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Mandriva Businesses

Mandrakelinux Goes X.org 363

Posted by CmdrTaco from the teaching-a-lesson dept.
dvalin writes "With Mandrakelinux now going for X.org it seems like every big linux distributor now has officialy dumped XFree86. First release for cooker was announced on the changelog list the 7th of June: http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/changelog/2004-0 6/msg00799.php Nice to see for all us cookers out there:) Also on another note, Mandrakelinux has also switched to gcc-3.4 now"
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Mandrakelinux Goes X.org More

Mandrakelinux Goes X.org

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  • xorg changes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:36AM (#9365095)
    I don't understand why everyone is switching to x.org when it's known that there will be significant changes coming in the next couple of releases. It seems to me like that's begging for problems.

    • Re:xorg changes (Score:5, Informative)

      by TEMM ( 731243 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:39AM (#9365137)
      People are switching to X.org due to liscence incompatbilities of XFree86 with the GPL.

    • Re:xorg changes (Score:5, Interesting)

      by auzy ( 680819 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:57AM (#9366094)
      The reason isn't only because of the licensing, its also because Xfree86 was a badly managed project.. It was very common for programmers to write code which wasn't accepted (I heard for instance the cygwin coders spent a very long time coding patches which they refused to accept).

      They also moved slowly.. At the rate Xfree86 was going.. in 10 years maybe we'd be getting up to OS X level, but with xorg, I know a few people are working on the compositing already (the stuff needed for the translucent window effects and stuff), and libraries like cairo I'd imagine will be better utilised.

      So, many of the flames here I think are wrong, and are made by people who have no idea what the current situation is.. In fact, I'm betting that it will be a year tops until everyone here is thankful of the changes..

      I'm not a coder for Xorg, but I do hang around the channel alot, and have seen how fast Xorg is evolving (I do code though)

      Anyway, you want simple applications, and maybe a bit more stable server, go Xfree86.. If you want something, that is more cutting edge, can easily produce nice next generation effects that can surpass longhorn, Xorg is your best choice for the future.

      Haven't you noticed that nothing has visibly changed in X since the first accellerated ones came out, other then more drivers (lets face it, you could still run Xfree86 3.3 and get pretty much the same experience then now, if your drivers worked on it). Xorg however will add extensions that will finally make it worth while enough to be hoping for an upgrade.

      • Re:xorg changes (Score:3, Interesting)

        by stevey ( 64018 )

        It will certainly be interesting to see how many of these patches now get in.

        The Debian X Strike Force [deadbeast.net] produce a packaged version of X which runs on more platforms than the native version, seeing those patches folded in would be wonderful news.

      • Re:xorg changes (Score:4, Interesting)

        by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @03:11PM (#9369619) Journal
        In defense of XFree86, they came about due to 2 reasons:
        1. The X org was not truely open source.
        2. Xorg was moving way too slowly.
        It is humourous that this has come full circle. It also shows that the way to usurp an open source project is be more OSS and work harder. :)

  • and this means? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    can someone explain the benefits to me in real terms? performance?

  • Differences? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TEMM ( 731243 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:37AM (#9365111)
    What are the differences between XFree86 and X.org, besides the liscences and names? I havnt really had any experiences with X.org

    • Re:Differences? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Karamchand ( 607798 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:44AM (#9365187)
      X.org is actively developed while XFree86 is only maintained at best because most high-profile X developers from XFree86 have changed to X.org.

    • Re:Differences? (Score:3, Informative)

      by The Analog Kid ( 565327 )
      I read that in the next release there will be compositing implemented, right now though, there isn't much difference but some packages in X.org are updated that aren't in XFree 4.4. Xorg is the future, it's an X server that is actually put under an OPEN development model and patches are accepted, where XFree was not.

    • Re:Differences? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:27AM (#9365689) Homepage
      As far as the end user is concerned, there are relatively few differences between X.org and XFree86 at this point. X.org is a fork of XFree86, and even if they were gung ho to change everything no project the size of XFree86 is going to get radically altered overnight. (Which I don't think they are, bty.)

