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Ubuntu LTS Experiences X.org Memory Leak
MonsterTrimble writes "Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 is experiencing a major memory leak due to patches for X.org. 'An X.Org Server update that was pushed into the Lucid repository last week has resulted in the system being slower and slower as it is left on, until it reaches a point where the system is no longer usable. ... In order to make the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS deadline, the developers are looking at just reverting three of the patches, which brings the GLX version back to 1.2. Ubuntu developers are now desperate for people willing to test out this updated X.Org Server package so they can determine by this Friday whether to ship it with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or doing an early SRU (Stable Release Update). Right now this X.Org Server that's being tested is living in the ubuntu-x-swat PPA.'"
People are still using Ubuntu?!
Ubuntu developers are now desperate for those willing to test out this updated X.Org Server package so they can determine by this Friday whether to ship it with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or doing an early SRU (Stable Release Update). Right now this X.Org Server that's being tested is living in the ubuntu-x-swat PPA.
Um, call me when they actually know something.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
How come this wasn't caught when they were profiling? Notice I said "when" - the X.org people aren't seriously deploying patches to such a crucial app without profiling first, are they?
This doesn't bode well for Ubuntu, considering all the issues that happened when 9.10 was released. I hope they can get this all taken care of by the deadline, but it looks like some patches/bug fixes are to be expected soon after release.
For an OS that claims to be superior in all ways to Windows, it's interesting how it has regressed to the level of usability as a 15 year old operating system.
Or I suppose I could also compare it to the 1995 version of the Mac OS that was used around that time, which also sucked. Guaranteed complete system crashes every 50 minutes?
Thanks, Apple. Can you please increase the frequency of these crashes on your super expensive computer?
That said, I love my laptop with Windows 7 64-bit on it, and my iPod Touch and iPad are the cat's pajamas.
but... Linux doesn't have bugs!!
Why not hold the release until the bug is fixed ?
And then Red Hat 6 Beta is released. We need a Glenn Beck of Linux. "Now I'm not saying that the X.org was attacked by radical Red-followers...well actually yes I am."
The Ubuntu Wiki has details on this issue at the GEMLeak entry. It provides instructions on how to upgrade to (and remove) the candidate packages in the PPA. This comment is worthy of note for those already on Lucid:
This does not affect cards using proprietary drivers or not using DRI2. Intel will always be affected since DRI2 is used with and without KMS, ATI uses DRI1 without KMS.
I understand that fixed release dates are useful for planning, but I think Ubuntu has put too much emphasis on them. Software should not be released until it is ready.
The idea of releasing it on schedule, with this big bug in it, and then issuing a quick fix when it is ready (one of the options discussed) is silly and rather deceptive. If what they have on April 30th is only beta quality then don't call it a release just so you can say that you stuck to your schedule.
This is so typical of the Lunix, flaws and bugs everywhere. You need to upgrade to a proven, stable and powerful OS like Windows. IT JUST WORKS. Millions of eyes on the Lunix code, and yet it breaks like a Maginot Line. You know the whole anti-Windows rebelling-cum-teen angst was cute when Lunix was a bouncing baby, but now that it's in it's 20s it's just getting embarrassing. Lunix is going to become the balding 50 year old bachelor uncle who still insists on wearing the ratty Judas Priest t-shirt over his beer belly, while Windows continues to improve, season and streamline.
Give it up, Lunix. You've been passed by.
You've all got to help them FAST!
Because the world would, you know, end in a fiery ball of flaming death if the LTS ended up being 10.05!
(This policy is why I replaced Ubuntu on my desktop)
Ever since I upgraded Ubuntu to v9.4 last Spring, my x.org has been crashing it anywhere from startup to a couple days uptime. There's no signs of trouble in the syslog, or any other logs, no signs of trouble anywhere until it freezes (cursor screenfreeze, but background processes like wget piped to madplay for streaming usually continue). I know it's x.org because if I disable (only) x.org and leave the console-only version running, it doesn't freeze even after a few days.
