XFree86 4.3.0 Released 461
Dunkalis writes "The latest version of XFree86, 4.3.0, has been released! Release notes here, mirrors here. Enhancements include drivers for newer Radeons, better PS/2 protocol detection, the XRandR extension, better font support, and more!" Source tarballs are available, or wait for your distribution to package them...
Changes (Score:5, Informative)
Previous: Introduction to the 4.x Release Series [slashdot.org]
Next: Drivers [slashdot.org] 2. Summary of new features in 4.3.0. 2.1. Video Driver Enhancements
A more complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGELOG that is part of the XFree86 source tree. It can also be viewed online at our CVSweb server [xfree86.org].
Re:Changes (Score:2)
Re:Changes (Score:3, Informative)
No, it just means you can get antialiased fonts in KDE or Mozilla or other programs using Xft, on a video card that doesn't have RENDER support or a X11 Server other than XFree86.
To get antialiased fonts in emacs or anything else you still need application level support, probably meaning drawing the GUI using a toolkit that supports Xft (Qt 2.x, Qt 3.x, or GTK 2.x right now).
Re:Changes (Score:3)
Re:Changes (Score:2)
Re:Changes (Score:3, Funny)
Incidently, has anyone rolled Nethack into Emacs yet? I'm a vi user myself, but I hear emacs is quite, uhm, complete =)
Re:Changes (Score:3, Informative)
Working on it: nethack-el [nongnu.org], currently alpha state software.
Re:Changes (Score:3, Funny)
Rogue(6) at 23,485.5 FPS!
Re:Changes (Score:5, Informative)
No... really, the cursor can't be captured with a screenshot.
So, just imagine a red mouse cursor with a white outline and a strange red shadow that makes it look like there is ghosting on your screen when you're over a black area. That's redglass.
whiteglass looks a little better.
Oh, and they're scaleable. So, if you change your resolution to something lower and then go back, your mouse cursor might look really tiny. Or, the other way around, and the cursor will look really large. Basically, X is attempting to keep the cursor the same size on the display across resolutions.
However, IMO, the shadows suck. They look like a really cheap ripoff of Windows 2K/XP's shadowed cursors. The alpha-blendedness is pretty, but not much else.
Occasionally, if you're watching a movie in fullscreen with the xv driver in mplayer (or maybe xine, too) and you move the cursor, it leaves behind a black square. Very annoying.
I'm only using a Radeon VE/7K, so maybe I'm not expected to see any amazing differences, but things have almost gotten worse with the TCL stuff in the radeon driver. The VE/7K doesn't have TCL support, so sometimes, some accelerated GL stuff locks up X, and you have to log in remotely and kill the offending app. Hopefully this will be fixed in 4.3.1, or the separate dri project's drivers.
Re:Changes (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to have a look at these [musichall.cz] cursors - Jimmac doesn't seem to be working on them anymore, or at least the last update was last October and there's no package. But you can use any of the other cursor themes as a template and just copy the images from the web page (no scalability, though).
Personally I couldn't stand either the redglass or whiteglass themes; Jimmac's cursors, OTOH, are pretty close to perfect.
Re:Changes (Score:4, Informative)
Converts CursorXP themes to Xcursor themes.
Yes, this is a shameless plug.
Re:Changes (Score:3, Informative)
I've had several requests for a README, but I haven't done so yet. In addition, 0.0.4 will likely have an unzip feature to extract the curxptheme files.
Re:Changes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Karma Whore [n/t] (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Changes (Score:3)
Still buggy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Mozilla's links are suddenly not underlined, and some of the truetype fonts don't render quite right.
Anyone else run into this? I haven't been able to find any information either in Mozilla Bugzilla or in mailing lists.
Curious.
Re:Still buggy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing good to report from me on this new release... aaah, the price of staying up to date :-/
Re:Still buggy... (Score:3, Insightful)
This applies to major versions, like upgrading from 3.3.6 might be a good idea, but 4.1.x might not, especially if 4.1.x works good for you.
Sometimes you have to stick with an older version because your ancient card has been dropped. My laptop, a Compaq Contura 4/25c falls into this category. It has this weird _QVGA_ video which AFAIK is 3.3.6 only.
Somehow though, Debian has managed to port the 3.3.6 XF86_SVGA xserver to 4.1.x, so I could potentially install the latest version. I did this for my friend, he has Cirrus Laptop Mystery Video which worked with 3.3.6 but not 4.1.x, the Debian backport fixed him right up.