      I made the switch on Gentoo, where it was very painless. For distros without such a smooth upgrade path and/or non-geek inclined folk it might be better to wait for the next release of the distro (since a foobared X install is a little hard to fix without experience on the command line.) But if you're worried about programs not working or anything like that, there shouldn't be any issues at this point.

      The experimental work is, IIRC, focused primarily on the freedesktop Xserver. The major difference between X.org and XFree86 is things will get fixed sooner, driver releases will be better handled, etc. The license change was just the last in a long, long line of problems - fixes made by the cygwin folk, for example, were rotting without ever being applied to the main tree. I don't know all the details of that incident, but I don't think it is the only such either. The XFree86 team wasn't so worried about being responsive to the needs of XFree86 users. (Which is their right, of course, since most of us aren't paying them. But nor should they be surprised by a fork.) X.org is the place for people who want XFree86, but managed correctly and in an open manner. Those who want adventure and bleading edge should scope out freedesktop.org. I don't know what will happen to XFree86 - likely they will keep on the way they have been, with fewer users. I get the sense this won't bother them much, either, but I could be wrong.

  • x.org in debian ? (Score:4, Informative)

    by C0vardeAn0nim0 ( 232451 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:37AM (#9365112) Journal
    anyone knows if/when x.org will make it to debian experimental/unstable ?

    i don't want to build mine because the next apt-get dist-upgrade may overwrite x.org with xfree86, so i'm waiting for the packages. i just want to know how long i'll have to wait.
    • Isn't Debian the official XFree86 testbed, due to the large number of architectures it supports? Would this support be offered for x.org instead perhaps?

    • Re:x.org in debian ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dionysus ( 12737 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:43AM (#9365170) Homepage
      Probably is going to take awhile for unstable. Debian doesn't move X-Window System into unstable until it gets it running on all supported platforms.
      There probably will be unofficial ports long before that, though.
    • anyone knows if/when x.org will make it to debian experimental/unstable ?
      Debian is not planning a change, as XFree286 is not affected by the licensing changes.

      Hey-oooo! Debian versioning joke!!!

    • Re:x.org in debian ? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just after Duke Nukem Forever hits the shelves :)

  • Are there any advantages other than licensing? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by desplesda ( 742182 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:37AM (#9365115) Homepage
    It seems to me that the major distros are all jumping to X.org because of the XF86 licensing issue. Are there any other advantages to X.org, or are distros just jumping to it over what looks like a quite trivial license change?

    • Licence was only the last straw (Score:5, Insightful)

      by InfiniteWisdom ( 530090 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:42AM (#9365168) Homepage
      The XFree86 process has been dysfunctional for quite some time with politics dominating. A fork was probably imminent either way. This is natural selection at work, and shows why open source is an effective model.

      • Re:Licence was only the last straw (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:09AM (#9365443)
        and shows why open source is an effective model
        Not so, it only shows that open source is an effective model IF these transitions occur smoothly and the destination is found to be worthy the journey.

        • Re:Licence was only the last straw (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:26AM (#9365669) Journal
          Not true, because through the process of natural selection if the fork is -not- worthy very few if any will switch to it and the product will wither and die.

          If the transition isn't smooth then selection will be slowed until the transition has taken place. If the destination isn't worthy after transition, people still won't switch.

          Sounds effective to me ... far more effective than bying a commercial product that decides to make changes that aren't compatible with your setup and then saying "too bad, you have to upgrade, you might want to change you setup".

          Is it perfect? Nope, I think the Universe has an if() loop that states if anyone finds the perfect one-size-fits-all business model it then transfers the rights to the supreme being and ends the experiment. However, it is still quite effective.
        • "Not so, it only shows that open source is an effective model IF these transitions occur smoothly and the destination is found to be worthy the journey."

          Not really. The fact is that ALL of the choices available for proprietary software are STILL there in open-source. It's just that you also have MORE choices. So, even if this choice is not good in this situation, all of the other choices still exist.

