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Announcements GUI X

New, Modularized X Window Release Now Available for Download 456

Posted by Roblimo from the 10-years-in-the-making dept.
By Leon Shiman, X.org -- X11R7.0 is the first release of the complete modularized and autotooled source code base for the X Window System. It is the first major version release of the X Window System in more than a decade. X11R6.9, its companion release, contains identical features and uses the exact same source code as X11R7.0, but uses the traditional imake build system. (Read the rest of the announcement below)
These changes in source code management, which give openness and transparency to the source code base and employ current technology, invite a new generation of developers to contribute, building on the long tradition of the X Window System. The new modular format offers focused development and rapid, independent updates and distribution of tested modular components as they are ready, freed from the biennial maintenance release timetable.

X11R6.9 is comprised of many distinct components bonded in a single tree, based on imake. X11R7.0 splits that set of components into logically distinct modules, separately developed, built, and maintained by the community of X.Org developers. This simultaneous release gives a transition point for developers, builders, and vendors to adapt their practices to the new X.Org modular process.

X11R7.0 supports Linux and Solaris at this time, with other support pending. X11R7.1, the first modular roll-up release, is scheduled mid-2006. While the monolithic tree will continue to be fully supported and released, new feature development is expected to concentrate on the modular code base.

The X11R7.0 and X11R6.9 releases are the work of more than fifty volunteer contributors worldwide, working under the release management team of Kevin Martin (Head), Alan Coopersmith, and Adam Jackson, with the support of Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, and the unsupported, generous contribution of effort by Adam Jackson.

All X Window System Releases are available from ftp.X.Org and mirror sites worldwide (see http://wiki.x.org/Mirrors). They are distributed under the MIT ("X") License by the X.Org Foundation LLC. Information concerning organization, activities, and mailing lists can be found at www.X.Org. Membership is free and open to contributors. Sponsorship is encouraged to support the global activities of the X.Org Foundation. Current X.Org Sponsors include Sun Microsystems, HP, IBM, StarNet Communications, AttachmateWRQ, Hummingbird, and Integrated Computer Solutions Incorporated [ICS].

In continuous use for over 20 years, the X Window System provides the only standard platform-independent networked graphical window system bridging the heterogeneous platforms in today's enterprise: from network servers to desktops, thin clients, laptops, and hand-helds, independent of operating system and hardware.

* LINUX is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. "Solaris" is a trademark of Sun Microsystems. All company names are trademarks of their registered owners.

-------------------

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New, Modularized X Window Release Now Available for Download More

New, Modularized X Window Release Now Available for Download

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  • Something you won't see here... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:10PM (#14313043)
    This linux-related article is a stub. You can help Slashdot by expanding it.

  • In other news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:11PM (#14313047) Homepage Journal
    Xfree86 continues their self-imposed slide into obscurity.
    • Not to mention their homepage now talks more about donating money to them than anything else. As if there were any reason to give them money anymore. That's just sad.

      Oh wait, they just released 4.5 and they say "it's just terrific"! Wow! I can't wait to try it in all those obscure Linux distributions that still use it (because they still haven't noticed X.org yet)!
    • well they made a tactical error that forced a fork and x.org is the result.

      some may claim its survival of the fittest or evolution at work. maybe, maybe not. but as long as x.org maintains compatiblity with the Xwindows standard, and it developed under a open source model, i for one is happy.

    • Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nighttime ( 231023 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @08:08PM (#14313436) Homepage Journal
      What I find highly amusing is their list of distros [xfree86.org] carrying XFree86, which hasn't been updated since March 15 2005.

      BSD-style based distribution

      • NetBSD® Runs on practically everything; highly scaleable. (Offers X.org along with XFree86 in 2.x)
      • FreeBSD® Yahoo uses it. Hotmail still might. (Uses X.org as of 5.3)
      • MirOS BSD a new NetBSD/OpenBSD hybrid.

