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Wayland Archive

KDE, GNOME To Co-Host Flagship Conferences in 2009

Even though some users of the two desktops take every opportunity to make fun or flat-out attack one another, it is no secret to more reasonable people that the KDE and GNOME projects strive to make their respective desktops interoperate, and that the developers working on either of the two projects have a great deal of respect for one another. This has lead to an attempt to jointly organise the desktops' flagship conferences, in one place, in 2009.

A Preview of Kernel-Based Mode-Setting

Have you ever been annoyed by Linux' lack of a coherent graphical boot process? Graphics hardware causing problems during sleep/wake cycles? Problematic virtual terminal switches? Kernel-based mode-setting, a new feature of Xorg still in heavy development aims to solve many of these problems by moving the mode-setting code from the user-space X driver into the Linux kernel. Phoronix takes a look at this new feature.

X.Org 7.3 Preview

"Scheduled for release tomorrow is X.Org 7.3. Among the new features for X.Org 7.3 include the Xorg server 1.4, an application for adjusting a display's backlight, updated display drivers, and support for font catalog directories. Version 1.4 of the X.Org server contains such features as RandR 1.2 support, input hot-plugging, KDrive enhancements, Solaris DTrace support, and EXA improvements. In this article today, we will briefly go over some of the changes found in X.Org 7.3 and we will follow up with some benchmarks in early September."

Compiz Fusion 0.5.2 Released

"This is the first development release of Compiz Fusion, the result of more than six months of work and polish. Compiz Fusion is the result of a merge between the Compiz community plugin set 'Compiz Extras' and the parts of the Beryl project that are independent of the window manager core. The two communities have re-united to create a user experience for Linux that rivals anything available on other platforms."

Introducing Compiz Fusion

The merger between compiz and Beryl now has a name: Compiz Fusion. "Our previous attempts to select a project name have not gone well. We tried a poll but the names in the poll were not pre-qualified to determine if they were usable and the 'winning' name was also a strongly disliked name. Kristian and I each proposed a plan to select a name, but that effort got sidetracked by a massive flame war on the mailing list. While our community has some democratic features, ultimately it is a meritocracy and the people who contribute the most value have the most say. So in the end a decision was made by the majority of the people who have contributed the most."

Creating a Sane Beryl Settings Manager

The Beryl project has won a lot of press time so far with its impressive tricks -- even more than its slower-evolving daddy, Compiz. There are several lose ends to Beryl's core engine and incompatibilities with existing applications or technologies. However, something that really put off a lot of people when they try Beryl is its dreadful settings manager.

Bring on the Bling with Beryl

"Desktop computing technology has evolved considerably since the first graphical user interface was developed by researchers at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in 1973. Microsoft's Aero Glass, Apple's Quartz 2D Extreme, and Sun's Project Looking Glass are all poised to transform the way that users interact with computers. Also at the forefront of innovation, the Linux community has some prodigiously impressive new user interface technologies of its own. Beryl, a new open-source window manager for Linux, features compelling visual enhancements like support for transparent windows and elaborate window animations."

Beryl 0.2.0 Released

"Beryl 0.2.0 is a complete overhaul of Beryl. The last stable release (0.1) featured a very fun, and eye-candy based compositing window manager. However, since it's release, many parts of Beryl have been rewritten, replaced, or simply dropped. It’s filled with eye-candy, better user support, new features, and stability."

Drag and Drop in Beryl

Two more articles on Beryl. The first one is on drag and drop in Beryl: "What does Beryl add to the drag and drop picture? Well, for a start, if you've got a lot of windows open, it's easier to find the target if you can see all the windows at once. Also, if you want to drop a file/text on an application on another desktop, you can do this much more easily. This is a cool little feature that allows you to drag and drop files between applications on the same desktop, or different desktops." The second one is a performance tweak for Beryl.

Compiz: Update on xdevconf07, Beryl Situation

David Reveman writes: "I'd like to get all of you updated on the compiz related things discussed at the X developer conference that was held last week. My talk was mainly focused on 'what's next' and how to get desktop compositing in X to the next level." He also discussed the fork: "I had the chance to talk to Quinn Storm from the beryl project during xdevconf. I would have hoped that the current situation with beryl could be improved but it seems like Quinn at least isn't interested in that. However, after talking to Quinn it's very clear to me that the fork was partially motivated by assumptions that were wrong."

X11 R7.2 Released

The X.Org community is proud to announce the release of X11R7.2, the third modular release of the X Window System. It incorporates significant stability and correctness fixes, including improved autoconfiguration heuristics, enhanced support for GL-based compositing managers such as Compiz and Beryl, and improved support for PCI systems with multiple domains. It also incorporates the new, more extensible XACE security policy framework.