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Cygwin/XFree86 Leaving XFree86.org
Posted by
simoniker
on Mon Oct 27, 2003 02:00 PM
from the oh-the-shenanigans dept.
from the oh-the-shenanigans dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Cygwin/XFree86 project is leaving XFree86.org. For those that don't know, Cygwin/XFree86 is a port of the X Window System to Cygwin (which provides a *nix-like API on Windows). Here is the announcement and the start of the trouble. The XFree86 project has pushed away more developers than most projects ever have - is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?"
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Cygwin/XFree86 Leaving XFree86.org
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Leaving? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes there is a replacement. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah right (Score:4, Interesting)
Fresco has been bogged down in Alpha status for the last 5 years. Some people think that the only reason it is so slow in development is because no-one knows about it.
But the real reason is because Fresco sucks and no one wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole. If you think X is bloated, Fresco is 10 times worse. Its an over-engineered solution heavily reliant on C++, CORBA, GGI, and other crap.
X does suck, but 90% of the basic design of X is excellent. A new windowing system should focus on keeping the basic design, while (a) eliminating legacy crap that no one needs anymore, and (b) adding the stuff we DO need like Drag and Drop, Transparency, AA fonts, 3D, etc.
-- LD
Re:Leaving? (Score:5, Funny)
Not for a while.. (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://xsco.net/)
Re:Not for a while.. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://cgranade.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday December 05 2003, @12:52AM)
"beginning of the end"? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday May 04 2003, @09:26PM)
slashdot story [slashdot.org] on the topic.
Re:"beginning of the end"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Xouvert is a development branch of the Xfree86 source tree. It's purpose is to provide wide testing and integration for third party patches, and to test and stabilize innovative new ideas for submission to the main Xfree86 branch.
Doesn't really sound like Xouvert marks the end of XFree86. Indeed, it sounds like Xouvert is dedicated to improving XFree86.
Dinivin
Branch Becomes Trunk (gcc) (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 23 2002, @05:38PM)
Xouvert is a development branch of the Xfree86 source tree. It's purpose is to provide wide testing and integration for third party patches, and to test and stabilize innovative new ideas for submission to the main Xfree86 branch.
It's an interesting phenomenon associated with free software: enough talented developers get the perception that the current people in control are being unreasonable about release schedules, overall direction, features, bugs, indenting styles, etc. and fork their own branch.
A closely-related parallel here is how the egcs [gnu.org] folks wanted greater ability to change the gcc codebase than the gcc developers wanted to do.
Then, the egcs branch took off so famously that later it essentially became [gnu.org] the gcc development branch.
May the best X branch become the tree trunk.
Re:"beginning of the end"? Maybe not! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.geocities.com/gwidion23)
--
1.1 What is Xouvert?
Contrary to popular opinion, Xouvert is not a fork of the XFree86 project.
Xouvert wishes to provide a development branch of XFree86. What this means is, Xouvert is an attempt to create, implement, test, and bring new features and ideas to XFree86 sooner.
Xouvert has now just started. Currently, Xouvert simply is XFree86. The purpose of this document is to help people get to a point where they can help contribute to Xouvert.
Thanks for your "insight" (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:Thanks for your "insight" (Score:5, Informative)
(http://trigeek.net/)
"What this means for XFree86
Some will say nothing. Some will say good riddance. Some will say this is the beginning of the end. Who knows? Who cares? Let
Re:GNU seems cranky (Score:5, Informative)
Their problem is probably exactly what they said.
Why is it that GNU sees the need to fork *everything*?
Like what? Cygwin is not a particularly GNU project, and XFree86 has always explicitly been given support under its current license by RMS.
And who are these myriad other developers that have been turned off by the X group?
How many times does Xouvert need to be mentioned in this thread?
I can see arguments that X is unwieldy and archaic, fine
RTFA. That has nothing to do with it; it's a management problem, not codebase problem.
After reading the thread... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://locut.us/~ian/blog/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 20 2005, @02:26PM)
These guys seem to care more about being able to brag about their commit access in their email signatures than streamlining development of their software and making things as easy as possible for those willing to devote their time and talent to the project.
If ever a project was in need of a fork, and if ever some project developers were in need of an attitude readjustment - this is it.
