

[mrsteveman1]

I should donate to a project that makes what i consider VERY poor software? Why?

I would rather pay Apple (who avoided using X11 for a reason) for a complete working system.