[Discuss] X instability

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2008-12-30 15:11-0800 pwillis wrote:

> Isn't xorg the 'new' X?
> Or am I missing something?

It's complicated.

What I meant by "old" was the familiar xorg+mesa+DRI X stack up to recent
releases, while "new" is a completely refactored/reorganized X stack. Many
components of the "new" X stack are developed by xorg developers, but their
work may be released as part of other software packages, (e.g., GEM, and KMS
are part of the kernel) or part of the xorg xserver releases, or part of
individual xorg device drivers.  Many of the "new" X stack components have
not been officially released yet so you either have to look at the latest
git versions of many components or else rely on your cutting-edge distro
version (e.g., Debian unstable) to do the same.  In sum, if you distro
version is more than a year old, you are almost certainly running an "old" X
stack, and you have some "interesting" experiences to look forward to with
the "new" X stack.

I recommend subscribing your news feed reader to the phoronix news feed to
help you to keep track of the extremely active "new" X stack development
that is going on so you will know what's in store for you.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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