I'm running on an Dell tower with a P4/2.4GHz and integrated Intel graphics chip. I thought some upgrades in the past year would fix the bug, but they haven't. If there's no fix sometime after v10.4, I'll have to get new HW, and seriously demote my respect for Ubuntu.
--
make install -not war
If you read the wiki page referenced carefully, it would seem that the general consensus is that the bug is fixed in the testing packages. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Testing/GEMLeak Seems a bit blown out of proportion to me.
10.04 is supposed to be a LTS release, and they are nearing their deadline. Roll back to the "stable" version of X, and push these patches forward to 10.10. Anyone who cares about having the latest and greatest will roll along with the 6 month release cycle.
chown -R us.
Most Ubuntu users aren't smart enough to notice the memory leak anyway.
QamuIs Heg qaq law' lorvIs yInqaq puS
According to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Testing/GEMLeak , then you ARE SAFE!!
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
though, I have to [klerck.org"]? under the GPL. but suffice it *BSD is dead. turd-suckingly you can. No, You don't need to
> system being slower and slower as it is left on, until it reaches
> a point where the system is no longer usable
At last Linux is feature-complete with MS Windows and ready for the desktop!
This isn't the only video problem in the Lucid Lynx betas. Since upgrading, I've been having a problem where x.org sometimes fails to start up when I boot. Presumably this is a separate problem from the one described in TFA, since you wouldn't expect to see a memory leak's effects showing up at boot time.
Jaunty and Karmic were really terrible releases, IMO. The good news for me is that sound, which broke when I upgraded to Jaunty, is now working for me again with Lucid. I'm hoping that Lucid gets nice and stable over the long lifetime it will have as an LTS release. In the past, I'd been upgrading ubuntu steadily rather than waiting for the next LTS, mainly because I wanted my apps upgraded. That was such a miserable experience that I'm planning not to do it anymore; I'll just stay with Lucid until the next LTS.
I like debian and ubuntu better than the other OSS systems I've used (Mandrake, Red Hat, FreeBSD), but this close tie-in between updating apps and updating the OS can really be a pain. The OS-level tweaking has never made my life any better. As a user, I couldn't care less about stuff like OSS versus ALSA. I would really love it if ubuntu would focus more on fixing bugs in the OS while keeping applications up to date, but not gratuitously breaking stuff in the OS just because they want to be on the cutting edge.
Another thing can be a drag about ubuntu is that they aren't very careful at all about keeping Gnome separate from the underlying OS. Anyone who uses a WM other than Gnome with ubuntu is going to run into lots of things that don't work properly, because the developers always seem to feel free to make changes without testing them on any other WM. For example, here is a bug in xsplash. It causes problems for people who aren't using Gnome. You know you're in trouble when you have functions whose names begin with "temporary_hack..." This one was not a bug in a beta, BTW, but a bug in a real release.
Find free books.
eyes 0n the real Moans and groans with the number case you want to
Seriously, they need to hide their source code better, so random incompetent people off the street don't mess with it. What, do they just let ANYONE see it?
Ubuntu has chosen for a fixed release, it is a tactic, one of many to deal with the reality of running a Linux distro.
Others do a rolling release, this means they can release a new version of any package when it is ready but means you are near constantly updating and if you don't, you risk missing out on a change that turns out to be essential (going form 6-8 might miss an essential config from 7).
Ubuntu however now faces a near impossible choice of which version to go for. If they wait other packages will have new versions and their release will become older and older.
And lets face it, this method works for MS. If MS had done what you suggested, Vista would not have been released until all drivers for it had been fixed.
If you don't want to risk Ubuntu, use something like arch linux instead. Or gentoo :p
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I actually worked on a friend's new Win 7 HP laptop, and I was a bit surprised to see that it came with Flash, Java, and Adobe Reader installed OOTB.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Then when I first tried it I thought "Man that is WAY too much brown and orange."...LinuxMint, which is effectively "Ubuntu with the ugly removed".