          However, I am sure that the transition will be smooth. Why? BECAUSE NOTHING HAS CHANGED YET. Because

    • In the immediate sense, X.org is barely different from XFree86 4.4.0. They're almost the same code.

      However, this fork wasn't made merely because of the licensing issues. XFree86 development has been fairly slow, as well as not really being focused on some of the sort of improvements that would actually help end-users. To the best of my understanding, the X.org people are much more focused on helping Linux become a "desktop" OS than XF86 was.

      So, the first release of X.org looks like XF86, and it was a good choice to make it close to identical, to help migration, and it means they're starting from the solid base XF86 provided. However, we should be seeing some real improvements soon (hopefully).

  • Good Thing(tm) & FP (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zoloto ( 586738 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:38AM (#9365122)
    XFree86 project was scuicided and this is what happens. :) Personally, any change for the better including new implementations and speed enhancements will do everyone good.

    Speaking of which, this is off topic, but has anyone gone x.org for their own machines and if so, what's the smallest compiled binaries sizes (total X install) you've come up with? I'm looking at working with DamnSmallLinux [damnsmalllinux.org] and the smaller the better, or straight out integration (unless that's pure evil)

    Post some replys, I'd love to hear from everyone.

  • Bad Sales (Score:4, Insightful)

    by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:38AM (#9365125) Homepage Journal
    Looks like XFree86 has a bad management staff. If companies and people all start jumping ship you fix why they are all doing it. It's simple business.

  • Wow, that's gotta be a record! (Score:5, Funny)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:41AM (#9365162)
    XFree86.org changes a few words in their license, and within four months almost every major Linux distribution and BSD has dumped it. How much longer does it have left? I'd guess by the end of the year the team will be disbanded as the independant OSS people move to x.org. Oh well, I never like the name XFree86, especially after it was ported to other architectures (XFree68? XFreePPC? :)

  • gcc 3.4.1 does not exist yet (Score:5, Informative)

    by ishmalius ( 153450 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:47AM (#9365224)
    Is Mandrake doing a RedHat move, and including a CVS build of a compiler that hasn't been released yet, or is this just a statement that 3.4.1 is the "target" version that will be in the next Mandrake release?

    GCC is still 3.4.0 [gnu.org].

    GCC 3.4.1 is targeted for June 15. [gnu.org]

    • Re:gcc 3.4.1 does not exist yet (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dcnjoe60 ( 682885 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:59AM (#9365338)
      Mandrake cooker, the development version of Mandrake has switched to GCCC 3.4.1, not the release versions. Since the next release of Community and Official are months away, it makes sense for Mandrake to start using the new GCC. By the time the next Mandrake Community is released, GCC 3.4.1 will be officially stable.

    • See the package (Score:4, Informative)

      by DreadSpoon ( 653424 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:18AM (#9365568) Journal
      The package revision is 0.1mdk. That means it is not yet the first real release of the package, but a pre-release. The changelog also clearly indicates it is a CVS copy of GCC. Once GCC 3.4.1 is officially out, and the package has been stabilized, the package release will become 1, and increase as other changes/improvements are made to the package.

  • X Protocol? (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by ciroknight ( 601098 )
    Anyone know where I can find decent information on the X protocol without druging through the source? I've been toying around with Y-Windows, and I've been wondering just how much work it'll take to make some kind of compatibility driver/subsystem.

    Thanks in advance.
  • Can anybody give an update on what the thinking inside the BSD community on the Xfree86 vx X.org is? Do they plan on changing or staying with Xfree86?

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:01AM (#9365358)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:What is going on with the BSD's (Score:5, Informative)

      by DreadSpoon ( 653424 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:22AM (#9365621) Journal
      OpenBSD for one is likely to change. They were one of the biggest opponents of the new XFree86 license.