Re:After reading the thread... (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO David Dawes comes off sounding arrogant and uninterested in solving problems (yet again - he seemed the same way over the Keith Packard blow up). He seems to have the attitude that since he is a volunteer he has no responsibility to the other developers, in terms of improving the process or otherwise making their life easier. It's not a good way to run a project.
Harry's right... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday November 01 2004, @04:55AM)
You know, what kind of nut must it be to crack to get X running atop of Windows? You'd think they'd give Harry some slack just out of the complexity of what he's doing.
Another poster mentioned that it's the fault of the tools, and I think this is a good point. A truly usable code management system would allow for Bozo the Clown to have commit privileges and it wouldn't impact the overall effort at all.
This is discouraging (Score:1)
So uhhhh.... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/21/)
What this means for XFree86
Some will say nothing. Some will say good riddance. Some will say this is the beginning of the end. Who knows? Who cares? Let /. figure it out.
So uhhhhh... who wants to tackle this one? ;-)
Unite! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.tftpanel.hu/ | Last Journal: Monday June 13 2005, @06:22AM)
beginning of the end? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wish. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://ck-gunslinger.deviantart.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 08 2004, @01:17PM)
Re:I wish. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most likely, modern desktop users need much more of the advanced features (recent extensions such as video, OpenGL etc., in particular) than ever.
If you look at what the basic X11 feature set really is, it's really very simple.
Most likely the most complicated thing you aren't using is the color management stuff.
What most people experience as "X11 bloat" currently probably consists more of bloat on the widget toolkit side than on the XFree86 side.
XFree86 could use a lot of cleaning up, but it's not particularly bloated.
Re:I wish. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.spamgourmet.com/)
I would wager that >75% of all software users don't need *any* of the advanced features of the software they use on a daily basis. I would also wager that those in the 25% range drive over 95% of the innovation and development, and that those users _need_ (as much as anyone can need anything) those advanced features.
Doesn't anyone know about the 10/90 or the 20/80 rule anymore? (If no, look it up).
I would like to see a completely modular, X-windows core-compatible windowing system for Linux. Want to use some of the advanced features? Add in the module, recompile, and go!
1st, to me, modular means you don't need to recompile. 2nd, who really cares how modular X is? That surely wouldn't help me get cut and paste working (by this I mean between all X apps and beyond text data). That surely wouldn't help me get drag and drop working. These little features that are over 20 years old are welcomed!
Until these basic needs are met, I don't want to hear another "Is Linux ready for the desktop?" questions.
Re:I wish. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.usermode.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 17 2007, @09:13PM)
Screw those 25%. They're the minority. They lost the election. Their duty is to humbly follow the behind the victorious mob!
Oh wait... Those 25% are those that actually help product the software, unlike the 75% that merely sits around and soaks up freebies.
<derail>
Okay, all facetiousness aside. The 75% is not more important than the 25%, even assuming those numbers were accurate. This isn't a democracy where the winner takes all. This is a marketplace where everyone who participates has the opportunity to win.
Let's look at some of the "advanced" features. None of them, by the way, detract anything from the experience of those using the basic features. First, Xinerama. I don't use it, since I possess only a single monitor. But I know people who do use it, and they absolutely love it. Some recent reports show that their productivity is improved. If all you do is run a single game in a single window on a single monitor, you might never want it. But if you don't, someone else using it is not going to affect you.
Second, remote networking. I use this daily. Most people I know who are on a UNIX local network use it. It frees you from the physical constraints of your workstation. And like Xinerama, if you don't use it, it doesn't affect you. Contrary to myth, the overhead of networking support for local use is non-existant. Local connections use sockets, which are damned fast.
Before you start trimming off huge chunks of X11 because one out of four people are not worthy, start with the Linux kernel. I would be willing to wager that 75% of Linux users don't need the advanced features of the kernel. Ditto for glibc. Ditto for everything else in the system.
Best quote: (Score:2, Funny)
(http://www.bombcar.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday January 22 2006, @01:15AM)
Some will say nothing. Some will say good riddance. Some will say this is the beginning of the end. Who knows? Who cares? Let
Perseverance (Score:4, Interesting)
I think not and here's why: I've been working as a consultant for one of the top banks in the US for the last 10 years. One of my roles is to maintain the COBOL-emulator for the VAX systems that we store customer data in. One of the integral pieces, as you may guess, is CygWin. We actively add elements and integrate third-party products with CygWin since it is the best at what it does.
