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I've read that distributions such as redhat, debian and such have prepared X.org's packages but I haven't seen any for debian. Am I unofficially blind people?

No matter which mirrors I look into (testing or unstable) or how much I google, can't seem to find anything remotely close to a debian package or mirror containing X11R6.7.

By tomorow if I find something I'l try. If not, then by src I guess. I hate not being up to date

Technonotice

You're not the only one! I spend half hour yesterday searching packages.debian.org and aptitude trying to find it

Anybody?

Sebboh

Debian is well-known for its swift package releases... =P

Dead Parrot

Here's some info on the current state of X server packages in Debian:

http://necrotic.deadbeast.net/xsf/XFree86/NEWS.xhtml

Hopefully Debian catches up the other distros once X.org makes its way into Debian.

Technonotice

It is fast actually (assuming sarcasm here ) - it's just XFree86 takes a while to package up for all the architectures (around 10 I think) and create all the nice automated scripts.

Thanks Parrot - unfortunately, nothing on the X.org server I could see on there, only the current 4.3.0 XFree86 release. X.org is a branched version of XFree86 just before the licence change (about version 4.3.99 or something, a release candidate).

320mb

LMAO, when Slack had already moved to 2.4.20 kernel
Deb was still using 2.2.18

they really know how to keep up to date.........

Dead Parrot

Of course, people are still waiting for Slackware to move to the platforms and architectures that Debian has already supported for ages.

http://www.debian.org/ports/

comp12345

You're probably referring to the stable branch of debian. The unstable branch is releases kernel updates quite frequently.

sterrenkijker

What exactly has changed in the xfree86 license? Is it not compatible with debian free software guidelines anymore? Or does the version number 4.3.0.dfsg.1-1 in sarge actually refer to X.org? Quite confusing it is...

Genesee

iirc, 4.4 introduced an attribution clause in the license, or something like that - anyway, it has been considered as incompatible with the GPL.

there was a good discussion about the license and the politics of the xfree86 group at slashdot.org about it a while back - try a search there.

Dead Parrot

I've understood that X.org is a branch off from XFree86 and that it is based on XFree86 version 4.4-RC2. X.org has taken a different direction in development than the original XFree86 project that proceeded to release XFree86 4.4.0. As far as I know, all Linux distros have agreed that they will support X.org releases instead of future XFree86 releases.

Debian has indeed lagged behind other distros concerning XFree86 implementation. Even XFree86 4.3.0 is quite recent addition to the official Debian repositories. I'm not aware why XFree86 proceeds so slowly in Debian (while most other software in Unstable is quite up-to-date) but the ambition to port Debian into several cpu architectures simultaneously may be one of the reasons.

If there have been problems in the past in making XFree86 licensing to agree with Debian policy, I hope that these problems are now over with the X.org release and that in future Debian will be more up-to-date with current X server releases.

Technonotice

I believe there were a lot of internal politics at work too between developers. I've read about a lot of heel-dragging going on for introducing new features into the code and accepting patches.

Every single major distro now has dropped XFree86 and moved to X.org (for their next releases) - the only significant player that still supports it is NetBSD. So it isn't just Debian that are changing.

As for your quick dig at Debian '320mb', even though unstable is almost bang up to date, you can still create your own Debian kernel package with a couple commands extremely easily. Then you just install the package as normal and reboot. You can do this with brand new kernels

Dead Parrot

In NetBSD it is just as easy to build X.org as XFree86 4.4.0, because X.org is in xsrc. But I agree that it looks like the binaries in the forthcoming NetBSD 2.0 release will include XFree86 and not X.org.

pe2338

1. debian is approaching the release of sarge, so can't allow X to sweep from under it's feet
2. there are/were discussions about this on the mailing list and irc channels
3. look here http://necrotic.deadbeast.net/xsf/XF...ocal/FAQ.xhtml

I hope x.org will be better and will be more flexible than XFree86

superstoned

well... I've been reading a bit on the mailinglists of the xsf (X-Strike-Force, the debian team mantaining X) and as far as I get it, the version 4.3.0blabla debian now has in unstable isnt just Xfree86 4.3.0, but it includes patches from debian developers (from xsf, that is) and from upstream (eg Xfree86 > 4.3.0) so its not that debian is that much behind ;-)

they seem to be discussing the switch to Xorg, but I dont know what they will do, and when.