      The reasoning for why the new license sucks has absolutely nothing to do with the GPL, despite the uninformed ramblings of the Slashdot crowd. It has to do with practicality. The new XFree86 license is almost impossible to follow depending on your interpretation. The license itself is unclear, and instead of fixing the wording, XFree86 leaders have just made informal statements on mailing lists regarding their own personal interpretation.

      The new license is impractical because it requires that attribution to be given to the XFree86 developers wherever any other attribution is given to another party. OpenBSD's complaint was with CD covers. Say you put a "Artwork provided by Foo Bob" on the CD insert. Now, according to some interpretations of the XFree86 license (and these are valid interpretations, because the license wording is very ambiguous and vague) you'd also have to put there in the same font size and prominance, "X Window system provided by XFree86, Inc." Then, if a contributor adds some stuff to the project under the same license, you have to add their name as well. And the next contributor. And so on. Pretty soon you run out of space to put all of these. There's also potential for the license to "spread" as people lift code, resulting a wide variety of apps with hundreds if not thousands of authors that have this incredibly stupid licensing stipulation.

      The XFree86 developers have stated that the above scenario is not their intention. But what they say doesn't matter much, because the above is pretty much exactly what the license text implies.

  • Awsome.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by kaiwai ( 765866 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:52AM (#9365275)
    Its great to see another distro adopt x.org as the cornerstone of their distro.

    When XORG 6.7.0 was released, to put it midely, i was running around the house naked celebrating with great joy knowing that finally X11 will be bought kicking and screaming into the 21st century in regards to performance.

    With the heavy weight of the distros plus SUN, hopefully SUN will stop having their own in house X server and instead adopt the XORG. What this should mean is greater enhancements coming to Solaris and all platforms that rely on XORG.

    What I am disappointed in, however, is the lack of movement by FreeBSD to getting XORG working. A known bug that has been sitting in bugzilla since last month still hasn't been fixed, whats taking FreeBSD so long?!
    • "What I am disappointed in, however, is the lack of movement by FreeBSD to getting XORG working. A known bug that has been sitting in bugzilla since last month still hasn't been fixed, whats taking FreeBSD so long?!"

      FreeBSD is dead... didn't you know??? :)

    • Re:Awsome.. (Score:3, Funny)

      by stienman ( 51024 )
      to put it midely, i was running around the house naked celebrating with great joy

      Dude, that is so not mild. I'm going to have to get the memory eraser out again to get rid of that thought.

      -Adam

  • dumped? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phrasebook ( 740834 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:52AM (#9365277)
    it seems like every big linux distributor now has officialy dumped XFree86

    But is XFree86 actually dumped? Surely their future work (even if it does come out slowly) will continue to be utilised by X.org. And right now all they've done is fork a version of XFree86 anyway. In effect everyone is still using XFree86, and unless X.org has some kind of wild new direction planned, it doesn't look like much is going to change for users. Bah. It's all too political and boring.

    • Re:dumped? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Shimbo ( 100005 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:10AM (#9365463)
      But is XFree86 actually dumped? Surely their future work (even if it does come out slowly) will continue to be utilised by X.org.

      I doubt it; the contributors will just submit their patches to X.org and get them directly into the mainstream that way. The extra effort required to get them checked into XFree86 is only worthwhile as long as XFree86 is perceived as the 'official' source (whatever that means). Plus X.org can't use just XFree86 code and strip the new licence off it anyway.

    • Re:dumped? (Score:3, Informative)

      by OrenWolf ( 140914 ) *
      Actually, the license change means no work by XFree86 can be used in X.org.

    • Re:dumped? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Wateshay ( 122749 ) <bill,nagel&gmail,com> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:21AM (#9365601) Homepage Journal
      Due to the licensing incompatibilities, I wouldn't be surprised to see little or no XFree86 development make it into X.org. Given that there's little to no XFree86 development to start with, that means that in the grand scheme of things XFree86 is dead. On the other hand, since X.org is a fork of XFree86, and most of the good XFree86 devs have moved over to it, you could make the argument that XFree86 just changed its name to X.org.