The greatest challenge for our team is to enhance the Win32 abstraction layer so that it no longer interferes with the HAL on a multi-processor layer. We've made some progress and thanks to CygWin we're close to completion.
Which is nice.
We don't need more fracturing ... (Score:3, Insightful)
calling Chicken Little... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.fat-toast.com/ | Last Journal: Monday December 20 2004, @05:14PM)
Why the scaremongering, anonymous submitter? Just because one project isn't getting access to XF86's CVS tree and will have to maintain one of their own somewhere else, doesn't mean that everyone will abandon XF86. It's mature, has a ton of features, and has no viable replacement; who is gonna leave and where are they gonna go?
so what are you talking about? (Score:1)
Thanks. I still have no idea what this is.
I do know what X is (more or less). OK, I get that Gygwin is trying to make Windows users have Linux/Unix tools (I think that's what that says). So what is Xfree86 and what are we loosing?
good move - their whole patch system is whacked (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:good move - their whole patch system is whacked (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://wanderingjew.co.uk/)
I certainly can't speak for XFree86, but this is normal practice within the engineering group at my employer, and AFAIK at other commercial development houses. Raising a bug for a feature means that it can be tracked as a commit, means people can make comments on it, means you have a common format for all commits, be they bugfixes or new features, and so on. No, I don't really like it either, but it makes a lot of sense.
XFree are really stupid people ... read why! (Score:2, Interesting)
Read here the fixes [freedesktop.org]
I can imagine that there are to many trouble but I think that the remaining people working on XFree are fucking dumbasses and the primary troublemakers here. They threw the major leading developers out, those that liked to bring XFree up to new roots, fix many bugs, make it modern. And what do we have now ?
Xouvert as lame fork with people who may not be able to deal with it.
XFree as a lameass project full of bugs they not gonna fix, full of people who slowly develop it and who use old versions of xcursor, freetype, fontconfig and stuff like this. Ignore bugreports and fixes
FreeDesktop org as last bastion for people like Keith Packard and Jim Gettys to fix all the stuff.
I think we should start to boycott XFree.
Great... (Score:2, Funny)
Just like Gnome was the end of KDE (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when Gnome split from KDE? They fully intended to end KDE, yet today both are powerful desktop systems that have benifited from each other. (Last I cheked you can't even complile KDE with a couple GNOME libs - code reuse in action)
For that matter, linux was the end of BSD, or perhaps we should say OpenBSD was the end of NetBSD. Take your pick of history, BSD is alive in well despite what some anonymous cowards would have you believe.
This is a good thing, XFree86 has gotten a lot of criticism, let the critics go their own speerate ways and each prove their way is best. In the end the best way wins, or if there is no best way, all survive, and each focuses on the areas where its way of doing things is best.
Is this the beginning of the end? (Score:4, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 07 2003, @02:38PM)
That was easy! Ask me another one!
Maybe XFree has had its day (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.planethalflife.com/hlwf)
I seem to remember there was a move to streamline X given this new reality. But I don't know what it's called. Could someone fill me in?
Re:Maybe XFree has had its day (Score:5, Informative)
That's not the reality at all. Real environments where X is widely deployed (i.e. not a few boxen on a geek's home lan) frequently use the remote display capabilities of X. Indeed, those capabilities are the among the main reasons X gets deployed in the first place. Only niche markets use X clients and servers exclusively on the same machine (notably the visual effects industry where SGI once ruled and Linux has taken over.) Even in these environments, the overhead of a networking layer is minimal. (And these are among the most graphics-performance-sensitive environments that exist.)
-Isaac
Re:Maybe XFree has had its day (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
That's why when an X client and X server share a machine, XFree86 doesn't use the network layer whatsoever. And every time someone complains about that nonexistant "overhead" when X11 is discussed, God kills a kitten. X11 and Free86 have enough genuine warts of their own without having to make up more. So think of the kittens and forget the "network overhead".