X is really a fantastically stable platform. It is great that the X team is working away, but don't feel like you _have_ to upgrade just because a new version is out. The new versions are mainly made to support new hardware. If your hardware works ok then you do not necessarily need to upgrade unless you just want to.
Re:Still buggy... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still buggy... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Still buggy... (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends which distros your talking about.. Some [mandrakesoft.com] seem to care more about buzzwords than stability. But there are a few exceptions. [debian.org]
Personally, I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.. I don't pretend that I can help debug it in a meaningfull way...and this new version doesn't make my current version work one bit less.
Stability issues aside though, I'm overjoyed to hear that Radeon support is still improving. I'll pass a brick when DRI + Xinerama works with the OS Radeon drivers. Improving support for built in 3D chipsets is also great news. Even minimal performance is a godsend. These guys are doing great work.
How about a real bug report? (Score:2)
Re:Still buggy... (Score:3, Informative)
Great... (Score:5, Funny)
I REALLY need to remember emerge -p
Re:Great... (Score:2)
-9mm-
Re:Great... (Score:5, Informative)
See the Gentoo Guide to USE Flags [gentoo.org] for more information.
distro release (Score:2)
Or, if they are too lazy to even re-release it, how long until they decide it's compatable and post it on their website?
Re:distro release (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyways, RH is likely waiting to test all these newfangled toys. GNOME 2.2 came out, and now that X4.3 is out, RH8.1 shouldn't be too far behind
Re:distro release (Score:2)
Re:distro release (Score:2)
Also in X 4.3 (Score:5, Informative)
Not true transparency yet (waiting on Keith Packard's tranparency server for 5,0), but cursors can be colored, shadowed, animated, and themed.
A new utility, mkfontscale, is included with this version. This creates fonts.scale files. In the past, in order to install third party TTF fonts (such as MS corefonts), a utility called ttmkfontdir was often needed (except in distros like RedHat that took care in making everything "just work") to build the fonts.scale file. This program depended on Freetype 1.x libraries (which can't always coexist peacefully with freetype2), and was generally a PITA.
Re:Also in X 4.3 (Score:2)
Not true transparency yet (waiting on Keith Packard's tranparency server for 5,0), but cursors can be colored, shadowed, animated, and themed.
Hmmm ... I'm only using 4.2.99, but the default cursor set (redglass) definitly has transparency ... and alphablending (i.e. transparency just with a different name) works fine too ... *shrug*
True transparency? (Score:5, Informative)
That's what transparency is. Transparency is normally implemented using alpha blending. An alpha value of 1.0 is a fully opaque surface. An alpha value of 0.0 is a fully transparent surface. This can easily be done on a per-pixel level either by using a separate alpha map or by using a alpha channel on the main image.
Normally a 32-bit, RGBA image is used. This gives you normal 24-bit color, with 8-bits per channel for Red, Green and Blue. The extra space is an 8-bit alpha channel giving you 256 different levels of translucency.
I guess I'm just confused as to how you can have alpha blending, but not "transparency," as they are the same.
Justin Dubs
Re:True transparency? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. XRender only supports one layer of trasparency - if you have a transparent XRendered object (such as a cursor), it'll show the object underneath. However, if the object underneath is also transparent, you won't be able to see through both layers to the third layer underneath. As a result of this, transparent windows don't work too well yet (though probably still better than the traditional hack of grabbing the X backdrop, shading it and pasting it in) - but since nobody is really using transparent windows, a transparent cursor is unlikely to highlight this issue.
Re:True transparency? (Score:3, Interesting)
kde menus work by taking a picture of the desktop, and using that.
Transparent cursors, as far as I know, are 'the real thing'.
As for the transparent cursor over a movie - my guess would be that it depends on how the movie is being drawn. If it is being drawn like every other window, then it should work fine - however xine and mplayer by default don't do this, as this is slow. Instead they more-or-less draw directly to the video card. This probably won't allow the shadowing to work.
Also things like TV cards draw directly to video, so I doubt shadow would work on them either.
Re:Also in X 4.3 (Score:2, Informative)
Change the "inherits" property to your desired cursor set.
Re:Also in X 4.3 (Score:2, Informative)
Another method (Score:2, Informative)
Xcursor.theme: bleu_rainn
where bleu_rainn is the name of your cursor set you want to use.
Cursor sets are in
Re:Also in X 4.3 (Score:3, Informative)
http://freshmeat.net/projects/sd2xc/
Converts CursorXP themes at wincustomize.org to Xcursor compatable. Pop the themes into ~/.icons/ or
Re:Also in X 4.3 (Score:3, Informative)
Edit
Xcursor.theme: where name is a subdir of
Then:
xrdb ~/.Xdefaults
Then:
Restart your window manager, not necessarily X, just the window manager. Probably another way to do it, but that seems to reinitialize cursors in most cases.
