Subject: X fall preview
Newsgroups: gmane.linux.gentoo.desktop
Date: 2004-07-31 11:16:28 GMT (4 years, 48 weeks, 3 days, 9 hours and 55 minutes ago)
For those of you interested in X (probably everyone, since you're all on the desktop list), here's a brief summary of what things look like upstream and in Gentoo. --------------------------------- IMPORTANT: --------------------------------- The xfree package is deprecated in favor of xorg-x11. I anticipate its removal by the first Gentoo release in 2005. --------------------------------- X.ORG: --------------------------------- NEXT RELEASE: --------------------------------- An alpha of the next release (6.7.1 or 6.8.0, seems undecided but leaning toward 6.8) is planned to come out today [1]. Beta's scheduled for 13 August and release is scheduled for 25 August. The alpha may slip some because of unresolved issues below (mainly in the FREETYPE section and the Damage/XFixes/Composite integration). PLANNED FEATURES: - Damage/XFixes/Composite [2-4] (transparency and so forth) -- Composite will be runtime disabled by default because it's in flux and may be broken for the alpha. - ATI r4xx chipset support (latest cards, such as X800) [5] - ATI IGP chipset support [6] - RENDER acceleration for ATI r1xx/r2xx chipsets [7-9] -- faster 2D. Note that Radeon Render acceleration may cause hangs in some situations, so you may want to turn off Render (Options "RenderAccel" "NO" in the driver section) (Eric Anholt). - ATI dynamic power management [10] -- for laptops - XEVIE (X EVent Interception Extension) [11] -- will be set up the same as Composite (runtime disabled) - DMX (Distributed Multihead X) [12] - Updated DRI [13] and Mesa [14] -- your 3D stuff - Matrox i2c and Maven support [15] - Intel i915 2D and 3D drivers - VIA/Unichrome 3D driver -- Within the DevelDRIDrivers define upstream (Eric Anholt), probably USE-flag enabled for us. See XFREE-DRM section for why. - Savage 3D driver and rehashed 2D driver -- Savage 3D isn't really integrated yet, because the DDX (server-specific) changes aren't in (Eric Anholt). Also, see XFREE-DRM section for security implications. Further DRI development is intended to happen within XOrg CVS, rather than independently as in the past. This largely is a result of having a more open CVS access policy than XFree86. COMPOSITE/XEVIE As mentioned, these will be runtime disabled by default. They can be enabled by a 'Section "Extensions"' in xorg.conf or by command-line options. DLLOADER: Many dlloader-related fixes were recently committed [16-18]. If you've got USE="dlloader" and a Rage128 or a Radeon, you'll need to use the "ati" driver rather than "r128" or "radeon." Also, the overlay framebuffer and cfb drivers haven't been checked yet. These issues are anticipated to be fixed by the beta release. If you see 'cfb' or 'xf[0-9]*[0-9]' being loaded in your X log, worry a bit if you're using dlloader (Adam Jackson). FREETYPE: A major issue remains with freetype [19]. As a result of some CJK-related optimizations, a dependency exists for >=-freetype-2.1.8. The optimizations previously (and wrongly) used a private API, but the API was publicly exposed starting at 2.1.8. Unless this gets fixed by the time the alpha is released, we'll probably be building freetype statically into X (at least for now). This means it'll ignore the system freetype and use its own internal version. Note that this static building is only necessary for those of you using freetype versions lower than 2.1.8 (everything 2.1.6 and higher is in package.mask). I haven't decided yet whether I'll check for a high enough version at build time or force a static build. The former breaks packages built for other machines, and the latter leaves people safe in the case of an external freetype downgrade but ignores external freetype upgrades, security updates, etc. MISCELLANEOUS (BIG ENDIAN, NON-TCL): Some endianness problems may remain for big-endian platforms (PPC and others). Also, non-TCL video cards (e.g., old Radeons) may be broken. HARDENED: Some setups with a gcc built with USE="hardened" or with X built with USE="dlloader" or USE="pie" [20] will encounter problems. Also, using the "-fstack-protector" CFLAG can cause problems with gcc 3.3.3 or higher [21]. GENTOO: I plan to get the alpha and beta into Portage for widespread testing (in package.mask) as soon as possible after their releases. Unfortunately, I'll be on vacation Aug. 3-16, so anything that happens in that time, I won't be able to do. So let's hope the deadlines don't slip much. Also, I'm looking to add the multiuser patch sometime soon. This allows multiple users to run independent X sessions on the same computer. It's already in Mandrake and perhaps other distributions. CURRENT RELEASE (6.7.0): --------------------------------- 6.7.0-r2: Testing. I'd like to fix some potential font [22] and xkb [23] problems. 6.7.0-r1: Stable. Seems to work alright. --------------------------------- XFREE86: --------------------------------- >=4.4: Not planned for Portage, unless upstream licensing and committing policy and philosophy changes significantly and more maintainers join the Gentoo X team. Neither of these seems very likely right now, the former much more so than the latter. 