The X.org 6.8 release [LWN.net]

The X.org 6.8 release

Posted Sep 9, 2004 14:25 UTC (Thu) by larsga (guest, #2801)
Parent article: The X.org 6.8 release

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.

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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 (guest, #17537) [Link]

1) the screen size has been resizeable on the fly for quite a while
now. (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
without any xorg.conf file at all?

That being said, there is a lot of interest/plans in this area;
I encourage you to come help.

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
> without any xorg.conf file at all?

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;
> I encourage you to come help.

That's out of the question, I'm afraid. It might be fun, but I am way
too busy with running a business and doing standardization to even think
about it. There's no way I could do it. Sorry.

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 some
updates 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!