The sd2xc utility mentioned below seems to work well.
I imagine that before too long all this functionality will be in a trivial app. Aside from having Xcursor reinit, I could have a nice gui program to do this inside of 15 minutes, and I'm too lazy to figure out how to do the reinit from PyGTK
well... (Score:5, Funny)
Updated PS/2 mouse support... (Score:3, Interesting)
Has this been resolved in 4.3.0?
Re:Updated PS/2 mouse support... (Score:3, Interesting)
BWP
Re:Updated PS/2 mouse support... (Score:2)
Re:Updated PS/2 mouse support... (Score:5, Informative)
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Time::HiRes qw(sleep);
open(OUT,">/dev/psaux");
print OUT "\xF5";
sleep 0.5;
print OUT "\xF3\xC8\xF3\x64\xF3\x50\xF2";
sleep 0.5;
print OUT "\xF4";
close OUT;
The above requires the Time:HiRes perl module and perl-setuid installed. You can likely remove the Time:HiRes requirement and sleeps, but not sure . Then you bind the script to the scroll lock key. I do this via sawfish, my window manager. But there are probably a dozen different ways to bind it. If you are switching between two Linux boxes both need the script and XFree86. I currently am switching between RedHat 8.0(4.2) and RedHat 8.1 beta3(4.3, phoebe3). The beta works right and the non beta doesn't. 4.2 does hae auto detection, but when I tried it and someone else tried it it said in the logs it couldn't detect the type.
No problems with my OmniCube (2-ports) & Logit (Score:2)
Logitech Internet Keyboard Support Broken (Score:3, Interesting)
One gripe: Support for the media buttons on the logitech internet keyboard is broken.
Another blown weekend.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another blown weekend.... (Score:5, Funny)
What about Quake 3 (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who upgraded see it fixed? Or know of a fix?
Re:What about Quake 3 (Score:2)
but it always worked (and worked right now when i tested)
Re:What about Quake 3 (Score:2)
Yay Fast Machine (Score:2)
No, I hadn't tried it yet. What were you expecting?
Anyone know how the performance compares?
Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Excellent! (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong (Score:3, Informative)
we all know and love apt, but even in unstable we will have to wait for these cool new features. i guess one has to choose between bleeding edge and fairly secure/stable
*/
of course...i'm waiting for my favorite distro to realese them...duh...
-frozen
Volunteer, or Donate (Score:2, Insightful)
Debian is all volunteer efforts. Why not help them out, after all they've helped you out plenty. Then volunteer your time/efforts and compile yourself and make a package for others to use.
Or donate $$$ to the Debian project.
What goes around comes around.
Re:Don't get me wrong (Score:2)
As a temporary hack (Score:3, Informative)
1) Get the latest XFree86 binaries excepting the config package (I tried with sources but had more luck with binaries). /usr/X11R6 to /usr/X11R6.debian /usr/X11R6 /usr/X11R6 to /usr/X11.4.3.0 /usr/X11R6.4.3.0 /usr/X11R6
2) Rename
3) untar the binaries into
4) Rename
5) ln -s
6) Restart X.
I've been using this for six months now (due to the latest gatos drivers eternally needing a version of X that wasn't in debian). The good news with doing this is it's relatively easy to unfsck if things don't work. It sounds as though they've changed the font server configs so you may have problems with this in the latest version (I haven't done this yet).
I'd recommend changing the link back to the .debian dir before doing a apt-get upgrade or things may get really pear shaped in a hurry.
Let the flames begin ... and ignore them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since this is a story about X, all of the pre-programmed Slashbots are going to trot out and declare that X is broken, old, badly designed, missing features, whatever.
Meanwhile, the XFree86 team continues, release after release, to pound out great code that addresses all of the shortcomings people tend to cite. Faster direct rendering? Check. Anti-aliased text? Check. Multi-head? Check. Video extensions? Check. 3-D? Check.
Do you see a pattern here? X is versatile. X is extensible. X is the industry standard -- all Unix GUI programs use it.
And as always, X's killer feature is its network transparency. No "desktop-within-a-desktop" nonsense like you have to do on other platforms. Today I had the windows of programs from no less than three different computers running on my desktop. Transparently. Lots of X users do this every day, usually without even thinking about it.
