X.Org Releases First Modular Source Roll-Up 176
NewsForge is reporting that X.Org has released their first modular roll-up release. From the article: "All X11R7.0 derivative ("modularized") releases divide the source code into logically distinct modules, separately developed, built, and maintained by the community of X.Org developers. This concentrates and accelerates development time, supporting continuous modification, testing, and publication of each module.The new modular format offers focused development, and rapid and independent updates and distribution of tested modular components as they are ready, freed from the biennial maintenance release timetable."
I, For One, Welcome Our Modular Overlairds.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good thing! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the main thing that this will allow us to do is have more features added/modified, rather than more/newer drivers.
Accelerated Indirect GLX! Woowoo. (Score:5, Interesting)
What this will allow you to do would be allow users to gain some benifits from having hardware acceleration for 3d and multimedia application even when running applications remotely over a network.
Another way to put it is that applications gain their acceleration not from the hardware directly, but from the Xserver they are running on, which then itself then uses the hardware acceleration.
It's not going to be as fast or efficient as direct rendering, but it's much more flexible and usefull in a wider context.
It is another stepping stone to having a fully realised opengl-based X server.
This is probably very much due to Redhat's AIGLX specificly and xgl development in general.
Re:Why not scrap X (Score:5, Interesting)
X seems to work OK for me, and doesn't seem substantially less functional than the Windows or Mac OS models.
Re:Gentoo (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes! A friend of mine with a laptop with one of these cards said that with XOrg 7 came the first time he had hardware-accelerated OpenGL in Linux.
Please allow me to critisize you for a moment: I've been running 7.0 since it came out (before it was in ~x86 even). I'm perfectly sane. Somebody has to test new software if it is ever to become stable. Also, everyone will have to do the transition sooner it later, so I might as well do it now. The modularized system has been incredibly stable and error free; you (and I, and everyone) should be very thankful to Gentoo's wonderful XOrg team for figuring it all out and delivering evrrything so smoothly. Please don't call me, or them, or anyone insane just for playing around with something new. It's how Linux happened, after all.
How about RDP access to X sessions (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes - RDP is heavily underdocumented, and it's a Windows thing.
BUT . . .
There are a huge number of dumb "Citrix" terminals out there in corporate land that only use RDP. If Linux could support these dumb clients connecting, it would remove one of the large costs of migrating to Linux desktops.
To put it into some perspective, I've been involved in 2 major projects to migrate the desktop from Windows/Citrix to Linux, only to be stopped by the cost of having to replace every single dumb terminal.
Is this a stupid idea? Or could it really get wings and start to fly? My X knowledge isn't strong enough to figure out the best way forward.
Cheers
Duncan
Re:Why not scrap X (Score:3, Interesting)