The new XOrg X11 server is due out on August 25th and with it comes some new, exciting features and improvements to old ones. This article will describe some of these features, changes and more.
XOrg X11 Server Release 6.8 Soon
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-August/002619.html
with composite enabled. Though there are of course still some issues it is very stable for me right now and man is it sweet. Nice drop shadows and real transparency.
I really get the impression that the guys at freedesktop.org got the development of X back on track and that we will not recognize X one year from now.
Will this work now? Or do I have to wait until KDE, has implemented use of these new features?
PS.: Thumb up to the XOrg guys 😉
I tried the release on Fedora Core 3, and the composite manager was really slow, buggy and kept crashing. I don’t know if it is a problem with ATI cards because other people seem to have had alot more luck.
I agree with the decision to keep it disabled, as it is not yet ready for use.
Also I compiled Metacity which now uses the composite extension, Windows are transparent when you drag them, and there is a basic shadow behind windows.
It works now. Of course as kde has not implemented composite yet there are some drawbacks. For example you are right now only able to make a whole konsole window translucent (including text and windowdecorations), not just the background you probably want to have translucent.
You will have to wait until QT makes use of the new features.
Okay, thanks I think I’ll go try it 😀 And look forward to when I can fully make use for it.
i suppose this means that apps can update their windows off screen and then blit the result onto the visible screen so that the ugly and distracting slow redraws can be hidden. that together with drop shadows to make edges of windows more easily spotted will enhance the usability of the X desktop a great deal for me.
Why do they focus on the eyecandy so much and don’t make hardware support a priority.
has X gotten faster ….. i mean i read somewhere that X was going to get lean and mean or somethin like that
anatoxin
This is great. I want you to know that the compositing code isn’t *really* ready. I mean the speed isn’t so good becouse there wasn’t enough time to improve it. But don’t worry!! This issues are known and will be resolved for the next X release. Bye!!
What hardware would that be?
You’re right, composite is seen as something of a technology preview and will not be enabled by default. However at least using the newest nvidia drivers and their preliminary support for render acceleration it seems pretty damn fast allready. It at least feels faster then X used to and problems like the ugly artifacts when moving a window are simply gone.
Looking good. The shackles are off and they are really starting to push the X11 boundary to a whole new level. All the nay-sayers of X will be dumb-founded by the XOrg progress. This kind of progress is, if anything, long overdue after the atrocious mismanagement of the XFree86 project.
The real beauty will be the release after this one. They are moving away from the monolothic tree into a modular one that makes use of things already on your system – notably things like Freetype2 and other such libs which have long-since been bundled in with XFree86 and the inaugral XOrg release. The work has been done, from what I have read, but it was decided that there was too much potential for unseen problems to push it into this release.
This XOrg6.8 release will be good, no doubt. But XOrg7, where time will have allowed for new features to mature and the codebase to evolve further, will really be the icing on the cake. I can’t wait for it.
Isn’t it about time to stop including XEdit, XBitmap, Xditview etc? Are there really more than about 3 people worldwide that actually still use them?
Hm, cool, I’m using an NVIDIA card so I can’t wait to try this superduperfast stuff on my own system.
/me gets the source and starts building…
sorry couldn’t resist. This looks very promising. Kudos to the XORG team.
Great job, guys.
But I’ll really be impressed when it starts using Dancing Trees. 😉
It is going to be the beginning of an interesting time. I think the move to Xorg will accelerate, now. There are still some using X11’s implementation. And, there are still some offering a choice. Now that the forks are beginning to diverge, it will be too much effort to support both or X11 as a default.
X11 is the name of the standard. X.org conforms to the X11 protocol. It is a fork of XFree86.
Seems like the forking of X is starting to pay off. X will finally bring new features to the table. Looks great, keep up the excellent work.
On an unrelated note, does anybody know what is being used to simulate the OS X dock in GNOME?
Gdesklet. 😎
>> Gdesklet. 😎
+ -translucent option (at compile time)
but is it possible on gnome to put menu bar to the top of windows like mac has?
Sorry about that. I knew I would get my names mixed up. Maybe my point wasn’t completely lost.
Would
:%s/X11/XFree86/g fix it?
What is the difference between XOrg and Xfree?
Any performance enhancements?
If that is so I will change asap
but is it possible on gnome to put menu bar to the top of windows like mac has?
—
gnome by default has a menu bar on top. if not add a panel, move it to top, resize it appropriately and add the menu bar to it.