Perhaps someday the tired old "X is obsolete and must be replaced" will finally cease. But today is probably not that day. Let the flames begin. I will ignore them and continue to praise the XFree86 developers for another job well done.
Oh, c'mon. (Score:2, Interesting)
But perhaps people like yourself, who are willing to give the X developers the accolades they so richly deserve, are necessary to counterbalance the people who only see the bad points of X.
There are good and bad things that can be said about X-windows, but I don't think anybody that is paying attention would have anything but praise for the people who have worked so hard to make it as useable as it is.
On the other hand, I can honestly say that Xwindows is the only piece of software that ever caused my monitor to literally catch on fire. Gave me a very strong incentive to RTFM, I must say.
Re:Let the flames begin ... and ignore them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let the flames begin ... and ignore them. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let the flames begin ... and ignore them. (Score:2)
However Fresco aka Berlin is dead, has 3 programmers working on it, and its written in Forth so nobody can contribute code to it because the language is not well known. I remember reading about it in 98 and years later the ability to draw basic shapes has just surfaced. Very immature and years behind. Aqua is nice but only available from apple. News is dead and was suppose to be an alternative to X. I don't know much about it or if their are some sources of it. Otherwise the OOS community could use it to write their own graphical environment.
Gnome or Kde using QT or GTK+ Embedded may be the only real viable option.
Re:Let the flames begin ... and ignore them. (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, no.
There's not really any more support for anti-aliased fonts now than there was before the Render extension, except that the Render extension makes drawing of anti-aliased fonts fast.
But the application still has to do the work itself. Whether it does so through "standard" libraries like the gtk or KDE toolkits is irrelevant: the bottom line is that anti-aliased fonts requires client-side support.
Clients have always been able to do anti-aliased fonts if they wanted to, but prior to the Render extension they had to do it the hard way: by actually drawing the individual characters and doing the transparency blending themselves.
The implementation of anti-aliased fonts is all wrong, IMO. The XFree86 folks should define a new font server protocol that knows how to talk about transparency (indeed, the protocol could easily be implemented such that it uses the same socket and everything: if the X server sees that it's talking to an old font server then it will revert to the proper monochrome font protocol), implement a font server based on Freetype that actually uses it, and hack the X server backend so that it automatically does the right thing when asked to perform operations using an antialiased font. The client shouldn't even know or care if the font is antialiased: that's a server-side-only issue (it's acceptable to name antialiased fonts differently, using perhaps a different encoding name or something, in order to make it possible for the client to distinguish between antialiased and nonantialiased if necessary).
Font handling belongs in the server. The client should never have to worry about it. Which means that the situation as it is now should never have come to pass. The Render extension is very useful for things like doing transparent windows and such, but it should never have been used for font handling: that was an evil hack, and now we're stuck with it.
Re:Let the flames begin ... and ignore them. (Score:3, Insightful)
But I do know that Microsoft also improves Windows with each release, addressing many major complaints. We still don't support them despite all this! So I don't see how your argument is useful at all..
And besides this, yours is the first modded up comment about X and whether it's obsolete or not.
Windows/OS X architecture is similar to X11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, so tell us: in what way are Windows or Macintosh OS X supposed to be more efficient? Where are these great gains in efficiency in their architecture supposed to come from? I mean, it can't be the use of IPC or system calls for the application to communicate with a graphics server: Windows and Macintosh have that as well.
In reality, there is no fundamental difference in the client/server window system architecture between OS X and Linux. For NT, there is a difference: large chunks of the windowing code have moved into the kernel ad some point, but you still need system calls to talk to it. Of course, there is nothing to stop anybody from moving X11 into the kernel.
Overall, the idea that network transparency is some sort of special feature that one pays a high price for is nonsense: all major desktop operating systems run in protected mode, and most GUI applications run in a different context from the window system. X11 simply has been designed that way from the ground up, while Windows and Macintosh have evolved there from "direct mode" graphics. Network transparency in X11 is not so much an issue of IPC or how it does graphics--it uses IPC like all desktop windowing systems--but in having well-defined network transparent support for features like window management and configuration information. It's lack of those features in Windows and OS X that means that Windows and OS X are not network transparent.
In practice, XFree86 is a damned efficient window system that, when it has comparable drivers for the graphics cards, beats OS X handily in terms of performance and memory usage, and usually even beats Windows.
You need screen on another computer, use TightVNC.
TightVNC gives you a "screen on another computer". It does not give you network transparent windowing. If you are running a well-designed X11 desktop, you can run applications on any machine, and they will behave as if run locally. You can also move individual windows between machines and displays. Of course, Gnome and KDE both break this behavior, but that's not X11's fault.
