New, Modularized X Window Release Now Available for Download 456
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.
-------------------
Have an important announcement or article to share with Slashdot readers? Send the complete article (or a proposal) to roblimo (at) slashdot (dot) org.
Something you won't see here... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Something you won't see here... (Score:2, Funny)
Clear Linux Bias, see the talk page before editing...
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In other news (Score:3, Insightful)
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)!
Re:In other news (Score:2)
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, Funny)
Really, I thought it was about intelligent design.
Re:In other news (Score:2)
Re:In other news (Score:3, Informative)
sorry
Things That Happen When You Say 'X Windows' (Score:3, Funny)
Things that happen when you say 'X Windows' [donhopkins.com]:
I was digging through some old papers, and ran across a 15 year old "XNextEvent" newsletter, "The Official Newsletter of XUG, the X User's Group", Volume 1 Number 2, from June 1988. Here's an article that illustrates how far the usage of the term "X Windows" [slashdot.org] has evolved over the past 15 years. (Too bad The Window System Improperly Known as X Windows itself hasn't evolved [art.net].)
Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
BSD-style based distribution
Linux® based distribution
I think we need to drop them an e-mail suggesting that the page needs updating :)
Re:In other news (Score:4, Informative)
Re:In other news (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
New developers (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:New developers (Score:2, Insightful)
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
You whippersnappers!!! (Score:2)
I remember using ^ back in the 80s. GW-BASIC, I think.
Re:New developers (Score:2)
Re:New developers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New developers (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:3, Insightful)
xfonts-base, xfonts-75dpi, xserver-xfree86, few more.
What they've done now is break apart the upstream source.
Re:Fully Modular (Score:3)
It was very painful to make X updates for a long time. This will help a lot.
Re:Fully Modular (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Fully Modular (Score:2)
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.
Re:Fully Modular (Score:2)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:3, Informative)
Emphasis on the shoulds.
Basically, this is a clean-up for the devs, which helps the end users indirectly.
Re:Fully Modular (Score:2)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:5, Funny)
I whole heartedly agree! A Real Men doesn't need some wimpy operating system to commmunicate with hardware. Hell, a Real Man doesn't even need a text editor. He just etches his source straight to the hard drive platter with a bic pen.
Re:Fully Modular (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:3, Funny)
Emacs popped in my mind immediately but I assumed you were refering to grandma using ms works and aol.
Well when is X going to be ported to emacs then?
Re:Fully Modular (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:2)
Nah Emacs is so old and overated.
Re:Fully Modular (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:3, Funny)
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)
Re:Fully Modular (Score:2)
more features! (Score:5, Informative)
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,
* Output-only windows
* Non-rectangular mergedfb desktops
* Update bundled fontconfig to 2.3.2
Uhmm, what are you talkin about? (Score:5, Informative)
So what are the main stream using these days? Fresco? Qt/Embedded? The Y Window System? rio?
and even there, I know many Debian users, for example, who are eager to switch to X.org.
Debian IS using xorg (only stable and maybe testing still uses Xfree86)
Since you are obviously confused, let me clarify. "X", "X11", and "The X Window System" all refers to the same thing. It is a specification for a way of displaying and interacting with graphics in windows on a computer and/or through a network.
X.org used to be the organization that coordinated that specification between various vendors of X11. It also maintained a "reference implementation" that nobody used. Then X11-innovation stagnated among the major unix vendors. X.org slowly died, and XFree86 (a "vendor", and a free implementation) became the defacto standard. Then XFree86 (the organization, not the implementation) did something stupid with their license, and the code was forked by mostly the same people that used to work on XFree86, and they decided to call themselves X.org (and their implementation xorg), since the name now was available).
Today, most everybody uses xorg, not XFree86. This is an update to xorg. To end-users it means zilch, apart from the fact that it's better for developers, and they can expect to see some innovation finally happen in the X11-world (well, in the long-term at least!)
Re:Uhmm, what are you talkin about? (Score:4, Informative)
You're talking out of your ass. :-) OK, not really, but you and parent seem a bit confused.
In the beginning was the MIT X Consortium. They published the first standards documents for X, funded development of an X test suite to check implementations for standards compliance, and published a "sample" server that was supposed to be a sound implementation of the standards, as well as client-side libraries and utilities. Bob Scheiffler, Keith Packard, and Jim Fulton were the early developers here, with Scheiffler running the technical work and developing most of the architecture.
At some point, MIT and the X Consortium parted company. Some time later, the X Consortium became X/Open, and sometime later X.org.
During this evolution, the XFree86 folks forked the X code and documentation, and started their own development branch. Control of a few assets still remained with X/Open/X.org, and X.org continued to do X support and be used by some commercial vendors, but the X.org work was largely ignored by the PC community.
Recently, most of the X developers became disenchanted with the way XFree86 was being run, and forked X again under the aegis of freedesktop.org. For a variety of good reasons, the outcome of this was to reorganize X.org as a community-source-style foundation for X development. Current open source X work is done almost entirely under the aegis of X.org/freedesktop.org.
So, the standards are independent of the sample implementation, which is not really a reference implementation at all. To answer your other questions; the PC/Solaris only thing is just to push R7 out the door. The hope is to include all the other supported platforms in the "roll up" release due soon.