Is it possible to change the resolution without restarting my computer now? I have Lindows 4.0. And do i have to type in that stupid password thing
@ anon:
this has been possible since… Xxfee 4.3 i guess =)
To expand, it is possible to set the screen size on the fly if you have the RandR extension. You can use the xrandr command to switch screen sizes (I also think there’s at least a Gnome program that can be used). Also, it has never been necessary to restart you computer for anything other than upgrading your kernel. Restarting X used to be necessary though.
I don’t know what password thing you are referring to, but no, you don’t have to enter any password to change screen sizes with xrandr.
>> gnome by default has a menu bar on top. if not add a panel,
>> move it to top, resize it appropriately and add the menu
>> bar to it.
I think “your name” (what’s in a name
rather means the application menu’s and not the static menu bar from gnome-panel.
I’ve gotten used to using multiple monitors with my PowerBook (side-by-side, not mirrored) running OS X and it really spoils you. I don’t know how well XOrg’s X11 server supports multiple monitors, but I hope it’s something that gets enough attention.
xrandr will resize the resolution without restarting your machine.
Any benchmarks on X.org 6.7 vs 6.8?
Will there be any redraw or slowness problems ona desktop with linux 2.6.8.1, KDE 3.3, ReiserFS 4 and X.org 6.8?
That worked in XOrg6.7, both on cards with multiple output and multiple cards.
Just to bad, my GeForce4 Ti4200 (it has 2xDVI and 1xTV) doesn’t support more then 2 connected monitors at a time, and my second monitor is my TV. *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine* *whine*
But I’ve tried and made it work, and I can see what you mean 😉
Just forgot, while Xorg 6.7 (XFree86 <4.4 properly did too) do support multiple monitor I’m not so sure about KDE. I’m running KDE in my native language Danish and screen 2’s panel and menus just ignored that.
And I’m not a big fan of Xinerama, strasting my desktop cross to monitors as if they were one, come on.
Does anyone know if there’s a list of new hardware being supported by this release? DRI support for my ProSavageDDR adapter has been in CVS for a while, and I’ve heard of people having success with it. I’d really love to get that on my laptop, because as it is, the unaccellerated driver barely does any better than the VESA driver…
In the case that I’m *not* getting DRI support in this release, the new extensions are probably going to be unusable / unusably slow on this machine, correct?
Likely not. Composite will actually make X marginally slower (because of the extra composite step) and significantly more memory hungry*. Raw speed has not been the problem with X since high-speed drivers came out. What has been the problem is dumb application redraw logic and synchronization problems. Composite will do a great deal to alleviate that by eliminating the need for the application to redraw itself when something moves on top of them. Composite will also enable artifact-free resize, by allowing resizes to be fully double-buffered.
*> This doesn’t take into account the performance increase from using something like Cairo/Glitz, which hardware-accelerates drawing. Also, it should be noted that the enormous RAM requirements are an issue for every desktop (like OS X) that double-buffers all windows.
whats wrong with them it isn’t like they add a whole lot of time to compile that much space after install if you don’t want edit the makefile and don’t include them
>sn’t it about time to stop including XEdit, XBitmap, Xditview >etc? Are there really more than about 3 people worldwide that >actually still use them?
Nevermind, I RTFA and followed some links. Looks like my DRI support wont be put in “for security concerns,” but there’ll be a build option to include devel-drivers. I guess I’ll be grabbing the source instead of waiting for Slack packages.
whats wrong with them it isn’t like they add a whole lot of time to compile that much space after install if you don’t want edit the makefile and don’t include them
—-
work is being done to modularise these stuff. this release is likely to be the last monolithic release of xorg
Does anyone know what theme they are using for the window frames and the application theme they are using to make it look similar to mac os x?
Garrett
Anybody else think the shadows look like crap?
I’m sorry, but I don’t consider a black glow around the entire window a shadow. Most shadows are at an angle, unless it’s high noon.
Now that would be cool – shadows that reflect the current time and angle of the sun (don’t know what you’d do for the evening, but eh
).
“Anybody else think the shadows look like crap?
I’m sorry, but I don’t consider a black glow around the entire window a shadow. Most shadows are at an angle, unless it’s high noon.
Now that would be cool – shadows that reflect the current time and angle of the sun (don’t know what you’d do for the evening, but eh
).”
I think you’ve just been playing too much DOOM 3.