I never minded the Ubuntu color scheme, but when I tried out LinuxMint, I dismissed it for being, "Ubuntu, but ugly."
The point is not to say that you like the wrong things, but that people in general like different things. Your personal taste is not the reference point by which others should judge things :)
but... Linux doesn't have bugs!
Sure it does.
The point is that they get found and then get fixed fast.
Ubuntu's problem occurred because they have a shipping deadline and a really bad bug got inserted late and detected about a week from the scheduled release. So there's not much time left for testing a fix, another if the first fails, rinse-and-repeat...
Deadlines: "The light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming locomotive."
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I didn't even get my install to boot up!
A memory leak would have been luxury...
Ubuntu developers are now desperate for people willing to test out this updated X.Org Server package so they can determine by this Friday whether to ship it with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or doing an early SRU (Stable Release Update).
They should have thought that before antagonizing over 80% of the tester community with the windows button issue.
Yes, it IS a petty issue, the problem is that everybody said "We don want it, please revert pretty please" and Mark was like "Thank you, your opinions are very valuable, however, just bite it".
So I'm not surprised at all if the tester community feels withdrawn. There is a growing feeling that the opinions of the community are being soundly ignored, for instance these (public) statements from the bug tracker I'm going to reproduce without permission:
Jef Spaleta:
First of all I think you put too much weight behind Brainstorm as a tool
to drive change inside Ubuntu. You actually shouldn't be at all
surprised that Brainstorm popularity has very little influence over
design decisions. It's never had influence in any technical decision
making and no one in a position of authority inside Canonical or Ubuntu
governance has ever claimed that it has. Canonical nor the external
Ubuntu governance structures make it a policy to rely heavily or to even
officially review highly popular ideas in Brainstorm on a regular basis
or part of technical decision making or public governance discussion.
Were highly popular Brainstorm ideas even discussed in an organized
session during the UDS in the run up to 10.04?
The track record of implemented ideas backs up my point. You look
really closely at the ideas marked implemented in Brainstorm and they
are at best mediocre in terms of Brainstorm popularity. None of the
highly popular ideas in Brainstorm get implemented..or even discussed
publicly as a matter of technical decision making or governance. Take
for example the music store idea. It has a negative voting total and is
marked implemented.
It's wishful thinking to suggest that Brainstorm popularity plays an
important role in decision making. It doesn't. At best brainstorm is a
dumping ground for random ideas. There's no evidence that the voting
process correlates with feature development or decision making at all.
The thing is, Ubuntu has dropped the ball massively with this release, there is simply nothing good about the new release, worse still is that it lost contact with its user base, most of the decisions are now either politically or corporately motivated, or driven by the team of Cupertino rejects that Mark appointed to drive Ubuntu development.
But really, this is interesting, I'll get some marsh mellows and enjoy the fireworks. The question no longer is if Lucid is going to be an embarrassment but whether Mark will learn anything from it. If Mark learns a lesson it's well worth it.
I really loved ubuntu, I want to love it again, but right now, I'm just deciding whether to switch to mint or debian.
But... the future refused to change.
I just picked up a couple laptops - one each for me and the wife. I would prefer to put the next LTS on them rather than an older release followed by an upgrade within weeks. B-(
(But if we have to wait a bit for the LTS release to be a GOOD one, or have a backrev of a major component that needs an upgrade in a month or so, that's the breaks.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
lucid+xorg+nvidia+GLcompositing == fail (xorg and other apps will eventually grow/thrash and crash the box)
lucid+xorg+nvidia+Xrendercompositing == win (xorg behaves, but all video has bad tearing (no framrate sync))
from lucid-kubuntu,
--edfardos
But my experience with this has been absolutely fantastic on my IBM T61... It is way faster than it ever was with XP, and the 3d effects and AWN work great, along with Asterisk running in the background...
Fedora claims about twice as many active users as Canonical does, and most people consider it to be a desktop Linux distro. ... many of us can at least agree that Ubuntu is undoubtedly the most hyped Linux distro ever.
