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X.Org Server 1.16 Brings XWayland, GLAMOR, Systemd Integration
An anonymous reader writes The much anticipated Xorg Server 1.16 release is now available. The X.Org "Marionberry Pie" release features XWayland integration, GLAMOR support, systemd support, and many other features. XWayland support allows for legacy X11 support in Wayland environments via GL acceleration, GLAMOR provides generic 2D acceleration, non-PCI GPU device improvements, and countless other changes.
The systemd integration finally allows the X server to run without root privileges, something in the works for a very long time. The non-PCI device improvements mean System-on-a-Chip graphics will work more smoothly, auto-enumerating just like PCI graphics devices do. As covered previously, GLAMOR (the pure OpenGL acceleration backend) has seen quite a bit of improvement, and now works with Xephyr and XWayland.
there will be no usable X, at least not from X.org, outside of poetterix.
Why are there going to be all of these changes? I am genuinely curious since I have only heard a little about this in the past.
I really hope it is not a requirement and will never be on for X.org. Otherwise, I will end up having to make my Linux-servers X-less and probably use Windows as terminal. After all, with systemd, windows-like levels of intransparency, insecurity, complexity and developer arrogance have already been reached. One system with that is quite enough, I do not need to deal with that crap on Linux as well.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Is this configuration, currently the only way to run X with non-root priveleges? Is there no way to use OpenRC to run X as non-root? Or is that statement in the headline such that, with systemd, you can finally run X as non-root?
So, to me it sounds like they are moving to being Linux only. As someone who supports multiple UNIX flavors (AIX, Solaris, HP UX, IRIX, and FreeBSD), all of which are running some form of X (and several of them running X.Org), I am displeased with the trend towards all of the primarily Linux dependencies for a lot of software - GNOME 3, Wayland, and now features of X11.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
I can tell you I feel similiarly.
But until and unless a large percentage of the community starts coughing up money to directly pay devs otherwise, they're going to do what their corporate masters (primarily redhat, but also other tech incumbents) choose to do.
It's the same reason lots of other tech has made it into the linux kernel but taken years to a decade to make it into BSD. If the community isn't ponying up the cash to keep the development in a direction they desire, then some corporation will coopt it and pervert it into something we hate.
It's not the first nor last piece of software we'll see this happening with.
So what particular one thing does SysV init do well in your opinion? I honestly can't think of a single thing. It's crappy at managing services, it's crappy at running shell scripts (as witness by the non-standardness of init.d scripts), it's shit at managing running services with interdependencies (inittab), it's shit at dynamically reconfiguring systems (e.g. network reconfiguration for Wifi.), etc. etc.
There's a reason alternatives were created, y'know.
HAND.
Did this dude get so excited over the release that he peed his pants? http://www.phoronix.com/image-...
You could always run a non-GNU Linux setup if you don't like glibc. I'm all in favor of that!
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Actually, a lot of us, including Linus Torvalds, do submit bug reports and patches to various groups (such as GNOME) that get promptly ignored or rejected because of politics.
And in my case, it's "I was using Linux happily until I tried other operating systems, and realized how horrible the GNU/Linux setup really is"
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
OK, I'll feed the troll. Either X or an X wrapper is suid root. Find the right hole in X, and you've got root. I presume that X or an X wrapper tries to do the best it can, drops capabilities, etc. But it would still be better to not be root at all.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I use it. Sometimes to run something like Wireshark, sometimes I do:
ray@mymac$ ssh -X -C me@linux.myhouse
I think we've seen this strategy before.
Basically, it's job security; make it so complex you need to pay for 'support' to make it work.
All your ghosts are just false positives.
For a rough guesstimate, let's say 25 people read your post. At least one of those people (4%) use XQuartz. Is 4% of people "next to no one"?
It's not. It's only a dependency to run X as non-root.
Is Lennart paid by Redhat or by Microsoft?
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
So the solution is to hand the critical stuff to systemd-logind which I assume has root privileges.
Why didn't the Xorg folks split their root sections from the server themselves ?
There's the snarky answer, and what I suspect is the real answer.
First, systemd and everything associated with is just so kewl and shiny that's it's a privilege to even use any of it, which makes it all the more amazing that they're actually welcoming us to do so, instead of making us fight for a place in line.
Second, X11 goes way back before anyone was really concerned with security. I suspect from a core competence point of view, the X11 coders are far more comfortable and far more engaged with the graphical display code than the input side. I get the impression that a lot of effort was spent in properly cleaning and separating the root-requiring functionality. I know I've read of KMS and DRI work for years now. It's been a long road, and I believe it may have only been in the past year that the display side has gotten to the point where they could think about going rootless.
I also suspect that the input device part is not their core competence - they'd like events coming in from "elsewhere" and get back to their graphics work. So along comes systemd, saying, "We'll handle the gnarly details of console access and security for you," and X said OK, if only in the spirit of modularity and going back to their graphics work. (Graphics work includes processing the inputs, not just drawing outputs - I think they'd just like the inputs to be clean and handed to them.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You've just said what "init" doesn't do -- which btw, I'm well aware of -- I was merely preempting some responses I've seen in the past. Tell us which single thing it does do well.
HAND.