There’s already a third-party, accelerated driver for the S3 Savage chipsets. It’s located here: http://www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html
I’ve been using it with XFree86 4.3 and FreeBSD 5.x without problems. It’s not the fastest driver, but it is a lot faster than the stock XFree86 driver.
Does anyone know the set of icons and theme used on the 4th screenshot? The one with title “E-Gnome Dropshadows”.
Nah, it looks glowish alright. The shadow is also too big and it can ruin a bit of the contents in surrounding windows, because the window now really uses more screen real estate. I don’t think that was the point. Are the shadows user adjustable?
There are also two details missing: In OSX the shadow is bigger under active windows and small under inactive windows. That gives an extra hint at the active window, which is very nice for those windows that don’t change much between active/inactive.
Number two is lining up a window against a statusbar will cause one to put a shadow on top of the other, where it shouldn’t, such as in this screenshot:
http://www.lynucs.org/index.php?screen_type=1&screen_id=17594095004…
where the desktop selector is in constant shadow from the statusbar. It’s a bit distracting and OSX gets things like this right.
Keep up the good work. Looking forward to try this. 🙂
also the 5th screenshot with themes for Firefox and Thunderbird looks nice. What’s this?
And how can I add this “Aquabar” at bottom of the screenshot in Fedora 2 easily?
Thanx!
so, is it possible to have mac-like “application’s menus” on top of the window in gnome?
or is it not?
🙂
AFAIK it isn’t possible with gnome.
It’s possible in kde though.
Does anyone know if there are plans to make xcb (http://freedesktop.org/Software/xcb) part of the Xorg distribution? Even better than that would be to include xcb and xcl, making xlib redundant.
It sounds as though these could make a significant difference to the perceived speed of X applications (particularly gtk ones for some reason…), yet there seems to be no effort to push them to people.
I don’t have Doom 3, and I don’t play modern games anyway, if I play at all
I’ve seen good subtle implementations of shadows. Win XP’s shadows aren’t too bad (look at the mouse cursor or the start menu). I actually like KDE 3.2’s shadows that you get from things such as the KDE menus.
Than you should really get it. The dynamic shadows and graphics in general are amazing.
Sorry, but currently, the answer is no.
Much like window mangers the composition manager is replaceable. The shadows and such are only part of their demo composition manager. At this point what you think of the art does not matter, the point is the windows are independent and a composition manager can put them on the screen however it wants with whatever effects it wants. Just look a sun’s looking glass, they are composing the windows into some pseudo 3d environment instead of providing shadows.
Once xorg6.8 comes out people will start writing their own composition managers. Most composition managers will probably be integrated with the window manager. In the future kde and gnome will support this, and these implementations will be the ones to complain about the artwork with. Right now complaining about artwork in a demo app that was written to demonstrate the framework is useless. What is available now is for people who want to help test and debug it or develop applications for it.
Could someone explain what the status of kdrive/xserver is and how it relates to the xorg server?
I ask because the first pass of the release notes linked to say that the kdrive driver framework enables a much faster implementation…
Also, does anyone know what how Glitz, Cairo, DRM, the FB and X will interact in the future?
Much appreciated…
If I understand correctly, the status is as such:
1) kdrive/xserver — small, (permanantly) experimental server.
2) xorg — production server.
As far as I can tell, the eventual goal is to have the X server sit on top of the DRI/DRM and use OpenGL for it’s rendering. It’s not clear what should happen to FB, but the freedesktop.org folks want a saner kernel-level interface that has only one driver touching the video hardware. In theory, the console could also sit on top of DRI/DRM. As for Cairo, the idea is to be able to render with it either using the XRender backend (which could be accelerated via OpenGL), or via OpenGL directly.
hello,
Sorry for my very poor english.
When I use my computer as well as when I read various ideas about windows based display systems, like X window, aqua,…I can see that one of the main issues for those devices is the clutter of windows over the desktop after few minutes of use. Indeed, swiching from one program to another is very slow, and need a huge amount of attention, which could be used more efficiently…
But, when I use my computer, I can also see that I only work on one, sometime two topics : Humans are not multitasking devices. Hence my question : why nobody creates a “desktop environment” and applications that wouldn’t be framed by a window, but that would work as function containers, allowing a single generic “window” to open, create and edit all the kinds of media. But everall, this would allow the full creation of a complex document (like a web site with pictures, vector grapics, text and scripts) in the same frame, without having to manage 4 or 5 oppened apps at the same time.
Such kind of structures already exist : when people include a spreadsheet into an Openoffice text, they can still edit the sheet inside Writer with Clac tools. But this behaviour is restricted to Oo apps opening Oo content.