MSWindows 98 is snappy, even on quite old hardware. XFree runs like shit. It feels klunky and laggy.
That's a ludicrous claim. X11 worked reasonably well on 1988 hardware already. X11 servers obviously can run like a charm on 1998 hardware, hardware that's more than an order of magnitude faster.
And that's also what one finds in practice: Windows 98 requires much more hardware (memory, CPU power) to run than Linux/XFree86. If you claim were having a problem with Linux/XFree86, either you are making it up, or you had a bad driver, or you misconfigured something.
Re:Windows/OS X architecture is similar to X11 (Score:4, Insightful)
So, KDE/Gnome/Mozilla are clunky. Let's add Java to the mix, too. You won't get any argument from me there. Those toolkits rely heavily and unnecessarily on bitmaps. They are effectively written with a local direct drawing model in mind. They fail to use the X11 APIs properly in many ways. And that's not really so surprising: KDE, Mozilla, and Java all use cross-platform toolkits, and they have been designed primarily around Microsoft's APIs and Microsoft's performance characteristics, with X11 support kind of as an afterthought.
I also know that X wastes a bunch on bandwidth that Tight VNX saves. Try that "oh-so-nice-network-transparency" over a modem. I have, and it sucks compared to how snappy a 640x480 8bit black background screen transfers over EVEN regular VNC.
The default X11 protocol is optimized for minimizing CPU usage and latencies assuming LAN-speed connections. That's the environment people are using it in, and that's the environment it has been successful in for 20 years.
X11 does not try to minimize network traffic. If you want to run X11 over slow connections, you need an X protocol compressor. One comes built into your X11 server, but you need to enable it (lbx).
And there is nothing wrong with using VNC--it's a great system. It simply isn't a network transparent window system, it's a remote display--different function and different application.
still stand by what I said. Go get a copy of WIn98, and a feature-equilavalent copy of Linux with X and managers.
Well, and I say: you are wrong. I have run X11 and Windows 95 on the same hardware, I have run X11 and Windows 98 on the same hardware, and I'm running X11 and Windows XP on the same hardware. X11 has always been competitive with Windows, and usually beat it, in actual measurements as well as "feel".
Still, why didnt you approach the 3-D issue? 3-d's dog slow, even on supported hardware (eg: nVidia).
What's there to address? 3D games under X11 don't involve the X11 protocol, they use DRI (the equivalent of Direct3D). If that is slow, it's a problem with the 3D drivers or the game, it has nothing to do with X11. Basically, this claim is characteristic of your reasoning: something doesn't work, and you blame X11. I have to say, I have run all versions of Quake on Linux and have had comparable frame rates to running it under Windows.
But to what you accuse me of, it's MY fault X runs slow....
It's your fault to make bogus comparisons. Face it, Linux is still largely unsupported, and it is certainly unsupported on Windows 98-style hardware. It's not suprising that you might configure your machine less than optimally or that your drivers aren't very good. Most people aren't bothered by that, since it runs fast enough, but if you are going to nit-pick about performance, you have to nit-pick about your own installation as well.
Likewise, a lot of GUI developers (KDE, Gnome, etc.) come to X11 without knowing much about X11 or understanding how it works. It isn't surprising that they produce inefficient or sluggish code.
But we know X11 can run fast. You said so yourself: you found it responsive on a 120MHz SPARC, hardware that it is actually supported on.
If you want X11 to run fast under Linux, either figure out how to configure it properly and buy the right hardware for it, or go out and pay the money for a commercially supported version with drivers that were written with access to closed hardware specs.
Ok, one at a time (Score:5, Interesting)
You know having fully featured infrastructure components, which X is, is damn nice when writing applications. Feature creep is bad in a word processor, good in your display system.
X has little to do with Linux. X has been around for a long time.
---Yeah, it IS getting faster...
This goes directly to the network transparency myth. X window systems tend to be a little slower on login because things run in user space. Once things are running however, there is no performance penalty at all. With X you can choose a lot of things that can affect display performance. Seems to me that other display systems don't have this option. Want a blazing fast X system? Choose reasonable window managers. A machine running TWM these days is very fast yet will still do everything needed in a nice clean minimal way.
As a comparison, I have an older SGI IRIX machine running at a blistering 30Mhz. Scrolling text in a window, minimize, raise, lower and resize are all nice and fast. X is clearly not the problem here as it has been proven to be effective for years. That machine was manufactured in 91 and will still display 3D applications in a usable way.