Re:Maybe XFree has had its day (Score:5, Informative)
It's also worth noting the slowest part of X applications is in the badly implemented toolkits they commonly use which do their X event handling clumsily and sub-optimally (graphics exposures).
Wrong and wrong (Score:5, Informative)
No, the problem you imagine simply does not exist because X already has the "shared memory extension" [hp.com] to make it possible to write directly into the X-server's graphics memory bypassing the socket communications. In any case, XFree86 uses domain sockets for all local communications. Domain sockets are implemented extremely efficient on Linux. It is definitely not sockets that are causing any delays you may see on your user-interface. It is likely you are using a GNOME or KDE application which is badly implemented whether in itself or in the toolkit on which it is based.
"security implications this has as well"
No, there is no security problem. X defaults to have closed network access. Every PC should also use a firewall which provides a separate stronger access control mechanism. Nobody should be able to access your X-server remotely unless you have explicitly given them permission.
Not true at all. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Furthermore, when the client and server are on the same machine, the data stream is NOT sent over the network, but is routed through local UNIX sockets or shared memory, making X essentially as slow or as fast as your system bus and graphics hardware. Only when you actually separate client and server on to different machines does X use the network sockets.
Overhead is simply not a factor on an average Linux desktop.
This feature bloat everyone is frightened of is in other places, like for example the KDE and GNOME architectures and the desire of most users to drown in pixmaps and theme engines.
With that said, on my own Linux desktop (a lowly 900MHz PIII) I use KDE 3 and play Quake III and so on and I don't find it to be any slower than Windows 2000.
Maybe there is just a small crowd (the ones who keep submitting "3D site" or "hardware site" stories) who won't feel elite at LAN parties until their Linux box can beat Windows boxen by at least 6fps in frame rate tests, 403fps. vs. 397fps.... and they're somehow convinced that if they can just get rid of that damn protocol and somehow drop "abstract" graphic ideas directly into video memory rather than organizing and processing them, that extra 6fps will be forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the rest of us continue to use the god-send network features of X to administer large installations from a single point of access, or to deploy narrow-application thin clients at greatly reduced cost.
Cygwin rules, but asking people to fuck... (Score:1, Informative)
"So, please take this as kindly as possible when I say: Go fuck yourself."
Re:Cygwin rules, but asking people to fuck... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Friday November 01 2002, @10:02PM)
Re:Cygwin rules, but asking people to fuck... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thomas Dickey says:
"well, when you graduate and (presumably) find a real job, you'll have a chance to get an idea of where time goes. the patches _are_ applied, right?"
Which is an extremely rude thing to say to anyone. Even more so when Harold has already spent several emails explaining, and also is apparently currently suffering some fairly serious medical problem.
"When you are in a graduate degree program and working 30-40 hours per week, that is a *lot* of time."
"Seriously, I don't know why I waste my time submitting patches that are specific to my platform and then wait up to three weeks for them to be committed."
"Can I please finally be given CVS commit access with the understanding that I am a moron and that I will only commit things that are cygwin specific,..."
All he wants is the ability to commit to CVS for the module that he is the expert on, and David Dawes and Thomas Dickey are unfriendly, insulting and rude to him. Not exactly a good way to run an open-source project. Did they not read the Cathedral and the Bazaar?
Start of the trouble mail (Score:2)
(http://anthony.liekens.net/)
What happens when I assign patches in the "Cygwin Xserver" project to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"? Does an email go out to everyone with CVS commit access? Is there a single person that receives this email? Should I be assigning patches to a specific person to ensure timely commits?
I realize that a feature freeze is in place now... this is a general questions for "normal" times so that I know how to assign my bugs to when I want them to get committed.
Harold
Ugh... (Score:1)
Regression tests, anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
the way out is the way in (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Monday July 04 2005, @03:43PM)
In theory, capitalism is a Columbus' egg: competing firms will strive to satisfy the customer, thus maximizing social welfare. But just as lack of competition begets corporate mammoths like our friends from Seattle (I'm talking about Sub Pop, I swear! Nirvana, Soundgarden, et cetera), an established reputation might beget open source initiative monoliths.
I'm not up to date enough to claim with a reasonable degree of certainty that the XFree86 group has become a stagnant monolith, but that's a theoretical possibility I've been fiddling with for a while.
