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X.Org Server 1.11 Released
An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix is reporting that X.Org Server 1.11 has been officially released to users of Linux and other operating systems. This time around their reporting is more detailed than the official release announcement."
Is it just me, or are most open source project "official" releases getting rather humdrum?
If I have a bug that needs fixin', I use the beta (or just apply the patch(es) manually). If I don't, I generally don't fix it until a feature it has seems interesting, or my package manager says "omg you need this!".
do they have binary version release?
...and once again nvidia drivers won't work anymore.
Whether it's the flash player doing something silly or mplayer going or leaving full screen, occasionally the proprietary nvidia driver crashes, and I don't understand why X then lets my entire system crash with it. Nothing responds (except sometimes my mouse movements). That should not be possible. It's 2011, dammit, modular coding practices should be in place by now. [/rant]
If you had read the article you would have seen that nVidia's binary blob already supports it and Ati's isn't far behind.
Shh.
So X is Robert and Wayland is Joffrey? Of so, I really hope Unity is Ned.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
I mentioned about this a while back on OSNews when I got my new laptop and noticed that it has two graphics cards instead of one: the other one is a higher-powered one able to churn away on games, 3D-modeling and whatnot at acceptable speeds, the other one is a very low-powered one that is barely able to do regular 2D sufficiently. The system switches between those two when I plug/unplug the AC adapter, though it also allows me to switch between them at will.
The thing here is that the low-powered one saves HUGE amounts of battery compared to the high-powered one, even if I go to such drastic measures as downclocking it. Using two separate chips instead of incorporating both in the same chip, or just having more aggressive power-saving capabilities on the more powerful chip is not the same thing for several reasons: being able to buy and use both chips separately means the manufacturer may be able to save money by buying different batches of chips from different places, and it obviously allows the manufacturer to mix-and-match at will. And adding more aggressive power-saving capabilities to a chip always means having to make compromises that could otherwise be omitted. It simply makes some sense to use two chips for saving battery, and I've noticed several manufacturers lately trying that. It remains to be seen whether or not it'll actually become a trend, though, or just a passing fad.
Unfortunately though X.org doesn't support such a scheme. You can't just switch between cards on-the-fly, you must muck around first, then restart whole X, thereby defeating the whole idea. And it doesn't seem like there are any plans for remedying this, or atleast I can't find anything relevant.
Unity is Jaime.
"We live as though the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be." - Joss Whedon via Angel
Does this mean we are finally going to eliminate some of the layers of X and go with a more sane and modern approach to video display or did we just throw in a few new bells and do some performance tweaks. We really need a better, more responsive/modern display system.
One of the targets for the 1.12 release is smooth scrolling support.
What? That has been in Windows since at least 98, if not 95 with the IE shell updates.
But what is the use case for network transparency in a modern setup?
It was original designed so you could log into a powerful graphics workstation/server and do you work on them, and then send the output to your own computer. But nobody does that today because cheep powerful workstations are everywhere.
I have been running Linux for the last 10 years and I have not used the ability to show remote x sessions/windows on my own desktop for the last 5 years. And I can't make up a reason to ever do it again.
It might be useful for remote troubleshooting of desktop systems if you are an admin, but there you need a copy of the output on your system, and not the ability of X to forward a single window.
And since network transparency is seldom used, and causes so many design problems for the graphics system, handling it as a separate application is the best solution. (Like skype, where you can share desktop without any support from the operation system*).
*I newer managed to share my linux desktop with others, but I can se their Windows desktop.
I use Windows for non programming stuff. With Windows, I don't have to dick around with all the video problems of X.org and drivers. Sure, Gnome and KDE could be significantly better, but if Gnome and KDE used a framebuffer instead of X11, I might try to use my coding skills to be part of the solution instead of the problem. For my programming/admin, a console is good enough. I wouldn't be surprised if many Unix users feel the same way.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
in the fantasy of modularization, different pieces of the computer machine are separated and individual.
in reality, they are all mushed together through undocumented, hacked-together crap. alot of driver-writing is black-box guesswork, and always has been, probably always will be. Nvidia's binary closed blob only makes the problem worse --- you are basically taking unknown undocumented kernel bits and putting them into your linux kernel (IIRC)
there are various ways to get rid of this problem... theoretically the 'microkernel' OSes like Plan9 or the Hurd should not crash with video driver problems... but those plans never seem to work in reality.
lastly, there is the old argument taht linux "crashes" are often not really 100% crashes... if you only had a serial-port terminal, like an old VT100, you could plug it into your machine and log into the linux console, reset the keyboard, video, etc, and get everything back up running. Of course, machines don't even come with serial ports anymore, and i dont know the new version of the argument.
i hate to go all Glenn Beck here, but we know the microsoft Standard Operating Procedure. We know how they think. We know how they act.
introducing subtle incompatabiities and crashes into product in order to crush competition is just another day at the office for those guys.
they probably are putting political pressure on Nvidia to give them special access to their internal documentation or something.
this is precisely why 'closed blob' drivers are bad. . . . because it allows the enemies of Linux and FOSS to destroy it. closed blob drivers are a step away from closed, un-sniffable hardware. it is like the story of the WinModems all over again. . if the situation with WinModems was repeated for Graphics cards, mice, keyboards, monitors, etc, then Microsoft could really destroy Linux.
vomiting crack whores are welcome in the church, they can get counseling and treatment... something they would never find at a linux convention.
> [goat.cx]