4.3.0-r7: Has many of the changes present in xorg-x11 but remains masked in package.mask. As the blocker bug in portage that prevented its unmasking should be fixed, it may or may not be unmasked at some point. It still is affected by a security hole in xdm [24] but is the only X implementation in Portage that works as intended for the hardened team, to my knowledge. I plan to get the security bug patched within the next few days, so the hardened team can have something that works as well as intended. 4.3.0-r6: Stable. Only anticipated changes include possible security updates. --------------------------------- XFREE-DRM: --------------------------------- 4.3.0-r8: Hard-masked and in development. Plan is for it to add some great stuff including: - savage DRM - via/unichrome DRM - i915 DRM - 2.6 kernel support (2.6 users should be using in-kernel DRMs now) We expect to change the name to x11-drm to reflect its present independence of X implementation around the time 4.3.0-r8 is released. mach64 also was moved to the trunk from its own branch upstream, which will greatly simplify the ebuild and allow you to build mach64 in conjunction with other DRMs rather than keeping it exclusive. Note that via/unichrome, savage and mach64 ALL have the insecure DMA access security issue [25]. The insecure portions of their drivers will probably be hidden behind (a) USE flag(s). --------------------------------- OPENGL-UPDATE: --------------------------------- We're looking in the direction of multiple simultaneous OpenGL implementations (e.g., for diskless node setups) [26] and other enhancements [27]. Any suggestions are welcome [27]. 1.8.1: Stable on amd64, testing on every other architecture. Provides SGI's glext.h as the default to ensure that everything has the latest one. Adds support for TLS and 32-bit compatibility libraries that the nVidia binary drivers provide. 1.7 added '--get-implementation' and libtool-archive fixing for xorg-x11's new libGL.la location (different from xfree's). --------------------------------- MISCELLANEOUS: --------------------------------- DRIVERS: ATI and nVidia binary drivers are being maintained and stay current with upstream. Matrox binary drivers are not doing so well but are updated occasionally. Kyro binary drivers are largely ignored, and upstream does not plan to update them for 2.6 kernels. ati-gatos has an X.Org- and XFree86 4.4-compatible version in testing upstream, planned for inclusion in Gentoo soon. FREEDESKTOP.ORG: Gentoo's kdrive is actively maintained, but it is a freeze of the kdrive in XFree86 4.3.0. Upstream kdrive has moved to CVS in xserver.freedesktop.org as a development medium and has not had a release, nor is one planned. Once there is a release of X that uses the modular xlibs [28], we will probably add both the xlibs and a snapshot of kdrive to Portage. OTHER: XTerm and utempter stay current with upstream. Y-windows is largely unmaintained in Gentoo and upstream. The same seems to hold true for XDirectFB. I'd like to get freeglut in [29]. We have an ebuild contributed [30]. --------------------------------- IMPORTANT: --------------------------------- The xfree package is deprecated in favor of xorg-x11. I anticipate its removal by the first Gentoo release in 2005. Any suggestions, comments, etc. are welcome. Thanks, Donnie -- Donnie Berkholz Gentoo Linux Resources: 1. http://freedesktop.org/bin/view/XOrg/XorgReleasePlan 2. http://xlibs.freedesktop.org/Software/DamageExt 3. http://xlibs.freedesktop.org/Software/FixesExt 4. http://xlibs.freedesktop.org/Software/CompositeExt 5. http://www.ati.com/products/gamer.html 6. http://www.ati.com/products/integrated.html 7. http://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=748 8. http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-June/001024.html 9. http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/usenix2000/render.html 10. http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg-commit/2004-July/001287.html 11. http://freedesktop.org/Software/XEvIE 12. http://dmx.sourceforge.net/ 13. http://dri.sourceforge.net/ 14. http://www.mesa3d.org/ 15. http://bugs.xfree86.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1098 16. http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg-commit/2004-July/001355.html 17. http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg-commit/2004-July/001375.html 18. http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-July/001875.html 19. http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-July/001931.html 20. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47197 21. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51342 22. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53753 23. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47243 24. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53226 25. http://dri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/ATIMach64 26. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55212 27. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54984 28. http://xlibs.freedesktop.org/ 29. http://freeglut.sourceforge.net/ 30. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36783 Acknowledgments: Thanks to Adam Jackson and Eric Anholt for looking this over.