Mainstream public sector economics has been developing the idea that government departments and autarchies compete for influence and budgeting, and perhaps it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to imagine open source projects compete for user-base share and reputation. And while that can be good for the same reasons free market competition is good - Linux distros keep one-upping each other - the presence of an open source standard might lead to a great concentration of power in the hands of project maintainers, swollen egos and entire project deaths.
Sure, it's open source, but I'm surely not getting to hack the Linux kernel in a long time, since I actually have a life and professional uses for the only computer I own. Should the "official" development of the Linux kernel stall (sp. at a point where there are serious bugs), I could choose one of the BSDs - monolithic developer groups themselves.
Solutions lie in the projects' group development rules, and having little experience in working with them, I don't have a lot of solutions. But wouldn't the story of RMS itself show that even the Elders have egos and can screw things up?
Open source just isn't a solution per se, and I feel the really important game is not in the licensing models, but in the group development models. Perhaps they need a bit of standardising and a few cool acronyms right now.
Wow, what a jerk (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems clear that that David Dawes guy is just an egomaniac jerk... If I was working on that project, and he was acting in that manner in representing the project, I'd sure as hell quit the project.
I sure hope the project does die, and Mr. David Dawes can be king of his sandcastle, with nobody to play with... What an attitude.
Mirror of thread (Score:3, Informative)
X alternatives (Score:1)
WOW! (Score:1)
Xouvert, KeithP, ESR, code, cops, guns, beer... (Score:2)
http://www.xouvert.org/irc/2003/10/27 [xouvert.org]
Maybe the real motivation is license zealotry. (Score:2, Troll)
(http://www.brettglass.com/mailbrett.html)
It is well known that Cygnus (whose name was chosen because it has "GNU" in the middle) eats, lives, sleeps and breathes the GPL. Is this the real reason they forked the project? It's interesting: The GPL "faithful" claim that forking is a bad thing and that their license prevents it (a claim which has never been demonstrated to be true), yet they certainly seem to have no compunctions about forking a project to bring it under the GPL!
New UNIX GUI (Score:2, Offtopic)
(http://www.moderngeek.com/)
hope. (Score:2)
(http://suppafly.livejournal.com/)
One can only hope.
XGGI (Score:1)
Why is it xfree86? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 13 2003, @08:39PM)
Does the 86 mean 1986? That's the connotation that always springs to my mind, in these days of "95","98","millenium","2000" and "2003"
And in other news... (Score:1)
(http://www.kryhavoc.net/)
And in other news, BSD is dead.
Open Source Developers (Score:2, Informative)
CVS access is like giving someone the keys to the T-Bird. Everyone's excited to get it, but the parents are always terrified the kid will crash into a tree...and wreck the T-Bird (aww, don't worry, the kid will be FINE...). But CVS has this marvelous feature. You can create tags, and still quickly get around botched commits.
I work on an open-source game (I'm not going to plug it), and most of my commits revolve around a particular area, but occasionally I go over and revamp the configure.in/Makefile.am system and rip out all of the cruft. Ah, there's something nice about that efficiency, but...I could just as easily make it unusable if I made a large commit and didn't check everything first.
But that comes to my other point. You have to appreciate HOW much time each developer puts in. Some will only put in an hour every month or two, while some will simply stay and work on something, a dozen hours a day (or equivilent for their busy life), until it's done, even if small, like autoconf/automake files. Even a relatively unnoticable change from a user's perspective can have huge developer benefits, and people often forget that. Some developers will go for every last user-noticable feature, and some, perhaps like me, will often help out the other developers as much as they can, so that they can be more productive. Project leads often don't realize what a difference that makes until six months after a commit. *grins sheepishly at her 'boss'*
Unresponsiveness (Score:2)
(http://www.greenbaum.org/)
I've tried just submitting a bug report to XFree, and get nothing back. I've treid submitting the bug report to the owner of the driver, one of the posters in that email thread, and it was ignored. I have to turn off hardware accelerated 3D support in a very mass-market chipset to run at 1280x1024, and the project and the individual developer ignore well constructed, easily repeatable bug reports.
