Xouvert is the open, innovative X server that brings tomorrow’s technology to your desktop today It looks like they intend to keep everything public and out in the open. They will also be using some advanced development software as well. See the web site to learn more.
Well, my first impression is pretty positive. The website is good, the wiki contains many nice ideas. And if they actually do manage to get a release done every six month, all the better. I for one wish them luck.
All the Wiki for Xauvert contains right now is a text image of the goatse.cx guy so user beware. What kind of juvenile mind finds it fun or amusing to deface websites like that. One of the weaknesses of the bazaar is having to deal with immature stunts like that. Damn but this aggravates me.
How many X forks are there now?
See the frontpage of xouvert.org :
“Sun Aug 17 13:02:17 PDT 2003 – Our wiki on XWIN is currently being vandalized by a script, so we have removed links to it. We hope this can be fixed soon. Slashdot found us a little bit earlier than we’d planned, but it’s all good. Thanks for the boost, guys!”
I think they failed the name. Linux apps really have bad taste names, who will understand xouvert as a graphical environment ? (for a goodness name it could be alright but for a project …)
However I wish them good luck and acceptance with new developers. XFree really got old as an organization, no dynamism.
I for one, welcome our new non-network transparent overlords.
Xouvert = X + ouvert ; X from X Window System, ouvert from French for “opened”
Not too difficult to understand … I think it’s rather fitting.
— Rob
At last!! I can’t wait for them to start releasing some code
I hope it will be compatible with the Nvidia drivers…
What kind of a name is Xouvert?
Xouvert is named after the ancient Babylonian goddess of open windows, wooden digging implements, and moonlight. A notorious ritual among the higher levels of Freemasonry has kept her memory alive until now. Xouvert, awake!
Ah the ancient Greek goddess of User Interfaces…
Q.
> I for one, welcome our new non-network transparent
> overlords.
Then you’ll be disappointed by Xouvert. The causes of XFree86’s clunkiness have been explored in depth, and countless studies have shown the network transparency to NOT be a burden on performance. Most of what makes XFree86 slow is Xlib. A well-designed Xlib would have network transparency at no cost.
Yet another fork? Whatever happened to Xwin.org???? I’ll believe that this is good when I see some results.
..no matter if the slowness comes from the network transparency or not, I would be happy with every improvement that makes things faster and smoother.
>> Yet another fork? Whatever happened to Xwin.org????
xwin.org is not about any fork, it’s just a dead community site.
Really hope these guys will not lose their motivation.
Yet another fork? Whatever happened to Xwin.org???? I’ll believe that this is good when I see some results.
XWin.org actually never forked, it was just a forum for the discussion of improvements to Xfree86.
And after a while developers get frustrated there too, so, at the cry of SHOW US THE SOURCES, here enters Xouvert…
by the way, sorry to turn down right at the beginning, but wouldn’t be there a better name? (Five minutes after its creating, was already mis-spelled! 😉
I allways thought it would be great both for interface responsivenes (redrawing time) and network transparency
that instead of just sending drawing commands thru the network, the client would sent a sort of “code” (high level/portable of course) that would tell the server how to redraw different widgets (windows in the case of X11) even
at different sizes. Since the code could be cached server side, this would:
1-Minimize network traffic regarding to drawing lines and stuff
2-Increase redrawing speed AND responsivenes, because there would be no need to ask the different apps to redraw (unless they explicitly state they want to do it) and the server could manage the time spent on each task.
Which devs actually went, which stayed? kp, mv, ee, dd etc
I don’t have too many gripes about X’s responsiveness in general, and it does the job for me, but I’m happy that the project itself will be overhauled as a more open process.
Oh, and regarding the web defacing, it only goes to show that anti-OSS proponents can also behave badly – I can only hope Mr. Enderle (and those who agree with him) will notice.
Man, I wish someone would write a virus whose sole purpose was to seek out picture of the goatse man and erase them. I can’t bear that this man’s anatomy has become part of Internet history…
I don’t have any problems with XFree86 either but I am hopeful that Xouvert (spelled it right this time) will help advance X on Linux at a faster pace. XFree86 always seemed to take an extremely cautious approach to advancement, which is good in a way but made them seem unresponsive.
As far as the defacement goes, I doubt it was an ant-OSS proponent, or anyone else trying to make a message. More likely some script kiddie who thinks he’s being clever.
Well I for one would like to know of the text of the news story is David Adams’s opinion, or OSNEWS’s opinion, or if I have to figure that out myself.
Is it some sort of puzzle? Do I win a prize?
People are always bitching about the choises of names for Linux programs; I don’t understand. OK, so when you hear/read Xouvert it doesn’t immediately ring a bell. Does it have to? I don’t think so. Lots of non-IT products have names that say exactly nothing about what they really are. A lot of commercial Windows applications don’t fare any better too; it’s just that you’re used to them.
The best known X server for Windows is called Exceed – do you think that is any more descriptive than Xouvert? Dreamweaver, Excel, Access, Oracle, Delphi, Outlook, … are all non-descriptive names, and I think there’s nothing wrong with that.
Are these the people that initiated Xwin.org , and talked about a for some months ago ?
