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The X.org 6.8 release
For a project which did not exist one year ago, X.Org has come a long way.
In early 2004, X.Org became the landing place for the bulk of the
X Window System development community after XFree86 imploded over longstanding
disagreements and an abrupt licensing change. The X.Org version of the X
Window System is now shipped by most major distributors, while XFree86
sinks into relative obscurity. More importantly, X.Org has become the
focus for a reinvigorated and excited development team which is bringing
new life to a long neglected - but crucial - piece of free software
infrastructure.
The X11R6.8 release (not formally announced as of this writing, but due any time now) will be, for most users, the first look at what is happening in X.Org; it is the first X.Org release with significant new functionality. While much of the new code in 6.8 is not yet ready for truly widespread use, this release should still result in more attractive and more functional desktops for Linux users. The 6.8 release does not, yet, incorporate one of the project's major goals: splitting the release into a modular distribution made up of several packages. An X release is a big thing, consisting of the X server, fonts, libraries, applications, and more. Someday it will be possible to get an upgraded server without pulling down all the rest, but not quite yet. A great deal of software has been updated in this release. There are new versions of FreeType2, Xprint, Mesa, DRI, and lots of driver updates. The core of this release, however, is in the addition of four new protocol extensions. The X11 protocol was, from the beginning, designed to incorporate extensions and evolve over time. X.Org 6.8 has made use of this extensibility to add a number of new features:
Some screenshots from the 6.8 release are available. Where to from here? The next major X.Org release is likely to be called X11R7, and, with luck, it will be a modular release. There will probably be significant changes to Composite and XEvIE in response to current, known problems and feedback received from wider testing. The input subsystem is due for a rework to make it properly responsive to hotplug events, among other things. What actually goes into the next X.Org release will depend on what actually gets done between now and then. Predicting future free software releases is always a risky proposition. What is clear, however, is that the fun has returned to X development, and we will be seeing interesting things on our desktops in the coming years. (Log in to post comments)
xorg 6.8.0 now available but masked for testing on Gentoo Posted Sep 9, 2004 11:08 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] .. as the title states..See the upto-the-minute status here: http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=xorg BTW, Gentoo KDE users may find the following addition to konqueror's "Enhanced Browsing", aka "Web Shortcuts", somewhat useful: Search Provider Name: Gentoo Packages Search URI: http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=\{@} URI Shortcuts: gp,genpak Of course, you may modify the above for your own use, but with it as shown, I can get updated status on for example, xorg, by simply entering: gp:xorg in either the run dialog, or Konqueror's address bar. (I also use gg frequently, and renamed their ggl that was google-lucky, to gglu, so I could change ggl to shortcut to google-linux. As well, I added as similar shortcut for my local online telco directory, Qwestdex, and before I switched to Gentoo, had entries for Mandrake's Cooker Bugzilla and the like. I haven't created an entry for Gentoo bugzilla yet, but I probably will at some point.) Hoping others find this as useful as I do. Duncan
Gentoo update! Now ~ on amd64, x86, and ppc Posted Sep 9, 2004 11:11 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] The testing with the 6.7.99.x snapshots probably greatly accelerated themove to ~. Duncan
"Sound" extension? Posted Sep 9, 2004 11:50 UTC (Thu) by Liefting (subscriber, #8466) [Link] Does anybody know if there's any plans to support audio through the X protocol as well? I always am amazed at my capability to SSH into my server upstairs, and start mplayer/xine or whatever, and have the video displayed locally. Or for that matter, any application. But it's annoying, and hard to explain to others, that the sound is not tunneled/forwarded to my local system, but is generated on the server.
Or should this be developed similar to how X does things ($DISPLAY variable, port 6000), but separate ($AUDIO variable, port ????) from X? Anybody working on this?
"Sound" extension? Posted Sep 9, 2004 12:58 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] I think MAS is supposed to eventually make it into X. For now, though, $ESPEAKER is your friend.
"Sound" extension? Posted Sep 9, 2004 13:03 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] I remember hearing that they were working on sound support for X, although not specifically for that reason. They want to have programs produce perfectly synchronized audio and video, which is impossible to get really right if different programs are responsible for each. That would be even more significant if you were doing it over the network; two unrelated programs on the local machine talking to a program on the remote machine aren't going to stay aligned with each other, particularly if they don't even know about each other. This may or may not be "MediaApplicationServer" these days.
"Sound" extension? Posted Sep 9, 2004 19:07 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I can also see other reasons to tie sound into the X protocol. You might want to have a set of headphones associated with a particular screen (if that's the right word) just as you have a mouse associated with one. It makes sense for X to own the entire interface to a human being.
"Sound" extension? Posted Sep 9, 2004 13:06 UTC (Thu) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link] I've wondered that too.Jim Gettys Open Source Desktop Technology Road Map has a brief but useful summary on audio and multimedia, as well as a good overview of where X is going. The current artsd and esd sound servers for KDE and Gnome don't seem to be evolving further. But the Media Application Server is surely worth a look. It is so ambitious in scope that X support is a mere detail!