---Yeah right. 3-D on linux/Xfree SUCK ASS. Want compairsons? Go play X game (with port to linux) on windows and then play it on Linux. You get shit for framerates, and dont tell me you're different.
I don't think so. OpenGl based games run just as well if not better than they do under windows. My current 3D machine used to be a windows machine and I ran the game in both environments. latency was a lot lower in the X environment than it was in the win32. Lots of people see this so you can forget your one guy argument. Running programs like Maya or Pro Engineer work very nicely as well. This used to be the case, but is not anymore. So, 3D, check.
------Do you see a pattern here? X is versatile. X is extensible. X is the industry standard -- all Unix GUI programs use it.
---Yeah, and all good games are out for Windows. Windows games are the industry standard. (sound dumb? same way you sound with X)
Yeah this does sound dumb. The X window environment has been setting the bar for display systems for years. Just think, they got it right long before win32 environments were even stable. X is the industry standard in many areas. Games are a niche. An important one, mind you, for the overall consumer market, but this does not make an industry standard all by itself. High end scientific applications, Mechanical CAD, Visualization are just a few of the true industry standard applications that have all ran under X for years. Ask users of any applications in any of these areas what the transition was like when moving to the win32 platform. It took a long time for things to work as well as they did under X. Very few things are really better.
Games? Direct X? These both sound dumb to me if they are to be considered the way of the future. Games will eventually end up on whatever platform has both power and marketshare to sell copies. Linux + X can do games very well right now, but marketshare is smaller. As that changes, you will see the games same as you did for win32.
I think it says something when the best graphics guy around continues to invest in OpenGL. Direct X is a capable, but clearly dead end API. Hardly competitive at all really. Got your killer application running under Direct X, but want to run it on higher end graphics systems? Sorry, win32 only. Maybe the next revision, that they make damn sure you keep paying for, will have what you need. Using OpenGL avoids this problem nicely.
If you want do discuss other aspects of the interface, you might equate OpenGL to X in that they have the same core design ethics. OpenGL has also set the bar in its way for years before Direct X was even a consideration. To get Direct X where it needed to be Microsoft had to thrash and almost kill SGI through their Faherienhit (sometimes spelling sucks --sue me) project.
Finally, if you want to again consider industry standards, consider this:
Every last high end scientific and engineering application that actually matters uses OpenGL for its display engine. Why? Because it is accurate, stable, scaleable and just works well. Microsoft would love for this to change, but creators of these applications know all to well the dead end nature of the Direct X API.
---And you're 1 out of how many??? You need screen on another computer, use TightVNC. Uses a bunch of less bandwidth too.
I will agree with you about the bandwidth issue, though this can be mitigated with ssh and compression. However you totally miss all the points here while showing that you really have no idea why people, who know what X does, use it this way.
X is a big part of why UNIX systems are true multi-user systems and the network transparancy is the key feature making this a reality today.
Any X window user can basically run any application from any machine they want from the machine they are on. Lots of people do this. It is called multi-user computing. Most people not doing this really just don't know it is an option.
This feature has some interesting ramifications when it comes to systems design and implementation. Not having it eliminates many choices that could reduce administration and costs.
Example:
Company uses high-end MCAD product; namely, EDS I-DEAS. This is complex and powerful software with included data managment.
If you are running win32, then you have only one choice. You load that software onto every machine that will ever use it. Outfit every machine that will ever use it with high end CPU, video, disk and RAM. To administer, you must deal with each and every machine all the time. Service packs, driver changes and other things like applications that change core system shared library code hose things up on a regular basis. Heavy users as well as light duty users must possess all necessary resources on their local machine.
Upgrades to software must be deployed locally on each machine. Complex scripting is needed to really get things done in a reasonable manner. Upgrades to hardware get quite expensive over time as each user gets new hardware which means new OS which means new display and drivers along with the reloading and rebooting that comes with that.
Now consider your options when you are running a real multi-user OS and the X Window display system.
You configure one multi-cpu server and remote display on just about any 3D capable PC. Machines can be new or old just as long as they have a good network interface and graphics engine. Almost any recent vintage machine made in the last 3 years or so will perform this task nicely. Because the application is running directly on the server, many data intensive applications that used to bottleneck on the network now run smoothly. Cost per user is low because the OS is multi-user. Properly sized shared resources make for a good computing experience for all the users. For the occasional power user, go ahead and give them local compute if you need to. The choice is yours with X, you don't even get to consider it with anything else.
