X.Org Foundation today announced their first release of the X Window System since the formation of the Foundation in January of this year. The new X.Org release, called X Window System Version 11 Release 6.7 (X11R6.7), builds on the work of the X.Org X11R6.6 and XFree86 Project Inc.
X.Org Foundation Releases X Window System X11R6.7
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Is this source supposed to be the replace of xfree?
Ok, now I’m confused between XFree86.org, X11.org,X.org, Freedesktop.org, and I think there may be one other one. I thought there was only X11 and XFree86. Does anyone want to be a little dove and explain this to me?
those were the main ones, but some of it is a protocol while some are implementations.
but recently more forks have popped up. i always get the details inaccurate.
ones a protocol, X11 i think is the name
the rest are implementations of that protocol.
someone else can clear it up properly
What happens if you install it over an existing XFree86 install? Will thinks fuck up, or will it ‘upgrade’ properly?
Well… I can’t give you all the details cause I don’t know them all, but here is what I do know: X (not X.org) is the protocol/standard, and X11 is “X version 11”. X11R6 = X version 11, Release 6. XFree86 is an implementation of X11R6. FreeDesktop.org is also an X11R6 implementation, as is AcceleratedX. X11.org is an alias for X.org. Hope that clears a few things up, and if anyone notices any mistakes, please point them out to me.
I don’t give a f… what the organisation of the x distribution is called, just make it a stable one!
Some nice fellow on /. pointed out this post on one of the fd.o developers blog’s:
http://fooishbar.org/daniel/blog/tech/x/xserverTrees-2004-03-12-00-…
One extra point of clarification: X.org are the original X Consortium, the people who maintain the X11R6.x reference codebase, of which XFree86 is a derivative. It appears that X11R6.7, the new reference codebase, is based on XFree86 4.4-RC2.
All clear?
Its my understanding that X11R6.7 is based on both X11R6.6, Xfree86 4.4-RC2, and the usual set of bug fixes, enhancements, and new features.
freedesktop.org is not an implementation, from the website:
“freedesktop.org is a free software project to work on interoperability and shared technology for desktop environments for the X Window System. The most famous X desktops are GNOME and KDE but any developers working on Linux/UNIX GUI technology are welcome to participate.”
Basically it is a comunity project to bring integration between various X implementations (or any other server should it become a serious alternative) and the various Window Managers/Desktop Environments. They provide specifications for how things should be done and how things should interact.
X.Org is a fork of the XFree project because they were fed up with XFree management quibbles, mostly dealing with liscensing issues (I’ve heard all the sides, I don’t need a reminder, yes the libs haven’t changed, blah blah blah…) and that not much progress had been made.
Freedesktop.org also houses Keith Packard’s X server implementation, but this is more or less just a test bed server for new technologies such as transluscent windows and other eye candy. However this is not a freedesktop.org project as they explain on their software page: “Some software has made its way here to live. None of this is “endorsed” by anyone or implied to be standard software, remember that freedesktop.org is a collaboration forum, so anyone is encouraged to host stuff here if it’s on-topic.” If you hear someone talking about the freedesktop.org server, this is the one they are probably talking about, but remember, freedesktop.org also houses X.org’s X server.
To help alleviate the confusion some of you appear to have about this release, there are really now only two version fo the X Window System available for Linux/Unix platforms. One is XFree86, and the other is the X11 R6.7 release from the X.org group. Freedesktop.org is just a place to put projects and in fact the X.org X11 R6.7 release is hosted on the freedesktop.org CVS server and ftp servers. Any work that was going on within the freedesktop.org community while the XFree86 project status was up in the air is now going on within the new X.org tree.
The first release of X11 R6.7 is a monolithic release that mirrors XFree86 4.4 with bug fixes and non of the new licensing conditions. There is also some parallel development going on for the next release from X.org that is based around a new module build tree, but the end result is basicaly the same. It will just make it easier for distro vendors to manage the pieces for distribution.