I dropped Red Hat for my next upgrade when Red Hat dropped its non-corporate customers. Hurrah for the community picking up support when the company bailed - but my die was cast.
When I next did an install (Gutsy came out two days after I got serious about migrating to my new work laptop) my experience convinced me that Ubuntu had made it to prime time - especially for me, as somebody who COULD dig into the guts to admin it but now had other things to do with that time.
At this point I see no other distribution with significant advantages for me, let alone a big enough edge to pay for the additional effort of switching. And now that my wife's vertigo is under control and she's looking at making the move from Windows to "a real OS" and possibly digging into its guts later, I have no problem recommending it as a starter platform for her as well.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
During its development cycle, Ubuntu is called by its code name "Lucid Lynx".
Only once it's released will it become Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
Notepad specialist & FAT administrator, group training available
Sounded like at least one voice missed the note a couple postings back. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Obligatory correction: it's not 9.4; it's 9.04. It's not 10.4; it's 10.04. Try to pay attention.
You might think, just wait for the X.Org thing to be fixed, then release.... but what about every other part of the operating system. If you wait until every single part is stable at the same time, you would never release. So, what you need to do is simply use the most recent stable version. If that means that the latest-and-greatest gee-I-wish-it-was-in-this-version has to wait for next version, so be it.
If you hold up the release for X.Org's latest and greatest, do you hold up for Gnome's, for the kernel's, for Firefox's, for the filesystem.... etc.
It doesn't mean release buggy stuff. It means release what works, even if it means rolling back to an earlier version.
And for anyone who would respond with 'If they don't wait for the bug fix, they are releasing a buggy version', keep in mind that I expect that every major part of any major OS is going to have a bug list. The only software that I know of that waits until all bugs are fixed before releasing is DNF.
This is half the reason I moved away from Ubuntu. Their crap is always buggy compared to other distributions. Fedora is on the bleeding edge too and not there is not nearly as many fuckups and bugs as Ubuntu releases.
### eix-sync: /usr/local/portage/layman/kde/Documentation && sh ./metadata-sync /var/tmp/portage/* # cleanup stuff from those failed packages /usr/src && ln -sfn linux-* linux && cd linux /boot/.config .
layman -S
emerge --sync
egencache --repo=local --update
cd
emerge --regen || echo "“emerge --regen” has returned the error status $?."
eix-update
eix-remote update
### update
emerge -auDNtv --keep-going world # press y<enter>
# Circumvent or fix a bazillion non-working packages, and run “emerge -auDNtv world” again... for a couple of times, until you got everything working or masked.
haskell-updater
etc-update # walk trough a ton of fils
eselect news read new
# Apply changes from news.
### cleanup
revdep-rebuild
emerge -a --depclean
rm -rf
### kernel
cd
cp
make oldconfig
make
make modules_install
make install # runs self-written installkernel script. answer questions, if they occur.
reboot
# Go hunt the forums and IRC for at least half an hour, to get everything that previously worked to work again, and file at least one bug on bugzilla for whatever you couldn’t fix this time. Get called an idiot or banned for trolling at least once while in your usual rage phase, because you weren’t already born with the knowledge, that from last month on, massive architectural changes are sometimes notified in overlay SVN commit messages, scrolling by and away at 50 lines a second.
Easy peasy. Who needs long-term stable platforms?
</sarcasm> (...and they wonder why I’m angry...)
P.S.: Yes, this was what I actually spent my whole last weekend with. :( Please Ubuntu, adopt Paludis!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Lucid Lynx added two new themes, Ambiance and Radiance. Only in those two themes do the buttons move to the left. In all the other themes, including the default theme from the previous release, the buttons are still on the right.
I thought that moving the buttons was really annoying -- until I actually used the new theme, when I discovered it didn't bother me in the slightest.