Now upgrade time. Add CPU or RAM to the server, all users benefit. Want to change software revisions? Great, it will take a fraction of the time because of shared code and configuration data. This leaves plenty of time to deal with those power users computing locally. Users local machine gets hosed up, what do you do? Give them a replacement one with the standard applications loaded and fix theirs as you have time without impacting their workflow at all. Since their critical data is in a shared stable environment, they will hardly notice.
When Open Office gets just a bit better, this will be possible for more mundane applications as well. The savings and advantages are obvious --if you know you have the option.
BTW, Apple is now beginning to ship an Aqua supported X server. Wonder why that is? Could it be because X has some advantages? Maybe they are interested in high-end applications being ported to the Mac. Not sure of the reason, but I am sure they would not do it if X really was as you say...
Schools all across the country are all working on implementations of the Linux Terminal server project. This project depends on X and its features. Administration will be remoted and centralized to save costs and improve response time.
At home here, I run win32, Linux and SGI irix. Each of the machines have applications I am interested in running. All the UNIX applications are avaliable on every machine with just two clicks and can be used by anyone at any time. My wife is currently watching a DVD as I type this. That same machine is providing Evolution e-mail to the win32 machine via X at the same time. Why bother running more than one mail client. With X, I can choose any client I want and use it anywhere I want.
It is easier than you think and very well worth it.
Finally, Tight VNC is pretty cool for what it is, but it is not multi-user. Sure, it will save you a trip to a machine, but will not allow any sort of multi-user action of any kind. Limited and totally non-competitive compared to X.
Network transparancy is *huge* and most of the industry is blind to it because Microsoft and Apple do not provide it. Their loss really.
---How about modularizing the obsolete crap (like the XT module in the linux kernel) or pulling the garbage out altogether? MSWindows 98 is snappy, even on quite old hardware. Now take that nice dual cpu motherboard and slap linux on that with a well-supported XFree video card. XFree runs like shit. It feels klunky and laggy. And no, I'm not using KDE to use as a test. I'm using TWM. The smallest gui manager out there.
I will give you points here. A lot of OSS software has been gaining in functionality in trade for speed. I wrote an article about this a while back titled "Where Is the New Linux Experience?" When I wrote that, I had the same experience you did.
Things are changing now. The feature growth is needed to capture users interest and get things done. Truth is, hardware fast enough to run most things is very cheap now so this is becoming less of a problem. Development is now starting to address speed issues and it is showing results. Compare KDE 3 to KDE 2 and you will notice the difference.
Given the cost savings of OSS over software you pay for, and you do pay for all that win32 or Mac software don't you? The price of a newer machine is easily justified.
The parent post is dead on. Every time X gets mentioned, people like you, who really have little grasp of the bigger picture, bitch and moan about how X doesn't do exactly what their older and inferior system does.
Get over it, X kicks ass and the rest just don't.
Re:Let the flames begin ... and ignore them. (Score:3, Informative)
For the record, my OpenGL is faster on Linux than it was in Windows. My framerates in Wolf3D easily top those of Windows.
I've run recent versions of XF86 on old 486 or p90 notebooks using Blackbox or Windowmaker. It's fast as hell. But KDE or Gnome 2 require a reasonably modern machine (as Windows 2000/XP does).
No klunk or lag here. I suppose that you just aren't ready for Linux. Don't worry. It will be user friendly enough for you soon.
OS/2 binaries here (Score:4, Funny)
Re:OS/2 binaries here (Score:5, Funny)
Radeon ? (Score:2)
What about getting up a dual-screen setup with 3D support on at least one screen?
(i heard people saying it was possible, i really dig a card that could let me do this under X
Re:Radeon ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it did work insofar as the video was shown. It did not work because the video overlay caused artifacts all over the screen! Little chunks of the video image were drawn at random locations horizontally from the overlay window, which - needless to say - sucked. And I used config files from the same driver versions' utility, and yes, I did read the README.
I had this behaviour in every version. I reportet it to ATI in every version. I did never even get a reply. So to all those who cry "support DRI" and stuff: I'm right behind you in that matter. But those folks can't do shit about Via sitting on patents for S3TC/DXTC, and I don't have the time or knowledge to work around this myself. I've since given up on getting any commercial game to run too desperately. If it doesn't work after a sane amount of time, I just play it in Windows and the current DRI drivers at least allow me to do some basic GL hacking with some basic extensions.
Syntax Highlighting and Lisp in Xedit? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought maybe this was a joke... crazy.
Wine[x] (Score:2, Informative)
It is being worked on.
So, if you depend on wine[x], don't emerge, apt-get, rpm, XFree86 just yet.