As far as I am concerned this is the end of the road for XFree86. All the major Linux vendors and distros will no longer be supporting newer releases from the XFree86 Project Inc, but rather building their distros from the source code released by the X.org foundation. The XFree86 BOD essentially destroyed the XFree86 project through exerting too much control over the project, and the new licensing changes were simply a catalyst to move everyone in the same direction of finding a replacement for the XFree86 project.
Finally this is a total replacement for XFree86. It is mostly compatible with XFree86 but I doubt there will be any support for ‘upgrading’ and XFree86 installation. Instead you will most likely need to replace XFree86 completely with this new installation. Hence unless you are an avid hacker and like dealing with this type of thing, you may wish to wait until the next generation distro releases come out that have this server technology available out of the box.
now they add 3 or 4 X and an extra ” project to work on interoperability and shared technology for desktop environments for the X Window System.”
They didn’t just “add” anything. X.org has been around for a long time, and Keith Packard’s server isn’t intended for widespread use anyways, so really there are only 2 main servers, one of which will probably fade into the sunset now that they have been ostricized by all the main distro’s (except Slack and a handful of others).
It was already very difficult to a non Linux-guru to understand…
Linux is only as difficult/confusing as you want to make it. If someone wants to learn about all the different WM/DE/Distros/X Server/whatever you can, but it’s not neccessary. Just have them pick the distribution they hear the most about (right now it’s probably SUSE) or recommend one, and let it decide everything for them. If they want know more, they can do research, read some reviews, test options for themselves. That’s the great thing about Linux, you have the choice as to how many choices you want instead of 1 company dictating how much choice you can have.
As far as Freedesktop.org, it’s mission is to make everthing play nice so you don’t have to worry so much about which stuff you want to use because it should all work together. I don’t see how this is bad at all, since most of the work is done behind the scenes of all the other projects so you really don’t have to worry about Freedesktop.org.
>Ok, now I’m confused between XFree86.org, X11.org,X.org, Freedesktop.org
To add to the confusion:
X11.org is now X.org, they standarize the X protocol and provide an implementation. The recent release from X.org is
a fork from XFree86 4.4RC2.
XFree86 provides an X server(which once where based on an old release by X11.org)
Freedesktop.org provides many standards and guidelines, as well as their own X server(which is very experimental).
It’d be nice if forks of these projects actually had unique names so it’d be easier to tell them apart from each other while the X2Z11RXXZ part remained a codename. When Epiphany became a fork off of Galeon, they didn’t decide to call the new project “Gallina.org” for good reason.
> It’d be nice if forks of these projects actually had unique names so it’d be easier to tell them apart from each other
Yes! I can only second that.
gg:Xserver returns Apple’s X server as best match
gg:Xorg returns wiki.x.org as best match at least but number 4 is “Network Monitoring Tools”
The names are really way to vague.
@Anonymous:
> The recent release from X.org is a fork from XFree86 4.4RC2.
To confuse even more: That fork is hosted and developed at freedesktop.org.
I’d call it THE replacement for XFree86. It looks like XFree86, runs like XFree86, supports the same devices as XFree86, supports the same drivers as XFree86, takes (roughly) the same time to build and supports the same architectures as XFree86.
I notice no changes to XFree86 here on my laptop running x11-base/xorg-x11-6.7.0 under gentoo.
BTW, the last comment is mine.
s/last/previous/;
Does the new XFree86 replacement support Nvidia Drivers? Or is better off waiting for the next generation of drivers before migrating?
Anyway, good to hear some organisation is happening behind X server on OSS.
>Does the new XFree86 replacement support Nvidia Drivers?
Yes, Many comments on Slasdot and the Fedora mailinglist reports success with the nvidia driver.
1) There are two branches at x.org, there is the standard Xft/Fontconfig and there is the STSF branch. I’m assuming that the STSF branch will be what SUN will use for their linux and possibly Solaris distribution.
