xorg

S

ShimmyT

Gawd
Joined
May 4, 2003
Messages
608
Anyone running xorg instead of xfree? Also why am I so far behind on this? I've never even heard of xorg but now I see that Mandrake has switched to that as it's "default x window system" Any real bonuses to running it over xfree? all the window managers and such act the same?
 
i was wondering the same thing. I'm running debian and unsure if debian has switched yet or is going to switch.
 
Xorg is X.org's (part of Freedesktop.org) open source implementation of X. I don't use it myself because in Gentoo, it hasn't been marked stable for x86 yet. I know people I talk with in #gentoo on IRC who run it, and it works pretty well, basically it's just Xfree.

XFree has some licensing quirks, and some distros are moving towards X.org as their window system of choice (Gentoo is on the road, Slackware announced their support a few days back, and such).

And from what I've heard, it basically operates the same as X, but uses a xorg.conf file instead of XF86Config-4, and all the window managers work the same too. Don't expect anything drastic in change.

I'll just stick with my XFree for now.
 
thanks for the info. I see ikt's stable for ppc, so i will try it out on the ibook i'm setting up and report back. But if it's the same i'll be happy.
 
yea, Debian is still working on its transition as well. You're not behind, it is becoming the default in many dev versions of distros, but has not really begun to be deployed yet.
 
Right now, x.org is essentially just xfree86 right before the license changes, so there is really nothing new or amazing there that you are missing out on. However, the xfree86 team is quite disfunctional now, whereas the x.org team is very functional and very gung ho. In other words, there is going to be a lot more development a lot more quickly in x.org than xfree86. You won't really gain much from switching right now, but it is definately something to consider in the near future.
 
I just made the switch from XFree to Xorg under Gentoo. I didn't have any problems installing it or running it. I don't notice any benefits or speed increases, but from the post above at least I am ready for updates :D.

Here is what I did to install it.

1. Made a backup of /etc/X11/XF86Config
2. Removed XFree (emerge -C XFree for the Gentoo users)
3. Installed Xorg
4. etc-update and env-update
5. Copied my XF86Config backup to /etc/X11/xorg.conf
6. Re-emerged ATI drivers (3.2.8)
7. Did an opengl-update xorg-x11

This is for Gentoo only as it is the only distro I have played with. And I use XFCE4 as my WM.
 
In Gentoo, it's better to use dispatch-conf instead of etc-update, just a heads up.
 
BillLeeLee said:
In Gentoo, it's better to use dispatch-conf instead of etc-update, just a heads up.
Click to expand...

I will have to try that because I have been bitten a couple of time from etc-update and not paying attention. Thanks.
 
Well I did an emerge of xorg on my ibook and I did notice one thing, it doesn't have all of the older video drivers as options anymore like xfree did. For my particular ibook I would need the ati driver and they didn't have one. Unfortunately the r128 didn't work either. So i've assimilated another ibook with a radeon card in it to use :)
 
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