      Linux® based distribution

      • Conectiva Brazilian-based distro with a world-wide following using RPMs. (Absorbed into Mandriva, uses X.org)
      • Lycoris Desktop L/X a desktop friendly environment for novices with Bitstream fonts. (Bought by Mandrake)
      • Magic Linux when native Chinese-support is desired using ISOs. (Migrating to X.org)
      • OneBase Linux a meta distribution. (Offers X.org along with XFree86)
      • OpenNa Linux when security matters.
      • Peanut Linux when size matters. (now aLinux, uses X.org)
      • Plamo Linux best for native Japanese support; Slackware based.
      • Rubyx Linux object-oriented ruby is its scripting language. (Now Heretix, uses X.org)
      • Source Mage a source-based distro aimed at linux magicians (sys admins) with a social contract. (Offers X.org along with XFree86)
      • Sorcerer Linux a source-based distro aimed at linux wizards (sys admins).
      • Yoper Linux highly usable, with a KDE 3.3 customised desktop (Migrating to X.org)

      I think we need to drop them an e-mail suggesting that the page needs updating :)

    • Re:In other news (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) * <bruce@perens.com> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @09:14PM (#14313890) Homepage Journal
      That is, if anyone but David is working on XFree86. And yes, David did put his foot in it in a real big way.
    • Xfree86, Emacs & Hurd demonstrate there are right ways to run a community project and terribly, terribly wrong ways.

  • New developers (Score:2, Interesting)

    by lordofthemoose ( 716655 )
    I have to admit that it's something I'm welcoming. The autotools are hard enough to learn, having to figure out imake on top of that was a bit of a hassle. Add to this the fact that it's now modular -we can work on different bits much more easily- and it's a winner...

    • Re:New developers (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hackwrench ( 573697 )
      The autotools are hard enough to learn

      Sounds to me that there should be something better than imake and autotools. Something that can be easily applied to any digital project, not just codebases. Something that makes it easy for a person to have their own personal fork that keeps track of what files in the original tree the changed files are based off of and can notify the person of changes to the original project's files, so that improvements can quickly be assimilated across all forks. Anybody else hav

    • Re:New developers (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:32PM (#14313190)
      The autotools are hard enough to learn

      Yeah, but they work just wonderful if you want portability to something more than just different Linux distros. Any problems tend to stem from third-party sabotage (for example, Debian source packages mangle timestamps at patch time).

      The problem is, you need to be able to edit files using an insane slew of languages. Each of the autotools uses a different one, and in the case of autoconf, you have a weird combination of m4 and sh.

      having to figure out imake on top of that was a bit of a hassle.

      Oh right, imake is a living proof that you can get a lot worse.

  • Fully Modular (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:13PM (#14313055) Journal
    What does this mean for me as an end user?

    • Re:Fully Modular (Score:5, Informative)

      by nitehorse ( 58425 ) <clee@c133.org> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:16PM (#14313078)
      When a vulnerability is found in libXpm, you won't have to download 15MB of fonts for the update to the library.

      Also, drivers will now be released completely independently of the server. So you won't have to wait months for a new driver for your card; maybe a couple of weeks at most.

      • Re:Fully Modular (Score:5, Insightful)

        by temojen ( 678985 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @08:51PM (#14313751) Journal
        Hopefully it'll also mean we can install X client software on a server without also needing to install an X server and fonts too (kind of useless waste of space when you don't have a monitor, keyboard or mouse on the machine)

        • Re:Fully Modular (Score:4, Informative)

          by cortana ( 588495 ) <sam@[ ]ots.org.uk ['rob' in gap]> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @09:17PM (#14313910) Homepage
          This has been true for years! Please stop spreading FUD.

    • Re:Fully Modular (Score:5, Informative)

      by squoozer ( 730327 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:16PM (#14313081)

      AIUI at this stage not much really. In fact you could probably go as far as to say nothing. It does mean, though, that in the future it will be much easier to add new features and generally work on the code.

    • Just wait for the first security hole.

      The last time X packages had to be updated, security.debian.org got hammered down to a crawl. Now, you will be able to download just the module that changed.
      • Knowing how much of a bitch it is to maintain packages from experimental, I think Ubuntu is the distro that's going to get hammered. They were one (if not the only one) of the major distros that was offering Xorg 7.0 for testing during its development via Dapper.

    • Re:Fully Modular (Score:3, Informative)

      by Spaceman40 ( 565797 )
      It means that it's easier to hack on, which means that new features should be easier to code, which means that they should come to the end user faster and with less bugs.

      Emphasis on the shoulds.

