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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."
And exactly what earth-shattering new features were you expecting in an X Window Server? 3D? Smell?
I would like
* mouse gestures like Stroke-It
* support to connect xinerama dynamically to other computers and use them as second display.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
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.
I'm pretty sure it's just X crashing, have you tried SSHing in?
--sitharus
The NVidia driver is directly accessing the hardware so when it goes there isn't much X can do about it.
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.
Because Windows is 99.2% of the market and nVidia throws engineers at Windows drivers like firemen throw water at an oil refinery fire?
Because the nVidia marketing assholes have to be reminded on a daily basis that Linux (or OSX) even exists?
Because the Linux nVidia staff is three guys in a room who get less respect than a vomiting crack whore in the Sistene Chapel?
Idiot.
Starting from Vista, Windows runs as much as possible of the driver in userspace which means that if it craches it just restarts the driver resulting in a quick blink on the screen and you're back to normal.
Well how is Windows 7 doing it then?
Linux has a framework for some sort of recovery on GFX crash but that would require NVidia port their drivers to work with KMS and they havn't bothered.
This is not really an X problem.
This is a Nvidia providing crappy drivers problem.
Also it means your system has also most likely been set to not restart the X server, if it did indeed crash.
What most likely is happening is it is stuck in a loop, which is is not exiting, or something along those lines.
Regardless, most likely you just need SSH in and restart X.
The good news is these days it very rarely takes the kernel down with it, at least in regards to FreeBSD.
The performance issues are not an X issue, but a driver issue.
The major issue when it comes to performance and X is the drivers, which are largely crap. Unfortunately there is very little information on the internals of most cards, which makes writing good drivers complex or damn near impossible. This also requires a nice bit of programming and math knowledge in various areas.
Changing graphics server technology won't fix this issue.
Actually it is incredibly useful.
I've used it at work before for using a single keyboard/mouse between my unix and windows workstations.
* support to connect xinerama dynamically to other computers and use them as second display.
There is that xdmx stuff, although I haven't actually tried it yet.
Maybe RD doesn't have a lot of use for the average desktop user, but it is used in the corporate world and it is used by power users. Just because *you* don't use it doesn't mean nobody does.
Here are some of the use cases where remote X has been important to me:
You could summarize these in the way that, for power use(r)s, the number of users is very different from the number of computers. For starters, I'm not going to buy extra monitors, keyboards and mice for all my machines, just because some desktop user thinks remote X is obsolete. In the case of supercomputers and similar specialist machines, it is physically impossible for all users to sit by the same computer. Plus it would be expensive (money, time, environment) for everyone to get there.
Many people argue that remote X can be replaced by more platform-independent systems like VNC. In some cases that is true; in fact, there are cases where remote X does not work, for example when the OpenGL/CL code need to run on the same machine as the rest of the program. On the other hand, VNC is often much heavier on the network, as it needs to transfer the entire bitmapped screen. For example, my fluid mechanics work involved relatively simple 3D modelling, and it worked fine over a 1-megabit ADSL and cable, but VNC is often sluggish even on a LAN.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
You can also think of the "network transparency" part as being a side-effect of the client-server model implemented by X, which fully isolates applications from the graphics hardware. That isolation contributes in a very positive way to system stability and portability.
And, once you have a client-server model, it doesn't really matter how far apart the two are. Hence the "network transparency" part.
Regardless, anyone who argues against X because of its "network transparency" feature is arguing from a point of ignorance.
b.g.