"Sound" extension? Posted Sep 9, 2004 13:23 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] Does anybody know if there's any plans to support audio through the X protocol as well?About 8 years ago when I was sitting in front of an X terminal, I was able to listen to music played by a program running on the Solaris server. However, I don't know what kind of protocol was used between the (diskless) X terminal and the server.
"Sound" extension? Posted Sep 9, 2004 19:20 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] Sound has been the holy grail of X for a very very very long time. There have been several attempts at doing it.. but none of them have either caught on.. or been less than network killers. I think at various times it has been decided it needs to be an X thing.. or a desktop thing (esd, etc).
It might be possible once things are more componentized.. that way someone could put in some sort of Xiph X module and it work then.. but I dont think it would be easy until then.
"Sound" extension? Posted Sep 10, 2004 10:34 UTC (Fri) by stevem (subscriber, #1512) [Link] Network Audio System was written a long time, and is exactly what you're looking for. Written by NCD for their X terminals and opened to all.
See http://radscan.com/nas.html
NAS provides sound Posted Sep 11, 2004 0:21 UTC (Sat) by lakeland (subscriber, #1157) [Link] But it is ancient, and I personally would prefer sound as an X extensiontoo. Incidentially, KDE supports NAS. I have no idea about other things.
That's confused Posted Sep 16, 2004 14:49 UTC (Thu) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link] No, the sound is generated on the client. You are sitting by the (display) server.
The X.org 6.8 release Posted Sep 9, 2004 14:25 UTC (Thu) by larsga (guest, #2801) [Link] I found this oddly disappointing, but maybe there is a piece of the plot I haven't got. I find myself wondering why they are working on this instead of the known, long-standing problems with X like: that it is the hardest component of a Linux system to configure correctly, and that screen resolution cannot be changed while X is running. The other things are nice, and I'm sure they will be useful, but the configuration and resolution change stuff is *important*. People really need it. I'm not sure we really need the other things.
The X.org 6.8 release Posted Sep 9, 2004 14:33 UTC (Thu) by Dom2 (guest, #458) [Link] You can actually change the screen size whilst running these days. Have a look at the man page for "xrandr".
-Dom
The X.org 6.8 release Posted Sep 9, 2004 14:35 UTC (Thu) by jg (subscriber, #17537) [Link] 1) the screen size has been resizeable on the fly for quite a whilenow. (see xrandr(1x), and/or applets for you favorite desktop).
2) we are painfully aware of the configuration nightmare.
Are you aware that, on modern hardware, your X server may work
That being said, there is a lot of interest/plans in this area;
The X.org 6.8 release Posted Sep 9, 2004 15:31 UTC (Thu) by larsga (guest, #2801) [Link] Thank you very much for the tip about xrandr. I tried it now and it worked beautifully! That will save my life several times when stressing with presentations, I'll bet.
> Are you aware that, on modern hardware, your X server may work
That would be very nice. It's yet to happen to me, but then I avoid touching that file as much as possible. :-)
> That being said, there is a lot of interest/plans in this area;
That's out of the question, I'm afraid. It might be fun, but I am way
The X.org 6.8 release Posted Jan 2, 2005 4:10 UTC (Sun) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] How do people help? I mailed several addresses on the website, did someupdates on the documentation Wiki.... and never heard anything back. More than half of the Wiki links are broken and the formatting has been dropped and corrupted (HTML -> Wiki A -> HTML -> Wiki B). Maybe a "how do I participate" FAQ or guide is in order.
The X.org 6.8 release Posted Sep 10, 2004 13:39 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Frankly, I have never really experienced lots of problems with X configuration; especially nowadays most things just seem to work. (Maybe I have just been lucky, although I have installed and used X on quite a few different hardware setups.)So this is one in which I welcome the frivolous over the rock solid technology: bring it on, the eye candy! (Actually, I think it is quite important to have attractive desktops, and I can see how especially drop shadows improve ease of use). I would worry more over security (another aspect of X that has quite a bit of history), but I guess that's taken care of? To me, it looks great!
The X.org 6.8 release Posted Sep 9, 2004 18:27 UTC (Thu) by akupries (subscriber, #4268) [Link] The first thing which came to my mind after reading about "XEvIE" was: Keyboard sniffer.
I really hope that the people working on this are aware of the security implications of such an extension, officially allowing an application to spy on other apps.
The X.org 6.8 release Posted Sep 9, 2004 19:22 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] I think keyboard sniffers with X are already possible.. but this does seem to lower the bar on them...
The X.org 6.8 release Posted Sep 9, 2004 22:29 UTC (Thu) by gurulabs (subscriber, #10753) [Link] You don't need XEvIE to have a keyboard sniffer. All you need is the ability (xhost,xauth) to connect to any Xserver made in the last 20 years and the following ~100 line C program.
/* To compile, run it through your favorite ansi compiler something like
Experimental deb repositories? Posted Sep 11, 2004 0:23 UTC (Sat) by lakeland (subscriber, #1157) [Link] For people who want to break their systems by trying this out, is there adebian repository to help?
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