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XFree86 is going to split


Guest ndeb
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We all know about the recent drama regarding XFree86 ( http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/forum/200...rch/000807.html ). It seems now the expelled member (Keith Packard) has joined hands with others (such as Mike Harris of Redhat) to fork the project ( http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3267 ) and make sure that the painfully slow development of X is speeded up.

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i still haven't decided if this is going to be a good or a bad thing. what does everyone else think?

 

Yes, I wish X developed faster and improved (which from my understanding it really hasn't in quite some time), but my concern is with having two different X servers to choose from...just seems like more standardization problems (tho let's not get into a political arguement about that).

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I think its a much-needed move. X is the backbone of linux desktop. If linux has to succeed in the desktop market, X must do better than one release per year. There must be seperate releases for the server and driver modules.

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Is this not likely to be a pattern as Linux moves to the desktop? With the rise in Lycoris and Lindows, these could be considered as forks in a way. What they seem to have done is garner enough attention to be taken seriously as desktop contenders. With the big players looking at Linux and backing it with millions, more forking is likely as they won't stand for long and ponderous negotiations over minutae. Let's hope it doesn't happen with the kernel.

 

Counterspy

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the truth is that i havent heard of this news until now. to me it sounds nice. if they are going to fork the project then that would be good to the linux community if it will provide better services/software. linux is all about choice. this move will only provide us with another one. :)

 

ciao!

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It just so happens that X is not linux specific. Every flavor of unix ( *BSD, SunOS, HPUX, AIX, LInux, ....) uses the Xwindows system. In fact one of the major reasons behind unix-interoperability is the common X protocol. Also, this fork will not change any basic X protocols. It will simply reorganize (and speedup) the development process. Also, many of the commercial Unix vendors (Sun, HP, IBM) have their own Xwindows forks which are not open to the public. So this is nothing new. Its just that now it will affect linux too.

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Guest JaseP

I think this could be good if they don't try to go too bleeding edge and just focus on getting a good stability standard for a fairly rich feature set.

 

For example, it is my understanding that true transparency is dependant on the X-windows system. Existing "transparency" effects simply map a translucent window on top of a snapshot of the bitmap underneath. True transparency would be a very cool feature. I just wouldn't want it at the expense of a stable platform.

 

But one group focusing on more tightly interweaving glx into the x-windows system would be a good thing. Another nice development would be to integrate some of the winex code to make cross-platform development and things like wine itself work a little smoother.

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