      Basically, this is a clean-up for the devs, which helps the end users indirectly.
    • It means that X is now even more like Linux. Why we need an entire operating system for a graphical interface is beyond me. But then again, some people find they need an entire operating system just to edit text so I guess it's just a case of running whatever the hell is available.

    • Not having to deal with imake will make any hackers you know who build or work on X a lot less irritable.

    • Re:Fully Modular (Score:4, Interesting)

      by lindi ( 634828 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:46PM (#14313285)
      "Fully modular" immediately reminded me of "The X-Windows Disaster" [art.net] which has a chapter titled "X: The First Fully Modular Software Disaster".
    • I was hoping it meant that the X applications survived on their own so that if the X server ever died, it wouldn't take all the apps with it.

    • more features! (Score:5, Informative)

      by diegocgteleline.es ( 653730 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @08:58PM (#14313801)
      This new x.org version is not just about autotooling the server

      From http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/ChangesSince68 [freedesktop.org]

      * New EXA acceleration architecture [x.org], with experimental support in sis(4), radeon(4), i128(4) (more to come)
      * Individual extensions may be enabled or disabled on the command line using the -extension flag
      * Improved chipset probing for IA64
      * SecureRPC enabled on Linux by default
      * Updated savage(4), including dualhead and DRI support
      * Updated XRX support
      * Fixes to rootless mode for Cygwin and Darwin ports
      * Numerous K&R-to-ANSI C conversions
      * Many Darwin fixes
      * Updated XvMC support, enabling generic loading of hardware-specific drivers
      * Added wsfb(4) video driver for OpenBSD and NetBSD framebuffer consoles
      * Numerous ATI driver updates from the GATOS project, including TV input support
      * More support for enhanced visuals like 12-bit PseudoColor and 30-bit TrueColor
      * Improved ProPolice support
      * Updates to nv(4) driver from XFree86 and nVIDIA
      * via(4) updates from the Unichrome project, including DRI support
      * i810(4) updates, including i915GM/E7721/i945G support and shadowfb support
      * Improved module loader support for Alpha chips
      * Added mingw port for native Win32 builds
      * Updated PCI scanning
      * Added DMA support to radeon(4) for Render and Xv operations
      * Experimental DRI support for Radeon 9500 and above
      * Updated xterm to #204 from [WWW]upstream
      * Added evdev(4) input driver for generic input handling on Linux
      * Switched to libdl-based module loader
      * Improved acceleration for sunffb(4)
      * MMX blending routines for the Render extension
      * sis(4) updates
      * New sisusb(4) driver for USB-attached video
      * Tiled framebuffer support for radeon(4)
      * Initial support for running the Xorg server without root privileges
      * Improved acceleration for newport(4)
      * Add DragonFly BSD support
      * Update bundled Freetype to 2.1.9
      * r128(4) dualhead support
      * mach64(4) TV-OUT support
      * ATI Theater 200 video decoder support
      * SGI Altix support
      * Disabled antique [WWW]DPS extension
      * Support for FreeBSD/powerpc
      * Enhanced software Render core
      * Support for more than 12 buttons in the generic mouse(4) driver
      * Better support for DRI on 64-bit platforms
      * Solaris support updates: enhanced mouse driver, agpgart support, experimental AMD64 support, kbd(4) support, /dev/audio keyboard bell option
      * Output-only windows
      * Non-rectangular mergedfb desktops
      * Update bundled fontconfig to 2.3.2

  • What this means (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jotii ( 932365 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:16PM (#14313072) Homepage
    Am I right in saying this will not make any difference to the end users? Making X module-based seems to greatly simplify coding for developers, but does it have any effect for the end user at all?

    • Re:What this means (Score:2, Informative)

      by ajaxxx ( 209422 )
      Yes, it does. It means you get features, bug fixes and new hardware support as they get developed, rather than waiting for rollup releases every six months or so.
    • Video drivers will likely see better support since they are modules now too. That means faster bug fixes for existing drivers and a much quicker release schedule for new drivers.
    • Yes.

      For example, you can now pipe the X.org modules through an MP3 encoder and listen to the only standard platform-independent networked graphical window system bridging the heterogeneous platforms in today's enterprise wherever you go.