  • Conf file. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AngstAndGuitar ( 732149 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:57AM (#9365319)
    Is it compatible with the XFree86 config files?
    God knows we don't want to have to write another X server config file by hand after finaly getting one to work.
    Or perhaps, X.org is just better so we won't have so much trouble.
    I've not used X.org yet, so I can only ask others.

    • Re:Conf file. (Score:5, Informative)

      by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:34AM (#9365773) Homepage
      "Is it compatible with the XFree86 config files?"

      Yes. I simply copied my XFree86 config file over to the new name.

      No changes I'm aware of to configuration methods yet, so it's probably not "better" in that sense. However, now that things are more open, if support develops for some better method that's proposed there's every chance it could happen :-).

  • Who's left? (Score:4, Informative)

    by tomknight ( 190939 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @08:58AM (#9365335) Journal
    Here's [xfree86.org] a list of who's still using XFree86. I may be very out of the loop, but I'd only heard of one of the Linux based distros. Regarding the BSD distros, only two seem to used XFree86 - are the others all on X.org?

    Tom.

  • Crossplatform? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pigeon ( 909 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:02AM (#9365369) Homepage
    One thing which was nice about xfree86 is that is was very crossplatform, so it ran under linux, *bsd, solaris (etc) and on i386, ppc, arm etc. How will this be with x.org? Any plans?

  • What does this mean for upgrading? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:21AM (#9365610) Homepage
    Suppose that I have XFree86 4.2 or 4.3 on my system, and I've been happily using apt/yum/rpm to keep myself up-to-date. How difficult is it to switch to X.org?

    If X.ORG is marked as conflicting with XFree86, then apt will uninstall XFree86 for me -- along with everything that depends on it. KDE, Gnome, all my X applications... ack!

    Or should I continue with XFree86 for a while? Obviously, my install tools don't care about license changes.

  • How does this affect 3rd party drivers ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by farzadb82 ( 735100 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:33AM (#9365769)
    Will/Does the NVidia or ATI drivers work in x.org ? Will NVidia/ATI support future x.org upgrades, or will they continue to support xfree ?

  • Apple? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Compulawyer ( 318018 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:36AM (#9365804)
    Apple released X11, an X-windowing system based on XFree86. I wonder if X11 will change also.

  • From X to Xfree to X in ?? years (Score:4, Informative)

    by Pflipp ( 130638 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @09:47AM (#9365966)
    Funny how Xfree86, which started as a liberal spin-off of the "de jure" X Foundation, only to become the de facto standard for this foundation later on, now finds itself buried in bureaucracy and licensing problems, and getting passed by, no other than, the "new, exiting" X.org foundation.

    (Lots of letters and commas in that sentence :-)

  • Okay, I'm confused... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wandazulu ( 265281 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @10:03AM (#9366179)
    How does all this affect X as distributed on non-x86 platforms? Apple's X11 app is based on XFree86, but what about X as it comes with Solaris, AIX, et al. Does IBM, Sun, etc. write their own, which conforms to the X spec, or are they in some way beholden to what happens with the XFree86 project? I don't know why I thought this, but I was under the assumption that the XFree86 project represented "official" development of X going forward, after MIT stopped working on it.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

      by scrytch ( 9198 ) <chuck@myrealbox.com> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @11:21AM (#9367183)
      > Some people on the XFree86 Forum list claim it's the vendors using Xorg for their own interests.

      Speaking as someone who used a vendor that XF86 ignored for years and years ... fine. You can make a statement that you won't support proprietary drivers (not so), that you'll only support a certain interface (pretty much true), and so on, but you can't just sit there and refuse to take perfectly good patches WITHOUT COMMENT.

      Good riddance to bad rubbish. I for one welcome my new conspiratorial corporate overlords, whoever they are.

  • XFree86's reaction? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jifl ( 471653 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @11:46AM (#9367486)
    So what has the XFree86 project's reaction been to this? They'll have noticed the defectors to X.org like everyone else. Are they contrite or defiant?

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