Xfree86 sucks, and always has, every fscking time I've installed it from 11 Slackware floppy discs in 1994 with a Trident POS to my present "emerge xfree" on an Intel 845. Everytime I get a new graphics adapter, no matter how mass market, I still end up contacting the developer of the driver to find the secret sauce to make it stable.
That being said, Xfree86 has performed a great service by bringing this code out for us to abuse. Still there is much more work that they could do. The childlike behavior I saw on that mailing list (telling someone "when you get a job", my god) makes me fear that I'll never see a more stable GUI for Linux.
-- Jack
let /. figure it out (Score:2, Funny)
(http://www.ozten.com/)
Wow... (Score:1)
Egomania extravaganza!!!
another alternative to X (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.acidchat.net/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 29 2004, @04:09PM)
has xlib support, with very little or no bloat.
gonna try to use it for either an included app or and add-on to my floppy based distro (it's only a 100k server)
The main problem with XFree86 is the developers are trying to create a closed environment for a somewhat open project, they dont want any changes besides their own. even if the suggested changes are better than anything the developers could ever pull out of their asses, and they do this whilst adding features no one will really ever use, I dont see too many people even using X as a network graphics system, people usually use a vnc to do all their work with, people use X as a local graphics system, so, what's needed is that someone needs to include a graphics system that does what a graphics system should do. run graphical apps, xfree runs just about anything under the sun.
there's some functions I like in xfree, but, a lot of them I see as useless.
and that's what many "outside" developers think, and when they try to make a change, or add a new feature or even try to optimise the code, they get told to shut the hell up and go back to fiddling with their little bits of code.
Basically, the Xfree86 devs are afraid of any change that isnt their own. Afraid the change will break their work or put them out of the spotlight of ego, basically their position on the project.
what a lame thread (Score:2)
(http://bloggoergosum.us/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 25 2006, @10:02PM)
The guy contributes for an extended period of time and asks for CVS access so that his work will be easier and so that the other devs don't have to babysit him, and they basically tell him "piss off" or just ignore him? He had a lot more patience with that crap than I would have. After the first denial (or after two weeks of being ignored, whichever came first) I would have posted an email to the list stating that Cygwin/XFree86 would no longer be collaborating with XFree86 and that would have been the end of it.
This is what its like when Developers collide (Score:1)
(http://jrwren.wrenfam.com/blog/ | Last Journal: Friday February 25 2005, @05:44PM)
you've got the system for total control
so is there anybody out there,
now watch us suffer, cause we can't go
what is it really that is in your head,
what little life that you had just died
i'm gonna be the one that's taking over,
now this is what it's like when worlds collide
are you ready to go - cause i'm ready to go - what you gonna do baby - baby
are you going with me - cause i'm going with you - it's the end of all time
what is it really that motivates you, the need to fly or this fear to stop
i'll go along for the ride but surprise, when we get there is say 9 of 10 drop
now who's the light and who is the devil, you can't decide so i'll be your guide
and one by one they will be hand chosen,
now this is what it's like when worlds collide
are you ready to go - cause i'm ready to go - what you gonna do baby - baby
are you going with me - cause i'm going with you - it's the end of all time
what is it really when they're falling over,
everything that you thought was denied
i'm gonna be the one that's takin over,
now this is what it's like when worlds collide
So really, its what its like when EGO's collide
Thomas Dickey wrote:
On Sun, 26 Oct 2003, Peter "Firefly" Lund wrote:
On Sun, 26 Oct 2003, David Dawes wrote:
When I discussed this with you privately a while ago all I got were
disrespectful and insulting responses. Now there is more of the same.
Err... No.
He was quite reasonable, in my opinion.
He thought he was, but when I get email from people phrased that way,
I don't appreciate it.
Thomas Dickey,
You sent me the biggest insult I have ever received in my life. How can you not realize that? How can you do anything except apologize for your extremely rude message? Please, never, ever, respond to another word that I write until you correct yourself.
Harold
This was a petty argument (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Saturday August 09 2003, @07:33AM)
While Harold Hunt's intent and concerns were valid, he was unable to convey his concerns in a respectable manner. OTOH, David Dawes didn't seem very respectable, either.
This sort of event was a petty argument, and should be acknowleged as nothing more... I can't believe this was slashdotted...