Most people here are unimpressed with Ubuntu's usability. I am pretty impressed, as I see regular highschool/college kids installing it on their desktops and laptops and being able to do everything they want to. Not just Linux nerds, just people (including girls) who don't have a particular interest in computers, but don't want to use Windows or OSX. That's something I've never seen with any other Linux distribution. Using one of the other distros means you know how to use a terminal, and probably have been using linux since the time when you had to compile most programs on your box.
my trust in OSS.
I've been an open source user and developer since long before there was a Linux. And, I've been a Linux user for a long time. Used Redhat, Debian, and now Ubuntu. I've been using Ubuntu since 5 something. I like Ubuntu. It is easy to install, gets easier all the time. It works, which is really nice. And, it has very good support for things like Flash and proprietary graphics card drivers. You can complain that it doesn't have some detail covered that is critical to you, but that's OK. I've been very happy with Ubuntu.
Well, I was. I always try to test the alpha and beta releases. In the early days I could down load the first alpha and it would work. It might get a little weird, but it would work. In the worst case I can remember the computer would at least boot up to the command prompt. That is until the 10.4 release. That just plain wouldn't boot until we got to alpha 3. It wouldn't even install. It has been awful ever since. I don't know if it is a problem with X.org, but every time I type in the search field on firefox I get a black screen. After a few seconds the login screen comes up and I can login. The machine did not reboot. It looks like typing in the search field on firefox is crashing the X server. Now, back in the early '90s I helped get a little program called xcrashme written and distributed and after that was around for a few years the X server was damned near bullet proof. What did they do to mess it up so badly? I went to file a bug report. It turned out to be a duplicate. Seems a lot of people have reported the problem. I haven't seen any action on it.
Then there is the little thing about the user interface in 10.4. Nobody in their right mind, at least no body who had any respect for their users, would change something as basic as the location and order of the window buttons. But, Shuttleworth has done just that. The reason? To make room for a "cool" something that will appear in a later version of Ubuntu. The only discussion involved in the decision was the coolness of the feature and the vague technical argument that somehow it reduces mouse movement, because the buttons are now on the same side of the screen as the menus. Oh, yeah, like the amount of time anyone spends opening new apps is worth retraining your hands to find the new buttons. On the bug discussion list Shuttleworth would not even admit that human factors might have some validity in the discussion. Only the coolness and the bullshit argument about mouse movement were treated as worthy of consideration. Shuttleworth even posted data showing his own mouse movement. The data did not support moving the buttons. But, he claimed it did. He saw what he wanted to see. After all, the new thing is so cool we should all be grateful for the inconvenience.
Why doesn't Ubuntu care about the effect the change will have on their customers? Because they have no customers. They are in it to be cool and to score techie points with other people who do not understand why proprietary software actually tries not to piss off their customers. If you don't believe me ask a human factors engineer why purple is an awful background color for a GUI and then ask what percentage of the public can read light gray text on a dark gray background. Then look at the new Ubuntu default theme. It sure is "cool". I used ssh -Y to log in from a computer with a different theme so I could work select a readable theme and move the buttons back to where I'm used to having them.
The backlash from the users has been astonishing. Even more astonishing is Shuttleworth's "I'm to cool to care" attitude.
At least for now you can move the buttons back and choose another theme. What happens when he puts his uber cool new feature into the UI? I guess I am looking for a new Linux distribution.
That was bad enough... But, then I ran into OO.o Issue #956 (http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=956). Have you heard about this one? It was filed May 25, 2001. For comparison current issue numbers for OO.o are now above 110,000.
GP asked if X.org people used Valgrind or no. Apparently they missed this leak.
I have xubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 installed on my laptop. Everything works except screen locking on suspend. I was expecting a few problems but got none.
The ubuntu team have done a really great job with 10.04.
they should have said "fuck the deadline, we want a stable and modern system."
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
No one is saying to release the buggy patched version. They are saying to release the previous stable version.
clone53421, you're undoubtedly joking, because your posts often have you acting as that:
1.) Biggest "armchair engineer"
2.) Biggest "internet lawyer"
3.) BIGGEST TROLL!
