More information on the X11R7.0/X11R6.9 release [LWN.net]

More information on the X11R7.0/X11R6.9 release

Posted Dec 23, 2005 20:06 UTC (Fri) by daniels (subscriber, #16193)
In reply to: More information on the X11R7.0/X11R6.9 release by philips
Parent article: More information on the X11R7.0/X11R6.9 release

I have no first hand experience with binary drivers, but modularizations was (and is) mostly demanded by binary/closed source video drivers.

That is completely, utterly, flat-out, wrong.

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More information on the X11R7.0/X11R6.9 release

Posted Dec 23, 2005 23:34 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

Yep.

Modularization should help out a lot.

For example:

I had a notebook for a while that had the 854gm (or similar, I can't recall right now.) 'Intel Extreme Blaster'. Ok. For this I had a couple XFree86/X.org servers setup for this for a long time and it had 3d acceleration and the whole works. It wasn't without issues however.

So now there was this 915 driver that was suppose to supercede the older intel drivers for video cards. So I figured I'd give the newest driver revision a try, maybe it will improve performance and stability.

Ah, but since this was DRI and X.org drivers I couldn't just install the new driver.

I had to download and install the ENTIRE X server with all new libs and the whole crapload of other stuff, when all I wanted to do was build a new driver!

I did this on a Debian system which has apt-get for everything and their moms... So it's not like it was a clean install and it's not like it wouldn't get blown away next time Debian released a bug fix for one of the X libraries. Since they can only release X-related patches as a entire new X re-install.

And what if I wanted to try out the new (at the time) x composite extensions? Or xdamage? Or if I wanted to mess around with a new input extension? or wanted to build a alternative X.org X server like XGL? Or needed a library to be built with a slightly different compile time option for whatever obscure reason?

Again I'd have to download everything, apply patches to everything, and recompile everything.

This is a huge pain.

Now with X.org's new modular system.. If there is a security update for a library, I just update that library and don't have to reinstall X. If I want to try out a new driver, I can go to X.org get the sources for that driver and build it without having to reinstall X.

Anything to make it easier and less of a hassle for end users to update their systems for security reasons is a GREAT thing.

This should make it easier to build OS-specific extensions into X. Stuff to make X work with Linux hotplug and dbus notification services without breaking anything for the BSD users.

It should make it easier to have alternative X servers and try and develop new things without breaking everything else on the developer's or curious user's systems.

I am sure that this will make it easier to build propriatory drivers for X, but it will make pretty much everything easier to deal with with X.

More information on the X11R7.0/X11R6.9 release

Posted Dec 24, 2005 14:26 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Your example is incorrect. Binary-only drivers can be used with the current XFree.

Even before the revolutionary modularity of XFree 4 you could get binary-only drivers for some cards. They included the complete X server, though, because this is how XFree worked before 4.0. So it had to match your version exactly.

With XFree and current Xorg ("non modular") the binary driver is simply a shared object (.so library) that gets loaded by the X server. The binary driver's author wants a steady interface.

As long as everything comes from the same package, the interface between the X server and the card driver will remain subject to changes just like it used to be: if the change is important enough, it will happen.