--Tim
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://dandyman.us/)
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://cgranade.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday December 05 2003, @12:52AM)
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.iki.fi/psavo)
I wonder... do people say "X is going away" because they think it is, or becasue they hope it is?
I'd wager my bet on that in general people don't have a slightest clue..
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:5, Insightful)
But then I read it.
CJC
Re:Xouvert? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:"is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?" (Score:1)
Kathmandu Fried Greens.
KFG
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.joeyreid.com/ | Last Journal: Friday April 02 2004, @11:20AM)
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:2, Funny)
disclaimer: this is not a troll post! i'm running Xfree86 right now!!
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Have any proof to back that statement up?
Harold was requesting CVS commit access only for bugs that pertained to Cygwin only -- they had no impact on other platforms. Hell, if properly ifdef'd they wouldn't even compile into the binaries on other platforms. That doesn't mean they're not bugs though, and it doesn't mean they shouldn't be fixed in the main tree.
We're not talking about features here. And there's a long line of people that have tried to get XFree86 to fix bugs -- either in the core or in drivers -- that have not only been denied commit access but also had their fixes ignored, their questions ignored, and been passively shoved aside when trying to get things fixed. The number of actually active developers (i.e. - number of people with commit access and are actually spending time on the project) on XFree86 is absurdly low for the size of the project.
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:1, Informative)
Problems with X Free are the following : they do not care about quite a lot of feature in X at all (such as a 32 bits mode allowing transparencies, and no, this is not a bloat). They refuse to accept pretty good set of drivers for no apparent reason (DRI anyone). And they often radically change the way they implement this or that without telling anyone who is not a close friend. Leading to quite a lot of fun if you are in a low level project(such as LibXCB for example, but DRI people are having fun too).
Kha
Re:configuration nightmare (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/~MuParadigm/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 09 2003, @06:23AM)
Actually, from what I see, hardware device support in Linux has been catching up. True, it still lags behind, but I don't see that "always" being the case. Lots of improvement should come with the 2.6 kernel, and with MS's next OS not coming out for 2-3 years, Linux device drivers should be able to catch up.
As far as applications go, well, as long as developers focus on MS compatibility, the apps will always lag behind for the simple reason that compatability for new Office "features" can't be added until they've been released by MS. The only way around that issue is for developers to concentrate on re-thinking the functionality of desktop apps and implementing their own features to compete with MS.
That may not be practical yet, because of the large installed base that needs that MS compatibility to migrate to Linux and to communicate the "WinWorld". But I do think hardware support will be just as up to date and cutting edge as Windows within a couple years. It's almost there now, and what is supported is usually more stable once it's configured correctly.
Re:configuration nightmare (Score:2)
I'm reluctant to even ask, but what kind of video card do you have? One of the problems with Debian's stable release is that it has an old version of X on it. The server code is lacking a lot of driver updates that appeared recently.
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem as cited through the list is that the core developers do not allow external commits by major commiters like the entire Xwin cygwin port.
These people have to wait weeks for any changes to possibly show up in the CVS because the core developers don't have time for it.
The core dev's answer: Shut up and stop complaining we are doing the best we can.
This has nothing to do with bloat and everything to do with control and workload.
Great, Xfree86 needs this. (Score:1)
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:2, Funny)
Being the fool that I am - I told Keith Packard that my new fast box would build the xfree86 xserver in 25 min. He then showed me that his old 300Mhz laptop could build his version of the xserver in 5 min. He said it was because he didn't have a lot of bloat - no x86 emulator or unicode conversion. His xserver is also a lot smaller.
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, guys like Keith Packard were just bloating Xfree!
In fact, it seems that KP was just about the only guy who was passionate about Xfree and REALLY worked on it. I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry when I saw KP being flamed by David Wexelblat (one of the founder of Xfree) in Xfree mailinglist. It was sad/funny because while Wexelblat was busy flaming KP, he also mentioned that he does not even use Xfree there days, let alone hack it! He uses Windows these days!
So, Guys like Keith Packard get kicked out, while useless deadbeats like David Wexelblat are members of the core-team. What's wrong with this picture?
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:1)
Or a linux distro like Red Hat.
Re:beginning of the end? (Score:2)
Re:The good replacement (Score:2)
(http://moonbase.rydia.net/)