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Small but a crucial correction: By XFree86, you meant X.org. XFree86 was the first X11 implementation used by linux distributions from 90's and 00's. Then, in
by kasabali 11mo ago
Small but a crucial correction:
By XFree86, you meant X.org.
XFree86 was the first X11 implementation used by linux distributions from 90's and 00's. Then, in mid 2000's FreeDesktop guys forked it as X.org and convinced all linux distributions to switch to it.
...(now comes the rant part)...
...only to declare X11 as old and unmaintainable and announce Wayland just a few years later.
Also note that they twisted the situation very well to their benefit as part of Wayland's PR campaign saying "X11 developers are the ones who's developing Wayland", making people believe as if they've been developing it for decades even though they've been only working on X.org for the last few years. Unfortunately this myth still persists to this day. Whole Wayland thing was actually a textbook case of CADT [0] looked retrospectively but they fooled us all masterfully at the time.
[0] https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
- amiga386 11mo agoThanks, I've changed my comments to say Xorg. However, in that potted history, let's not forget a lot of progress and advancement that Keith Packard and the FreeDesktop.org initiative did make. Standardising on autotools/make rather than the obnoxious imake, creating fontconfig rather than requiring arcane settings and conversion software to add fonts, creating the RandR extension and supporting hotplugging monitors and autodetection; I can't remember the last time I had to add a modeline manually to a config file! But the problem is the current Xorg developers want to kill X11, however short their tenure on it was. If they choose to leave, there aren't other Xorg developers waiting in the wings, apart from the crazy guy.
- kasabali 11mo agoGood point on Keith Packard. He was never seemed keen on Wayland and was still suggesting improvement ideas on X11 'till 6-7 years ago.