The idea is to extend this behaviour in a much more opened way. For instance, in the same window, it would be possible to typeset text and to format it with tools from Oo, then to structure the page using scribus, add locations for images and to create them in the same place with the help of inkscape, all of that without having to switch between windows,copy, past, and so on. An if you prefer Koffice instead of Oo, Sodipodi instead of Inkscape, you could change the apps used to edit the document.
I suppose that this kind of behaviour need :
1 – A much higher integration of the apps with the UI (I don’t know, but maybee even more than K apps with KDE)
2 – A file format shared by all the apps (mustly an XML format)
I am not a programmer, just a biology student, but that’s my idea, so…
I always run 3×22″ Mitsubishi on 1600×1200 each on 4 vertical virtual desktops. I don’t know about Xinerama, but split screens work as they should. Order is what I preffer, and split screen it is the way to get it.
Diff between Xinerama and splitscreen. Xinerama, you can move one window from one monitor to other. Split screen is like having more than one single monitor but one computer one keyboard and one mouse. Draging from one to other monitor is possible for icons only, not Windows.
<quote>theme used on the 4th screenshot</quote>
enlightenment winter theme
and gtk+ milk theme.
I’m just… so impressed by those MacOS screenshot running new X.org. I’m wondering are they running on real MacOS X or just another WM theme alike? IF IT IS Linux theme emulate MacOSX, can ppl tell me which WM is it? And what theme, how to add dock panel like MacOSX, or just give me the link to the doc on it.
but is it possible on gnome to put menu bar to the top of windows like mac has?
Today we have window managers, session managers,… Why not a new panelmanager. One such panel manager could then implement the MacOS like menu placement style.
This should not be a Gnome thing. Instead one would hope that freedesktop org developed some kind of standard for how applications could talk to this new panel manager.
if you want an osx workalike go play with gnustep, it has everythign you’ll want including horizontal menus at the top when you build the theme engine into it. nothing else comes as close.
Kde does the current application’s menu bar on top thing like the Mac for all kde apps. Works great but I don’t like it because it isn’t very usable with a focus follows mouse policy.
There are two rather large and annoying bugs in xorg that have kept me from using it.
http://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=474
and
http://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=792
The first is still an issue for people with ATI or Matrox cards (mostly happens to them) and the second is just really annoying. I managed to patch the second one myself with the xfree 4.4.0 patch but it still needs to be fixed in xorg itself.
It appears to be enlightenment, with some EFL-based bar that I can’t remember the name of off the top of my head. (e-something. It’s ALWAYS e-something.
)
I’m pretty certain it’s not OS X. The shadows are all the same size and the fonts are “thinner” then the OS X renderer normally uses. That’s the current default windowframe theme for Enlightenment as well, IIRC.
<quote>And what theme, how to add dock panel like MacOSX</quote>
‘engage’ docking app
and ‘winter’ enlightenment theme.
>’engage’ docking app
where can i find this one ?
OK, downloaded, built. Spectacular. New NVidia drivers, experimental Option “RenderAccel” “on”. Without it, is unusable. With it, well, spectacular. KDE 3.3 works almost without a glitch. However, there are still some problems. GTK apps freeze it (RealPlayer, Firefox). Plastic theme has some little problems when resizing windows (some things do not redraw properly). Also, resizing often confuses compmanager, leaving parts of the screen not marked as damaged, and not redrawn. Xvideo, when it works, is shown on top of everything, cannot be covered with other window. But, oh boy, am I happy with it! super fast, no screen tearing when switching/moving windows. I cant wait a release to see how fast problems get fixed when everyone from Gnome to KDE starts playing with it. I think that it could become a rock solid with several win managers using it in a 6months to year range (composition manager provided with it is just a quick demo hack, much better looking, faster working things can be done with new extensions). Great, great work, and great great GREAT surprise (I tried it few months back and it was perty but unusable).
<quote>’engage’ docking app
where can i find this one ?</quote>
First u must compile and install Enlightenment Foundation Libraries
get ‘e17’ and ‘misc’ module from cvs
http://www.enlightenment.org/pages/source.html
compile/install libs in that order
http://www.enlightenment.org/pages/cvsnotes.html
then compile/install ‘misc/engage’
It is likely that the release will be delayed for at least a little while, while some remaining bugs are sorted out.
See http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/release-wranglers/2004-August/0009…
Erk. Seems I missed the first post.. 8|