    • Effect on end user (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:50PM (#14313312) Homepage Journal
      • Modular code is easier to maintain, so expect fewer bugs and a rapid explosion in the number of features. It is also (generally) easier for binary-only extensions, so expect more hardware vendors to support it.
      • Modular code means that the compiler cannot take advantage of any knowledge of other files when optimizing the code, but this doesn't matter much as the original tree didn't do that either. Commercially optimized versions of X might be fractionally larger and/or slower, though.
      • Gentoo users are in for an looooong run-up to Christmas. Especially if there is a bug in the e-build.
      • Fedora Core users will suffer greatly, unless the RPM specs correctly instruct RPM to deinstall legacy components from the old structure. Fedora users will also need to be careful about any RPM files that refer specifically to the old X11 RPMs. The same is true for other package-based distributions - package dependencies may not be tracked correctly, leading to outdated dependencies. At best, updates might fail unexpectedly.

    • the xorg as it is now is about 110MB (binary for i686) in size. it comes out about 2 times a year. means that you have to download every year around 230MB of data to keep your X up-to-date.

      BUT (!) actually, you are only 2 weeks of the whole time really up to date, because most of the libraries and drivers are outdated, just a week after the release came out. this means, that you download 230MB and are waiting the whole time for new releases hating the whole system it is organised.

      new, the modularised organi

  • Great... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by KangKong ( 937247 )
    more autotool hell, woohoo.
    • more autotool hell, woohoo.

      Did you ever try to build XFree from source? Well, did you?

      I still suffer from a slight nervous tick as a direct result of my last attempt.
      You may think that autotools are hell, but that is only because you have never experienced the inner-most circles of darkness.

  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by revividus ( 643168 ) <phil...crissman@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:21PM (#14313112) Homepage
    I'd guess that 99% of Linux users (myself included) do not hack away at the X source code.

    On the other hand, I'd guess that for the 1% who do hack X, this will make thier lives easier. Heck, it might even mean more people decide to work on X, which OSS dogma tells us is a Good Thing(TM), and it probably is.

    • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Fnord ( 1756 ) <joe@sadusk.com> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:38PM (#14313223) Homepage
      No, what this means is that of the people who want to hack on the X source code, 99% were unable to get into it because of the interdependant mess that the code was, and the inabillity for most people to commit back.

      Now 99% of the people who want to hack on X will be able to find a small isolated module to start on. And now those modules may be able to evolve without breaking the whole. I've wanted to hack at X for a long time, now I very well might.

    • Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)

      by karlto ( 883425 )
      As a user, my life is made easier by the result of the developers' work. If it is easier for them to do this work, I'm sure that every user will see a benefit.

  • For the end-users, ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by c0l0 ( 826165 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:22PM (#14313121) Homepage
    ... there are a few new features to expect. I'm most curious about the new drivers for ATI's R300-Chips (and newer), called "r300", which will provide GLX-Support (hardware-accelerated OpenGL) in a Free Software-only manner.
    Oh, and there are some minor features to be added, like 30Bit visuals for improved greyscale graphics for medical purposes, for example.
     
    Apart from the new drivers, there's nothing to be OVERLY excited about this release - unless you're going to build yourself, I'm really looking forward to playing around with portions of the code without having to recompile the whole bloody source again. :)

  • Why do we need the X? (Score:5, Funny)

    by dhasenan ( 758719 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:22PM (#14313122)
    I've been using Windows for years. First they started with numbers after the name, then they put "Me!" instead, then something about experience points. Now that's not enough, and they want prefixes as well.

    Screw the bastards. I'm going with Linux.

  • nVidia (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:27PM (#14313157) Homepage Journal
    So how long will it take us to get nVidia to support this with their evil, closed source drivers?

    For that matter, even if there is R300 support, isn't it now 2 generations back?
    • I thought ATI had the terrible drivers. I'm so confused now :(

    • Re:nVidia (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jZnat ( 793348 )
      At least nVidia actively supports Linux. Take a look at ATi and tell me they're doing anything helpful with their own abysmal Linux support.

      • Re:nVidia (Score:3, Insightful)

        by NeoChaosX ( 778377 )
        ATi released the specs for their Radeon 9250 chips and older models, so open-source hackers can make our own drivers (it's also the reason why the EXA feature in 7.0 supports ATi cards right now, and not nVidia cards). IMO allowing programmers to make their own open-source drivers with the official specs would be considered a lot more "helpful to Linux" than putting out working but closed-source drivers.