So give us a break already, before you of ALL people, start acting as if you're "holier than thou".
LMAO
Watch clone be quiet now, like a good beyotch.
Its a "single click change"? Would you mind telling me that single click? It requires you go know that a program named gnome-gconf-editor exits. It isn't in the menus anywhere. You then have to know where the info you have to find is hidden. Then you have to understand the syntax used in that specific field for that specific app. Then you have to actually edit the info. That is not a single click change.
I've been working with X11 based desktops since X11R3 and it still took me a good half hour of googling to find the info and another half hour to fix it.
OBTW, you have to know not to do it as root and you have to repeat the fix for each user.
So, please, tell me how it is a single click.
I guess I have to say this one more time for you folks who think that the Linux Desktop is a clone of the Windows desktop. It is not and never has been.
The windows desktop is a clone of the Alto and Star desktop developed at PARC in the '70s on into the early '80s. The Apple desktop is also a clone of the PARC desktop systems. MS did start borrowing from Apple by sometime around 3.0 when Apple sued MS over copyright violation. BTW, Apple lost.
The court ruled that Apple didn't own the copyright and neither did MS. The few things that were copyrightable belonged to PARC who didn't bother to sue until it was too late. When PARC sued they sued MS and Apple, not the X consortium or any Unix vendor. Why is that?
If you check your facts. You will find that the X Consortium got legal permission from PARC to use the desktop metaphor. The X11 desktop is the only one of the three, Apple, MS, and X, who have the legal right to clone PARC's work.
Check the dates. X and its predecessor W (yes before X11 was X10, X9, X8.. and before X there was W and guess what W is short for) predate Windows. The version of the X11 protocol we currently use was finalized in '87. MS released Windows 2.0 in December of '87. X1 came out in '84. Windows 1.0 came out in '85.
By the time that horrible thing called Windows 3.0 came out in '90 X11R4 was out in commercial products. By the time Window 3.1 came out in '92 X11R5 was out with the font sever and a standardized 3d graphics systems called PEX. (PEX looked strong enough in the market to force SGI to release an open version of their Graphics Language that we all know and love as OpenGL.)
Windows is not older than X11. While all you noobs moved from Windows to Linux/X11 some of us used Unix/Linux plus X11 all the way from the '80s until today. Only noobs moved from Windows. The rest of us either never used Windows or moved from Unix/X11 to Windows and then to Linux/X11. (Ok, that was fun to write. But I guess it may be considered a bit unfair to call most people under the age of 30 or even 40 "noobs". Even if you are. :-)
I got a laugh out of your "Moire" wallpaper comment. The Moire thing was there because way back in the before times pixels had one bit. Unix systems tended to have high resolution with 1 bit per pixel while PCs had very low resolutions with as many as 4 bits per pixel. In '87 when the VGA display first came out for PCs giving them an amazing 640x480 resolution with 16 wonderful colors I was using X11 on machines with multiple 24 bit color + alpha planes, a z buffer, multiple shaders, and support for stereo viewing using quad color buffers and shutter glasses.
Ah, that feels really good. But I do find myself thinking about Hank Hill yelling at Beavis and Butthead when he found them in his shed.
Stonewolf
P.S.
"I am the Great Cornholio, I need tp for my bunghole"
Go away kid, play with yourself somewhere else.
Since you suggested Gnumeric I tested it. Nice spreadsheet. Unfortunately, although it does handle circular references, it does it in a very odd way. Oddly enough, I can see exactly why they do it that way, but it makes it useless for doing what Excel is so good at.
Basically the formula a1: =a1+1 That is, in the cell a1 you have the formula =a1+1. Since the initial value of a1 defaults to 0 you would expect a1 to increment by 1 each time the sheet recalculates. But, on Bnumeric is increments by 2. Instead of giving you 0,1,2,3.... you get 2,4,6,8....
So, I tried the spreadsheet in Google Docs. It has a lot of advantages. But, it flags circular references as errors. I was not able to find any way around that. That spreadsheet provides minimal functionality. Great for casual use, no good for serious use.