Ok so will it be compatible with current drivers? i.e. The Nvidia drivers? if not, how do they expect to succeed with the non dieharders?
Let’s hope that they will make wise decisions, in a few years from now the 3D desktop will be common among commercial operating systems(Mac has it, Win gets it with the Longhorn release). And Linux could also have a 3d desktop, but support for 3d cards is rather bad under linux. I still cant get my Radeon IGP 340M to work. So I hope that one of the main development issues of Xouvert will be 3d ‘that just works’. And for the rest of the 3D desktop, Gnome/Kde should have 3d support by the next big release (Gnome 3/Kde 4). Sun already demonstrated the demo Looking Glass, they say people where impressed by it. But I haven’t seen anything of it, not even screenshots (anyone has em?). As for the rest, good luck to the Xouvert team.
> Are these the people that initiated Xwin.org , and talked about a for some months ago ?
No. Note the missing names that you might have expected like Keith Packard. Xouvert has atm only three developers from which only one is familiar with XFree source. And they are backed by no company. Looks like an going public without meat. Better wait for the “real” fork with known names.
There is a project to rewrite XLib and make some things at a lower level to increase perfomance (I don´t remember the name).
In my opinion,3D desktop will never be the mainstream application. The current windowing system is the most productive way to do jobs, until the computer can read our mind or at least to understand our simple body language.
until the computer can read our mind or at least to understand our simple body language.
My computer already understands simple body language : sometimes it will refuse to do anything until I kick it (hard) 🙂
>> In my opinion,3D desktop will never be the mainstream application
When people talk about 3D desktops, they don’t mean a desktop like you can have with some of those spiffy 3D-walk-me-around-to-the-next-room-full-of-icons programs.
It just means desktop rendering is accelerated by your 3d card and being able to do anything weird with your windows (like doing an OS-X-like genie effect, or the wobbling windows from the Longhorn demo, etc).
Everything will stay like it currently is, it’s just the next step to make things (much) better looking.
My computer already understands simple body language : sometimes it will refuse to do anything until I kick it (hard) 🙂
Before you do that next time, try ensuring that the keyboard and mouse (printer etc.) are plugged in. Also make sure the program you wish to interact with with is running and you aren’t looking at a screenshot. HTH.
Just read on #rhl-devel, Mike Harris’ comment on the project/fork.
“10:57 < mharris> A new project that is a fork of X has been started by someone who is not an X developer and has no knowledge of XFree86 source code or X11 development. Along with him, there are 2 others, both webmasters
and an IRC master, whatever that is.
“
>I think they failed the name. Linux apps really have bad
>taste names, who will understand xouvert as a graphical
>environment ? (for a goodness name it could be alright
>but for a project …)
What about ‘windows’ for an o.s name. Also stupid name
Once alan cox wrote in his diary (www.linux.org.uk) that
he installed ‘windows’. Windows? Alan! eeuh no that where real windows
merde
bill
>> Sun already demonstrated the demo Looking Glass, they say people where impressed by it.
Hm, just Googled around a bit and found that this Looking Glass GUI would be open source (!)
Interesting..
Can anyone explain where their technologies would fit in?
This is very good news… considering that it is a fork for R & D purposes only. i.e. all good developments will be ported back to Xfree86. No big Xfree developer has voiced support for this fork, but since Xwin is hosting the Wiki, I draw the conclusion that they are indirectly supporting it.
Linux is way ahead of Windows in many areas, I hope henceforth it will march ahead and compete with Mac OS X and its successors in desktops.
Gnome 2.4 Beta
Samba 3.0 RC1
Xfree86 fork….
Great way to start the week. I wait for the day when 90% of the stuff work out of the box in Linux, i.e. without editing config files or adding Libs and plugins
That’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard. You actually have to think for a moment to even spell the url right. Way to go.
Some find always something to complain about. The name is logical.
X = X windows
Ouvert = Open (in french language)
a) Forks like this are good. Advanced development happens in the forked tree, and if the results succeed, they get merged back into the main project. EGCS (now the new GCC) worked this way, to great success.
b) Quit bitching about the name. X/Open, which is a pretty cool sounding name in English, was the name of a group long before this came out. eeks-ouvert, which is how this name would be pronounced in French, is an equally cool sounding name in that language. I hate to break this to you, but sometimes English-speakers don’t get to have it their way. Especially in the open source community, where a very significant percentage of the developers are European.
Does anyone know where there are screenshots of the Sun Looking Glass demo? There is an old post on xwin.org from someone who hacked XFree86 to work on top of OpenGL. Here is his site. http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~unk6/transluxent/ , though it hasn’t been updated since April.
I think the name is crappy.. I thought english was the langua franca in software town? The bigger the project, the easier it should be for people to find out about the name, if you ask me.. And french really isn’t the best way to do that.. even though the (leading) developers are propably french!
according to the site. Supposed to be named for some Babylonian goddess but that sounds like bull to me.
But your family name has a French origin
(kidding here)
That Babylonian godess thing is a joke
Network transparency is something that must be maintained. But instead of using only the X means, perhaps, RDC could be used. Right now, it’s not practical to use X’s transparency outside of an intranet.