    • Re:nVidia (Score:4, Informative)

      by AnXa ( 936517 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:47PM (#14313287) Journal
      I think that at least couple months to get good EXA support from nVidia as they have to recode some parts their drivers. Expect faster compositation (more eye candy) with this release and better drivers. Also you can expect nv driver doing things what haven't never dream about. nv ships with the R7 so you don't have to wait support for it. 3dacceleration and nvidia. I guess you can use current drivers but I am not sure about them since we have now new acceleration architecture. nVidia has it's own system for this so I don't know if they will implement EXA or continue using their own systems. X will be somewhat faster too if I understood right everything on this page: http://wiki.x.org/wiki/ChangesSince68 [x.org] that's the changelog and there are plenty of stuff to take a look at. :)

      • Re:nVidia (Score:3, Interesting)

        by kelnos ( 564113 )
        Exa is a replacement for XAA, the old X Acceleration Architecture. nvidia's binary drivers do not use XAA. They cooked up their own method for accelerating their drivers, independent of what the X developers were using. Their method is superior to XAA, and it remains to be seen whether or not it's superior to Exa. If so, don't expect them to change. If not, it'll likely be a while before it's implemented. This is proprietary software, remember. It takes a lot longer.

        The OSS nv driver in 7.0 does *n [freedesktop.org]

    • Re:nVidia (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sparks23 ( 412116 ) * on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:50PM (#14313313)
      I would think that there'd be an initial delay, but that in the long run it will actually be rather faster this way. Since if a video card driver wants to not share their info, they can now in theory write a modular driver for X11 and release a little binary video driver module, instead of having to release binaries of the entire X11 system.

      Granted, the reality may be different than the ideal, but we can hope, right?

  • I usually don't complain... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dalutong ( 260603 ) <djtansey AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:31PM (#14313177)
    And I am a huge proponent of Free software. But I sure would like to know when X will support today's new technologies and trends. rotating your screen is very difficult. and you can't have accelleration when you do. even resolution changes are difficult (xrandr helps, but you still can only move between the resolutions provided at the X server start, which doesn't help if you've plugged in a different monitor.) Switching between dual displays is hard.

    can't think of anything else at the moment.
    • But I sure would like to know when X will support today's new technologies and trends. rotating your screen is very difficult. and you can't have accelleration when you do. even resolution changes are difficult (xrandr helps, but you still can only move between the resolutions provided at the X server start, which doesn't help if you've plugged in a different monitor.) Switching between dual displays is hard.

      X11 has support for all of those, plus more. It's up to driver writers and server implementors to s
    • Xorg is also a bear to configure, either by hand or automaticaly. You are only supplied with a CLI tool (with no options) that does a terrible job most of the time. In order to change the default resolution, depth or refresh rate most users must rely on distro-specific tools which are unable to handle the xorg.conf file with confidence.

      For instance, my distro did not initially setup DPMS (power-saving) feature, so I added the option to xorg.conf myself with a text editor. Now I cannot change the default set

  • Imake? (Score:2)

    by kzinti ( 9651 )
    Imake is the spawn of the devil. I've used it. I've understood it. But I HATED myself in the morning.

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

      by msbsod ( 574856 )
      X.org could learn a lot from NetBSD. The NetBSD makefiles are small and contain typically just the names of the source files and targets.

      • Re:Imake? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by prockcore ( 543967 )
        NetBSD could learn a lot from the rest of the world.. where you don't have to recompile an entire project just because you made a small change to a header file.

        Autotools do more than just make sure you have all the libraries needed to compile the app, they also set up a dependency tree so only the files affected need to be recompiled when a change is made.

  • platform-independent? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by msbsod ( 574856 )
    In continuous use for over 20 years, the X Window System provides the only standard platform-independent networked graphical window system...

    Somehow I question the claim that the X Window System is still platform-independent. To me it looks like a unix-centric development. There are other operating systems, like VMS, and they come with older versions of the X Window System, too. But the "autothis-and-that" tools all are written for Unix features, like the file specification, syntax of options, compilation t
    • X.org builds and runs on more than just Linux/UNIX; it works on MacOS X's display server as well as on Windows and (at least at one point) OS/2.