Re:Wine[x] (Score:3, Informative)
You can run wine in Xvfb, but that doesn't really help anyone now does it
changing resolution (Score:2)
Re:changing resolution (Score:2, Informative)
Getting better on free nv! (Score:4, Informative)
There's support for DVI flat panels now so long as you POST on that head, as well as real acceleration on all the modern nvidia cards. Looks like no more grabbing and rebuilding the non-free kernel-invasive nvidia stuff. :)
Keep up the great work, guys.
XFree86 4.3.0 on OS X (Score:3, Informative)
Cheers,
-JD-
Re:nVidia Question (Score:2, Informative)
Re:nVidia Question (Score:2)
The newer the driver, the worse the problem, to the point that I can lock it seconds after logging in in a predictable way. I posted info on the nvidia forum, no replies of any use.
I am using one of the older drivers (2 or 3 releases old) and I can actually have X going for a few days now, instead of minutes or hours.
This is not acceptable... if I was willing to put up with this level of instability I never would have switched to linux 11+ years ago.
My next card will be an ATI, you can bet on it!
Re:New drivers for Radeon... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:New drivers for Radeon... (Score:3, Informative)
I had my first XP Blue screen within 5 minutes - and the error message clearly showed the crash was in the ATI driver. It's not crashed since, but it still happened.
I've also noticed artifacts and weirdness in a number of places.
Overall, I'm happy with the card, but I think that If I was going to spend the money on a high end card, I'd be looking at an nVidia, not an ATI, even though the 9700 has an edge over the GF FX.
I've never had a problem with the GF2Go in my laptop, and my girlfriend's never had a problem with the GF2MX in her machine.
Re:New drivers for Radeon... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:X Improvements? (Score:4, Informative)
XFree86 communicates with the local client over a Unix domain socket or a platform-specific transport (on SVR4 and Xenix, for example). In either case, there's no TCP involved.
It also uses shared memory to transmit images.
There have been some attempts to make XFree86 use a shared memory transport, but at least on Linux, it turned out that it's not worthwile. The kernel's Unix domain implementation turns out to be just as fast as any custom code that XFree86 could implement.
Re:X Improvements? (Score:2)
From `man X`:
X servers listen for connections on a variety of different communica-
tions channels (network byte streams, shared memory, etc.). Since
there can be more than one way of contacting a given server, The host-
name part of the display name is used to determine the type of channel
(also called a transport layer) to be used. X servers generally sup-
port the following types of connections:
So, while you might be correct in some cases, you're not always correct. If you're connecting to a remote host, odds are good that you're using TCP.
Moral: read the man page.
Re:X Improvements? (Score:2)
Re:finally new radeons (Score:2, Informative)
(NVIDIA's supposedly can, but dispite being able to get almost everything else running I come across, a second monitor (TV) seems too difficult or something, even copying config files from people with the same setup. I think it just doesn't like me.)
Please note: this was a while back, and I am not sure of that. Please correct if wrong. I am pretty sure on the Nvidia stuff, not so sure on the Xinerama stuff.
Re:and gentoo users.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:and gentoo users.... (Score:5, Informative)
Since yesterday? You mean you got a head start yesterday. You'll still be emerging it when Debian Stable gets it. ;)
Bah. I emerged rsync at 12:00 today, and then niced an "emerge -u --deep world" shortly after that. On my dell 8200 laptop (1.6ghz), by 4:00 I had a shiney new X, mozilla 1.3_beta, and a whole bunch of other neat stuff.
It's not for someone with a p266 who wants to stay bleeding edge (bad idea anyway), but I see debian users complaing all the time (scroll up) about how it's gonna take forever for this stuff to even get into the unstable branch.
give gentoo a shot, portage rocks
Re:and gentoo users.... (Score:2)
Re:Nvidia drivers out yet (Score:2)
Re:Nvidia drivers out yet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:framebuffer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Compiling X yerself? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Shameless distro plug... (Score:4, Interesting)
Thank you Mandrake!
Re:Shameless distro plug... (Score:3, Informative)
Having said that, the cooker has been tracking XFree86 CVS for a while now, and many many people do use the cooker, so many people have been hammering on CVS builds.
Now that XFree86 is final, us cooker people will hammer on it for a bit to find the last few wrinkles before it goes into Mandrake's next release.
Many eyeballs, or something like that...
Re:how can one make switching from VCs to X faster (Score:3, Informative)
X sucks in a FB, as does VCs in my not so humbe oppinion, But that would make it almost instant.
The biggest delay on switching X->VC is the rez change.