XFree86 or X.org?

pickarooney

Anyone tried both and notice a major difference. I'm currently installing x.org and am wondering if I can use it and switch back to xfree if it causes problems. How do you switch between them?

Fenster

I don't recall any real functional differences between them. Most of the differences as such are due to its lisence.

pickarooney

I think I found one The vesa driver doesn't seem to be present or functional in x.org so the tv-out port is disabled.
As soon as I installed X.org it set itself up as the default X manager (is that the right term?) so it would be handy to be able to switch back.

[edit]The font display is also a bit buggered. I wouldn't recommend X.org at all(how's that for hasty judgement? )[/edit]

mambo50

The origonal release Xorg (6.7) was a fork of a release candidate of Xfree86 4.4. As far as i can remember the reason for the fork was due to a licencing change in Xfree86 and general dissatisfaction amung a number of X developers with the rate of progress of Xfree86.
Xorg has now replaced Xfree86 on most of the major Distro's
Xorg 6.7 is basically the same code as Xfree86 4.4. However, the latest Xorg release 6.8 features a number of enhancements. You can read about these at http://www.x.org
The future of X sure looks bright

tomk

pickarooney wrote:

the default X manager (is that the right term?)

To answer your question, the term is X server.

OfflerCrocGod

As mambo already said X.org is different from XFree86 in it's new release ( 6.8 ) There are some really nice and sexy effects like proper composite/transparency and dropshadows look cool. All this is a bit slow at the moment, oh and Xdamage which I believe speeds up window redrawing. I've been using X.org for a couple of months and I'm very happy with it, it's the future that's for sure

Example:

pickarooney

I got my new card and am trying to use it with x.org, but the tv-out is not functioning. When I installed xorg it overwrote xfree, so there's no going back.
Has anyone got an xorg.conf file with support for dual displays, as I get this error when X is starting:

(II) NVIDIA(0): Connected display device(s): CRT-0, TV-0
(WW) NVIDIA(0): Multiple displays connected, but only one display allowed;
(WW) NVIDIA(0): using first display

My conf file has only one screen entry and teh serverlayout section only specifies the monitor, not the TV.

[edit]Fixed it by adding several lines in the screen section (see new attachment)[/edit]

mambo50

A 2 monitor setup does much to enhance you geekyness
I am currently using a 2 monitor display on FC2 Xorg 6.7. A GF4 ti4200 in the AGP slot and an old GF2 in one of the pci slots. Both cards are using the nvidia closed source binary drivers. Although the nv drivers work fine too.
I'n general , it works very well. The only app i have come accross that will not work is nmap frontend .
I've attached a copy of my xorg.conf if thats any good to you . As always your milage may vary.

Fenster

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

As mambo already said X.org is different from XFree86 in it's new release ( 6.8 ) There are some really nice and sexy effects like proper composite/transparency and dropshadows look cool. All this is a bit slow at the moment, oh and Xdamage which I believe speeds up window redrawing. I've been using X.org for a couple of months and I'm very happy with it, it's the future that's for sure

I've tried those transparency effects myself, but even in Fluxbox it bogged down my system bad if anything much was happening. The transparent slit and window borders looked soooo good though.

nadir

xorg is faster imo, fluxbox is even zippier with it. Fenster if it went slow then you are doing wrong, or your pc really sucks, which I doubt
also fluxbox cvs now supports it somewhat, stuff like unfocused windows will be transparent, and nice shading.

you want to add some stuff to xorg.conf

like this

Section "Extensions"
    Option "Composite" "Enable"
    Option "RENDER" "Enable"
EndSection

and if you have a nvidia card something like this.

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Geforce4"
    Driver      "nvidia"
    VideoRam    131072
    Option "NvAGP" "3"
    Option "CursorShadow" "true"
    Option "CursorShadowAlpha" "60"
    Option "CursorShadowXOffset" "4"
    Option "CursorShadowYOffset" "2"
    Option "DigitalVibrance" "2"
    Option "RenderAccel"   "true"
EndSection

where Option "RenderAccel" "true" is the important line.
note: this is NOT hardware accelerated, but rather a dodgy work around, once real hardware acceration is supported (soon by the looks of things) then it should be crash free and GLX ought to work smoth with it, so should all non overlay video output drivers, like gl, not sure about overlay drivers like xv though, x11 works atm and its cool, heres a video I made with the cvs a while back.

xcomposite.avi

you want to get the cvs of xcompmgr too from freedektop.org, there are several hacks on the gentoo forums.

Stark

All the cool development is going into X.org

pickarooney

I resolved all the initial issues (a good half hour's work there) and am pleased to have to moved over to the bright side
I'd also like to celebrate my escape from ATI linux hell and am delighted to be back using an nVidia card - yaayyy!
Must try out some of the fansay Extension effects, though my old machine is going to hate me for it.

I can't get past the first 300k when downloading your clip, nadir.

OfflerCrocGod

Fenster wrote:

I've tried those transparency effects myself, but even in Fluxbox it bogged down my system bad if anything much was happening. The transparent slit and window borders looked soooo good though.

Never said it was fast , it is still being developed so give it some time to mature. Also as nadir already said you need to make sure that your Gfx card hw accel is on. Can't wait till it matures

dubhthach

pickarooney wrote:

XFree86 or X.org?

XSgi

pickarooney

While reconfiguring my network card with harddrake, I clicked for a second on the entry for the graphics card, which Mandrake took as an invitation to fúck up X.org. It reset everything to use XFree, which meant no X when I rebooted. I managed to get it to work just by changing the symbolic link 'X' in /etc/X11 to point to /usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg, but the login manager is still messed up. When I ctrl-alt-backspace, I get to a non-X screen with unreadable writing, and I have to blind-type startx to get back to the GUI. It should just reset and reopen the GUI with ctrl-alt-backspace, but I can't find what file needs to be present/edited to do that (something along the lines of KDM/XDM I think - I'm using KDE 3.3). Anyone know what I'm missing?