I remember a while ago, the XFree86 project more or less committed suicide. A friend of mine recently installed Gentoo, and I noticed that the X config file is now called Xorg.conf (or something like that). So I'm guessing something's happened, but I've been out of touch with the Linux world lately. What's going on?

XFree86 committed suicide, but XFree86 isn't the only implementation of X. There are others (at least two, I think) trying to implement the X protocol, X.org is one of them, and I think FreeDesktop.org is also working on one, but it's a bit more "proof of concept".

So now distros seem to be generally moving to one of the alternatives.

In December 2003, the XFree86 core team disbanded. However, development on XFree86 has continued and they recently released XFree86 4.4.0.

The news release for the dissolution of the core team is here.

Quote: Original post by SiCraneHowever, development on XFree86 has continued and they recently released XFree86 4.4.0.

Under what most people consider to be a GPL incompatible license, which is pissing off a bunch of distros. Thus the switch.

Quote: Original post by SiCrane
they recently released XFree86 4.4.0.

This release is what we're refering to as "committed suicide."

Core disbandment was a non-issue. It affected nothing.

I wasn't aware that X.org was at a mature enough level yet...I guess I was wrong. So is the trend right now towards X.org or towards staying on XFree86 4.3?

I know a little about Freedesktop.org. It seems like a much more modern design, but much more immature was well. Any insights on what we can see from them?

Quote: Original post by Promit
I wasn't aware that X.org was at a mature enough level yet...I guess I was wrong. So is the trend right now towards X.org or towards staying on XFree86 4.3?

Xorg is the new standard X sever.

Quote: I know a little about Freedesktop.org. It seems like a much more modern design, but much more immature was well. Any insights on what we can see from them?

It's nothing special. (and it's called kdrive, btw. not 'the fd.o server')

Its a testing grounds for features that might go into Xorg later on. Composite and such were tested there and are now being merged into Xorg.

The next intersting feature that will be tested there looks like an OpenGL DDX, which means ALL X rendering will be done with OpenGL.

This means that everything is hardware accelerated, and that vendors only have to provide an OpenGL driver, and not a OpenGL and XAA driver.

For those interested, the 'cairo' and 'xorg' lists at freedesktop.org are hosting the most discussion about it. a few keywords: 'glitz' 'mesa-solo' 'DRI' 'OpenGL'

Quote: Original post by Promit
I wasn't aware that X.org was at a mature enough level yet...I guess I was wrong. So is the trend right now towards X.org or towards staying on XFree86 4.3?

X.org was a fork of XFree86 just before the license changes, so it was very mature.

So distros are switching just because of a license issue? I dunno, I think I'd rather distros decide what to go in their distros based on quality rather than licenses.

Not that I'm saying x.org is worse than XFree86. I don't know if it is or not.

Quote: Original post by BradDaBug
So distros are switching just because of a license issue?

"Just"?

Quote: I dunno, I think I'd rather distros decide what to go in their distros based on quality rather than licenses.

Not that I'm saying x.org is worse than XFree86. I don't know if it is or not.

It's not.

Pretty much all of the XFree86 developers switched over to Xorg. It was effectively just a name change.