If I were building a non-PC X server right now, I'd use Kdrive instead of Xorg as a starting point unless I needed some of the advanced features of Xorg such as DRI support. Kdrive is shipped with current X.org distributions, including R6.9 and R7.
Hope this helps.
What this means (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What this means (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What this means (Score:2)
Re:What this means (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:What this means [OT] (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What this means [OT] (Score:2)
Effect on end user (Score:5, Insightful)
means less painful updating your system (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:Great... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)
Every so often I think about cancelling the job, but then I'd have to go shop for a space heater.
the correct mirror URL (Score:2, Informative)
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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)
For the end-users, ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Screw the bastards. I'm going with Linux.
Re:Why do we need the X? (Score:3, Funny)
nVidia (Score:3, Interesting)
For that matter, even if there is R300 support, isn't it now 2 generations back?
Re:nVidia (Score:2)
Re:nVidia (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:nVidia (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:nVidia (Score:4, Informative)
Re:nVidia (Score:3, Interesting)
The OSS nv driver in 7.0 does *n [freedesktop.org]
Re:nVidia (Score:4, Insightful)
Granted, the reality may be different than the ideal, but we can hope, right?
I usually don't complain... (Score:3, Insightful)
can't think of anything else at the moment.
you're confused (Score:2, Informative)
X11 has support for all of those, plus more. It's up to driver writers and server implementors to s
Re:you're confused (Score:3, Insightful)
X11's network transparency is a lot more than just remote desktop display; neither Windows nor OS X have anything like it.
But that's only a small part of it. Window management, damage, rendering, automation, and a lot of other facilities are far better designed and more powerful in X11 than on other platforms.
Re:I usually don't complain... (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:Imake? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Imake? (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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
Re:platform-independent? (Score:3, Informative)
So no, we won't drop the 'X is cross-platform' claim anytime soon. Thanks though.
Re:platform-independent? (Score:2)
Mac OS X: Look who else is switching [com.com]
Re:platform-independent? (Score:2)
Re:platform-independent? (Score:2)
Re:platform-independent? (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:platform-independent? (Score:2)
Looking foreward to modular X (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Two Build Systems -- Impressive? (Score:2)
Auto-configuration (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
You'll want to check out the new evdev driver (Score:3, Interesting)
to this:
Functionality stays the same. It's getti
YES!!! I have waited so long for this! (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Re:Major version release? (Score:3, Informative)
Not that there were major new features added
Re:Major version release? (Score:2)
For most gcc users, this is 100% true; insert valid C code, get a working binary out-- what happens in the middle doesn't matter to them.
Therefore, the new release of gcc does not have any new features, and there was no reason for a major version number bump.
Re:Major version release? (Score:5, Funny)
Even if the cheeseburger tasted exactly the same as it would have otherwise.
mod parent +1, ninja kangeroos with lightsabers (Score:2)
Re:Major version release? (Score:2)
Major/minor/update version numbers:
The digit to the left of the decimal is considered the "major" version while the digit just to the right of the first decimal is the "minor" version. If there is another decimal followed by a digit, that digit is considered the "update" version.
For instance
4.8.3 = update version 3 of minor verion 8 of major version 4. Although spoken alou
Re:Mild Disclaimer. (Score:2)
* Hmm, but now uses GNU autotools
Stupid troll (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What other improvements are we expecting to see (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What other improvements are we expecting to see (Score:5, Informative)
I used to X with a passion when I first started using linux back in 98.
Oh, man, those were the days... when you could not only X but X with a passion. [sighs wistfully]
X is not bad but perhaps Xorg sucks?
What I want to know is if they are planning on [...] adding features like sound support,Nope. Next question.
Sound support is handled by a sound server [wikipedia.org], which fortunately runs independently of X.
transparent objects,
You mean like compositing?
anti-aligned fonts (I think support is added now),
Keep your magnet [wikipedia.org] away from my monitor!
resolution changes that dont require a reboot,
Resolution changes don't require a reboot, just a restart of X.
ajax/caml/dashboard or some xml and javascript support
Huh?! AJAX [wikipedia.org] is for the Web, CAML [wikipedia.org] is a proprietary language, so of course X.org isn't written therein, and I'm not sure in what way you mean "support for XML or Javascript" other than to say that extensions/plugins/modules (whatever the X people call them) would be significantly slower if written in these languages. Since it seems that you're "concerned" with X's bloat, I'm sure you understand why that'd be a bad idea.
I actually hope this was helpful, but if I was just the unwitting victim of flamebait, I can roll with it.
Resolution changes (Score:3, Informative)
Grandparent: "resolution changes that dont require a reboot"
Parent: "Resolution changes don't require a reboot, just a restart of X"
Actually, for some time now resolution changes have been possible on the fly using the xrandr [xfree86.org] utility and associated X extension. On some platforms, xrandr also permits rotating and reflecting the screen on the fly also.
Re:What other improvements are we expecting to see (Score:4, Informative)
Actually they don't require a restart of X either. The only thing that require a restart of X is a depth change (though I'm not even sure that it actually requires restart of X), like from 32 bpp to 16 bpp.
It was never a problem to me, and I think very few people will need to switch to less than 32 bpp (or rather 24 bpp).