2) The new server does support the Nvidia and other binary only drivers. Nothing has changed in how the drivers interact with the server. The big changes are occuring in fd.o/kdrive which has two levels of support. It has the old DDX support which will enable one to run “classic X” and there is the new driver interface based on kdrive which will require vendors to move their drivers over to it if they want their customers to exploit the full features of their cards.
3) xlibs will be the interesting project as it will include some improvements threading and so forth, which has been lacking in quality or usability in X.
I thought XFree86 WAS a fork of X(.org) for the x86 platform. Now you tell me that X(.org) is a fork of XFree86 (?) I’m having a big headache…
Look at it this way:
In the beginning, there was the MIT X11 codebase, stewarded by the X Consortium. XFree86 (along with some other UNIX X servers, I think) is derived from that implementation, with a *lot* of extra work and porting effort. Eventually, the X Consortium got renamed to X.org. Now, the new X11R6.7 codebase is based on XFree86 4.4-RC2, with changes from the original reference codebase folded in. Basically, what happened is that the XFree86 branch became the main branch, with the latest release being mostly XFree86 code with additions for the X11R6.7 release.
It should be mentioned that the way XFree86 was developed previously was that changes to the reference codebase were gradually merged into the XFree86 tree. So the current XFree86 codebase, and thus the new X.org X11R6.7 release can be considered a superset of the original reference codebase.
>To help alleviate the confusion some of you appear to have >about this release, there are really now only two version fo >the X Window System available for Linux/Unix platforms.
In fact there are more than this two X Servers. E.g. I recall two commercial ones, namely AcceleratedX and Metrowerks’ X Server. Then there are some smaller forks of XFree86, I remember that one of them was implementing transparency. Then, of course, there’s Kdrive hosted on freedesktop.org which is allready in use by some people but it’s not ready for widespread adoption. There are surely even more…
ok,
X.org – Maintainers of the X standard, they have a “reference implementation” of X for anyone to use.
XFree86.org – A free implementation of X for x86 cpus, based off of the reference implementation by X.org.
KDrive – A lightweight X implementation by Keith Packard, former XF86 core team member
fd.o XServer – A heavyweight implementation of X based off of KDrive, again by keith packard.
Xouvert – An XF86 fork that is community controlled, and will be doing things that the community has been trying to push the core team of XF86 for a long time. Xouvert has the intention of re-merging with the official tree sometime in the future.
As far as I know, those are the major free x implementations. Ive just started reading up on the various X implementations, and let me tell you, its like some sort of soap opera. imho, this is how the future of free X will go down.
with the liscencing changes of XFree86 for version 4.4 being unacceptable for the major distrobutions, pretty much all of them have announced that they will go back to 4.3. Hopefully with this announcement, we will see the distros switching from XFree to X.org. This is a good thing for many reasons, chief amoung them being that the XFree team is too small to even maintain a codebase of that size and complexity, let alone implement new features. Thats why XFree moves at a snails pace, while other big open source projects tend to fly at the speed of light. With this new release of the reference implementation, there is no real reason to stick with XFree anymore, so we should have something workable to subside on for awhile. My money is still on Keiths XServer though, it will take a few more years to be truly usable, but it looks like it will be the most advanced (by far) X implementation available to the F/OSS community. If we want to see next generation technology on the desktop (like Apples Quartz, or Microsofts Avalon), this is where it will come from.
Again, reading up on X is still new to me, so there may be some mistakes in there, but it seems like there are alot of people who want a bit more info on whats going on
Kind of correct. The XORG version is the x.org reference and XFree86 4.4r2 rammed together to create xorg 1.0 which has been released today in two forms, the STSF branch and the Fontconfig/Xft branch.
The fd.org will be basically be X sever riding ontop of MESA which will consist of a compatibility DDX module and the new KDrive module which will require drivers to be ported to this new infrastructure to take advantage of the new nifty features of fd.o