I then tried KSpread in the KOffice suite. I found the UI to be peculiar. But, after only about and hour I was starting to like it it. OTOH, I was never able to find out how to make all the tools on the toolbar visible or how to get rid of the drawing tool menu. Why does that even show up? BUT, it handles circular references just fine. It works. Except... I could not find a way to set the iteration count. That means that if I want to process 100,000 samples I have to press F9 100,000 times. Close, so close...
So, I am looking for more info on KSpread. After looking at KOffice for a while I've decided to spend a lot more time looking at KOffice. To bad it is so closely associated with KDE. It looks like it could be a good alternative to OO.o. Of course, it runs just fine on any Linux/X11 based system, but a lot of people don't know that that.
Stonewolf
Someone may have already posted this, I simply couldn't read through all the comments. Also, the POSTed version which has already released had GLX 1.2, thus is safe: http://webpath.net/posts/index.php?itemid=27
The full scoop from Adam Williamson as reported on the Fedora marketing List (marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org):
Hey everyone, just a quick heads-up. Some of you may have read about a
memory leak that cropped up very late in Ubuntu 10.04 development
process. They kindly put this phrase in their explanation of the bug:
"One possible solution is to roll back the GLX 1.4 enablement patches,
and the patch which caused the memory leak to appear. These GLX patches
were produced by RedHat and incorporated into Debian, they were not
brought in due to Ubuntu-specific requirements"
which can obviously create the impression that the patches in question
actually come from Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or from Fedora.
Short story for the impatient: the problematic patch is not in any
version of Fedora and never has been, Fedora is not subject to this
memory leak and never has been.
So if you see any stories drawing the implication that Fedora is also
subject to this leak, please feel free to correct them - it isn't.
Longer version for the curious: I'm not sure about the claim that the
'GLX 1.4 enablement patches' come from Red Hat, they may be in RHEL for
some reason, but they're not in Fedora; we wouldn't need to backport GLX
1.4 from X server 1.8 to 1.7 as we're just shipping X server 1.8 in
Fedora 13 anyway.
Regardless, the actual patch that caused the problem in Ubuntu was not
part of the GLX 1.4 backport, but was an attempt to fix this bug:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26394
Sometimes X would crash when Clutter-based apps closed. Fedora did
actually suffer from this bug too:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=579756
However, Ubuntu and Fedora took different approaches to fixing it.
Ubuntu seems to have jumped on one of Jesse Barnes' early attempts to
fix the problem (Jesse works for RH, hence the Red Hat link). In the
end, though, if you read the upstream bug, Jesse ceded to Kristian
Høgsberg (who, for the record, works for Intel), who provided a better
fix which was committed to upstream. For Fedora 13, we took Kristian's
fix, not any of Jesse's attempts. This was included in
xorg-x11-server-1.8.0-7.fc13 . That seems to have caused a couple of
problems with compositing managers:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=584832
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=577142
-7 was sent as a candidate update for F13, got bad Bodhi feedback (as
you'd expect) and was withdrawn; it never went into the 'stable' F13
repo (the one from which the final F13 will actually be built). The bugs
were fixed by adding one more upstream patch, from Michel Dänzer:
http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/rpms/xorg-x11-server/F-13/xserver-1.8.0-dri2-fix-handling-of-redirected-pixmaps.patch?view=markup
to xorg-x11-server-1.8.0-8.fc13 . That build has good feedback:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/xorg-x11-server-1.8.0-8.fc13
and was pushed to F13 updates two days ago. So in summary our processes
worked very well, we didn't jump on an incomplete fix, we didn't push
the initial upstream fix to the 'stable' F13 because our feedback system
made us aware of the problems it caused, we did push the fully-working
fixed package when it was confirmed ready, and we were never at any
point subject to the memory leak issue. This is actually quite a nice
story of our QA processes working effectively, if someone's looking for
such a thing. =)