      So no, we won't drop the 'X is cross-platform' claim anytime soon. Thanks though.
      • MacOS lost its independence when Apple decided to use a Unix system as core of MacOS with version X.

        Mac OS X: Look who else is switching [com.com]
      • This discussion is about how the source code of the X Window Software is organized and being compiled. With Windows and OS/2 you have exactly the same issues. Windows for example uses a backslash "\" as separator between directory names and file names. Windows also uses device names (all the same for OS/2). Now, try to use a backslash in the current scheme. The only reason why we can build the X.Org software on Windows, OS/2 and (!) VMS is because these operating systems were adapted to be Unix compatible,
    • ... but I like to suggest that either the people who are developing the X Window System work on this part of their software or drop the claim that they produce platform-independent software.

      What about X11 for Mac OS X? Or how about X11 running on Windows using Cygwin? Seems to me like X11 is about as close as you can get to a platform-independent graphics platform.

    • Re:platform-independent? (Score:4, Informative)

      by penguin-collective ( 932038 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @08:07PM (#14313431)
      X11 clients and servers run on Linux, UNIX, Windows, OS X, and dozens of other operating systems.

      but I like to suggest that either the people who are developing the X Window System work on this part of their software or drop the claim that they produce platform-independent software.

      You don't understand. X11 is a protocol; there are dozens of different client implementations and dozens of different server implementations. X.org and XFree86 happen to be UNIX-centric, but other implementations are not.
  • I'm for one looking foreward to modular X.
    I know that the changes don't mean much at the moment, not to the end user anyway. I'm curious how will this affect the developement process, if more developers will jump on the X.org wagon as the article suggests. Will we see releases more often? I'm also curious how will this affect video card menufactores, and ultimetly their curtomers. I don't know what about the rest of you. I see that there's a bit of mixed feelings about all this but, I'm excited about this.
  • Supporting imake and autotools in what is essentially the same codebase seems pretty impressive. Just one build system generally is cause for enough hair-pulling to make even RMS go bald. Shouldn't we be offering kudos to the x.org folks?

  • Auto-configuration (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EdMcMan ( 70171 ) <moo.slashdot2.z.edmcman@xoxy.net> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @08:21PM (#14313525) Homepage Journal
    Hopefully this will mean that soon X will be able to probe more and use the config file less.

    Anyway, it is great that X.org is finally bringing some more work on X. XFree was content to sit around and twiddle their thumbs for the most part.
    • I went from this:

      Section "InputDevice"
      Identifier "Mouse1"
      Driver "mouse"
      Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
      Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
      Option "MouseButtons" "7"
      Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7 4 5"
      EndSection

      to this:

      Section "InputDevice"
      Identifier "Mouse1"
      Driver "evdev"
      Option "Device" "/dev/input/wheelmouse"
      EndSection

      Functionality stays the same. It's getti

  • YES!!! I have waited so long for this! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by poofyhairguy82 ( 635386 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @11:20PM (#14314571) Journal
    I don't understand the people saying that nothing big for end users comes with Xorg 7. For me Xorg 7 is my best Christmas present! Am I a Xorg hacker? No, I'm an eye-candy nut!

    With Xorg 7 comes the chance for the first stable composite extension! So Xcompmgr will stop crashing (as much)! Also, by using my own guide I can get an accerated desktop with a ATI 9250 card that uses EXA (which is more stable than Nvidia's renderaccel)! [ubuntuforums.org] So maybe...just maybe...I can get a Windows 98 level stable accerated desktop before 2005 ends, thereby beating Vista out the gate by a year. And since the KDE compositor is near stable, I can enjoy menu transparancies now when I log into Kubuntu without fear of crashing!

    Also the new driver interface will bring improvements to the closed Nvidia driver once they get their head around it, and my 6600 GT will hopefully give me decent performance with Skippy-xd by the time Dapper comes.

    Of course, this won't help most users because composite won't be turned on by a major distro for at least a year or two but for those of us on the Linux Eye Candy edge there is a whole new world open today.

    By far Xorg is the most primitave part of the Linux desktop compared to the alternatives (especially with Openoffice.org2 out there) and this release is the first step towards the wonderful desktop that OSX people have now and Vista people will have next year. I can't wait soon enough for drop shadows, real transparancies, and minimize effects that do not suck!

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